*Ø* Blogmanac September 1 | Feast day of St Giles
In Spain, shepherds consider St Giles the protector of rams, and it used to be the custom to wash the rams and colour their wool a bright shade on Giles’s feast day. They would tie lighted candles to their horns, and bring the animals down the mountain paths to the chapels and churches to have them blessed. In the Basque country, the shepherds come down from the Pyrenees on this day, dressed in their full traditional costume, sheepskin coats, staves, and crooks, to attend Mass with their best rams. This event marks the beginning of autumn festivals, and features processions and dancing in the fields.
St Giles is the patron saint of those who can't walk. He was born at Athens and came to France in about 715 (or 683; sources differ), having given his patrimony to charity. He lived for two years with Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, and became a hermit, and so continued till he became abbot at Nismes.
The legend of Giles and the hind
The Giles tradition has the following story: while hunting, King Childeric of France accidentally shot an arrow into a thorn bush, hoping to hit a deer, but instead wounded the hermit in the knee. Giles remained crippled for life, refusing to be healed so that he could better mortify his flesh.
The King of France so admired Giles that he had built the monastery of Saint Gilles du Gard for the saint’s followers, and Giles became its first abbot, establishing his own discipline there. A small town grew up around the monastery.
As he was wounded while protecting his pet hind, or female red deer, the hind is his symbol in art, together with an arrow in Giles's hand. The animal went daily to the hermit's cave to give him milk, and protected him by causing thick bushes to grow up around the convalescing eremite.
Giles once raised the son of a prince to life, and made a lame man walk. Once, he cast two doors of cypress into the Tiber River, Rome, and “recommended them to heavenly guidance”, as the 19th-century folklorist William Hone put it. On Giles’s return to France he found those doors at the gates of his monastery, and used them as the portals to his church.
Hospitals for the lame and poor
Churches, hospitals and safe houses to St Giles, which were for disabled people, people with leprosy, paupers and beggars, were generally situated outside the walls of the city, as these ‘cripples’ were not permitted within the walls, but these were built so that they could be easily reached by the needy.
When they were taken to Tyburn in London for execution, convicts were allowed to stop at Saint Giles’s Hospital where they were given a bowl of ale called Saint Giles’s Bowl, “thereof to drink at their pleasure, as their last refreshing in this life”.
St Giles died c. 710-724 (sources differ) in France. "Many wytnisse that they herde the company of aungelles berynge the soule of hym into heven" (Golden Legend). Upon Giles's death, his grave became a shrine and place of pilgrimage; the monastery later became a Benedictine house.
Giles is now an affectionate, generic name in England for a farmer, a sense that dates from 1800, when it was used in The Farmer's Boy, a poem by Bloomfield.
Patronage
Beggars, blacksmiths, breast cancer, breast feeding, cancer patients, cripples, disabled people, Edinburgh Scotland, epilepsy, epileptics, fear of night, forests, handicapped people, hermits, horses, insanity, lepers, leprosy, mental illness, mentally ill people, noctiphobics, physically challenged people, paupers, poor people, rams, spur makers, sterility, woods.
It might be that his patronage of animals and forests suggest his mythos may also have Pagan origins.
Other saints of the day
In Spain, shepherds consider St Giles the protector of rams, and it used to be the custom to wash the rams and colour their wool a bright shade on Giles’s feast day. They would tie lighted candles to their horns, and bring the animals down the mountain paths to the chapels and churches to have them blessed. In the Basque country, the shepherds come down from the Pyrenees on this day, dressed in their full traditional costume, sheepskin coats, staves, and crooks, to attend Mass with their best rams. This event marks the beginning of autumn festivals, and features processions and dancing in the fields.
St Giles is the patron saint of those who can't walk. He was born at Athens and came to France in about 715 (or 683; sources differ), having given his patrimony to charity. He lived for two years with Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, and became a hermit, and so continued till he became abbot at Nismes.
The legend of Giles and the hind
The Giles tradition has the following story: while hunting, King Childeric of France accidentally shot an arrow into a thorn bush, hoping to hit a deer, but instead wounded the hermit in the knee. Giles remained crippled for life, refusing to be healed so that he could better mortify his flesh.
The King of France so admired Giles that he had built the monastery of Saint Gilles du Gard for the saint’s followers, and Giles became its first abbot, establishing his own discipline there. A small town grew up around the monastery.
As he was wounded while protecting his pet hind, or female red deer, the hind is his symbol in art, together with an arrow in Giles's hand. The animal went daily to the hermit's cave to give him milk, and protected him by causing thick bushes to grow up around the convalescing eremite.
Giles once raised the son of a prince to life, and made a lame man walk. Once, he cast two doors of cypress into the Tiber River, Rome, and “recommended them to heavenly guidance”, as the 19th-century folklorist William Hone put it. On Giles’s return to France he found those doors at the gates of his monastery, and used them as the portals to his church.
Hospitals for the lame and poor
Churches, hospitals and safe houses to St Giles, which were for disabled people, people with leprosy, paupers and beggars, were generally situated outside the walls of the city, as these ‘cripples’ were not permitted within the walls, but these were built so that they could be easily reached by the needy.
When they were taken to Tyburn in London for execution, convicts were allowed to stop at Saint Giles’s Hospital where they were given a bowl of ale called Saint Giles’s Bowl, “thereof to drink at their pleasure, as their last refreshing in this life”.
St Giles died c. 710-724 (sources differ) in France. "Many wytnisse that they herde the company of aungelles berynge the soule of hym into heven" (Golden Legend). Upon Giles's death, his grave became a shrine and place of pilgrimage; the monastery later became a Benedictine house.
Giles is now an affectionate, generic name in England for a farmer, a sense that dates from 1800, when it was used in The Farmer's Boy, a poem by Bloomfield.
Patronage
Beggars, blacksmiths, breast cancer, breast feeding, cancer patients, cripples, disabled people, Edinburgh Scotland, epilepsy, epileptics, fear of night, forests, handicapped people, hermits, horses, insanity, lepers, leprosy, mental illness, mentally ill people, noctiphobics, physically challenged people, paupers, poor people, rams, spur makers, sterility, woods.
It might be that his patronage of animals and forests suggest his mythos may also have Pagan origins.
Other saints of the day
Pip Wilson posted item above at 11:54 AM | Permalink
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