Feast day: September 1

St. Giles

Hermit, Abbot · d. c. 710

Patron of The disabled, beggars

A hermit of southern France who, by tradition, lived in a forest with only a hind for company and founded a monastery that became a great pilgrimage center on the road to Compostela.

Giles — in Latin Aegidius — was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, though the historical facts of his life are slender and overlaid with legend. He is said to have been born of noble, even royal, family, probably in the seventh century, and to have left his homeland to escape the fame his holiness and miracles had brought him, seeking obscurity in Gaul.

There he became a hermit, living for years in a forest near the mouth of the Rhône in the deepest solitude. The most famous story of his life gave him his enduring emblem: his sole companion was a hind, or deer, that nourished him with her milk; when a royal hunting party pursued the deer to Giles's cave, an arrow loosed at it struck and wounded the hermit instead.

The king, struck by his sanctity, befriended him and built a monastery on the spot, over which Giles ruled as abbot until his death. The monastery, and the town that grew around it — Saint-Gilles in Provence — became one of the great pilgrimage centres of medieval Europe, a stop on the road to Compostela.

Because the legend made him a man himself wounded and lamed, and a friend of outcasts, Giles became the special patron of the disabled, the crippled, beggars, and lepers — those on the margins. He was counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

Legend says a king's arrow meant for his pet deer struck Giles instead, leaving him lame — which is why he became patron of the disabled and beggars.

Image: Master of Saint Giles (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/06559a.htm