Saint Giles

Abbot and Hermit
(died c. 710)

Saint Giles is one of the most popular saints of the early medieval West, venerated throughout Europe and the patron of an enormous number of churches, hospitals, and charitable institutions from Scotland to southern France. Despite his extraordinary popularity, the historical details of his life are almost entirely obscured by legend, and what is preserved in his Acts belongs more to the world of pious tradition than to verifiable biography. What is certain is that he was a hermit who lived in the forests of Provence in southern France sometime in the seventh or early eighth century, that he attracted disciples who formed a monastic community around him, and that he died there in great holiness.

The legend of Giles is one of the most charming in hagiography. He is said to have been an Athenian by birth who came to France to live as a hermit. He settled in a cave in the forest near the mouth of the Rhône, where he lived for years sustained by the milk of a hind that God sent to nourish him. When a king of the Visigoths or the Franks was hunting in the forest, his hounds started the hind, which took refuge in Giles's cave. An arrow shot at the fleeing animal struck the hermit instead, who refused all medical treatment as an unnecessary distraction from prayer. The king, moved by the hermit's holiness, offered to build him a monastery, which Giles accepted reluctantly and governed until his death.

He is the patron of cripples, beggars, and the disabled, partly because of his own wound and partly because his shrines became places of healing for the lame and infirm. The great abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in Provence, built near the site of his hermitage, became one of the principal stopping points on the pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela and a major centre of pilgrimage in its own right. His feast is celebrated on September 1st.