Giles (Aegidius) (d. c.710), hermit. All that is known of this saint, who became immensely popular in the Middle Ages, is that he was born in the early 7th century and founded a monastery at the place later called Saint-Gilles (Provence) on land given by a King Wamba. His shrine became an important pilgrimage centre on the route for both Compostela and the Holy Land as well as in its own right. The 10th-century Legend, a tissue of borrowing from other Lives, was most influential. This made him an Athenian by birth, who became a hermit near the mouth of the Rhône not far from Nímes, attracted to the area by the renown of Caesarius of Arles. While out hunting King Wamba was in pursuit of a hind; he shot an arrow at it which wounded and crippled Giles, with whom the hind had taken refuge. Another legend made an emperor (wrongly identified as Charlemagne) seek forgiveness from him for a sin he did not dare confess, but while Giles said Mass next day he saw in a chart written by an angel the nature of the sin in question: the letters disappeared as Giles's prayers were so efficacious. Towards the end of his life Giles went to Rome and offered his monastery to the pope (thereby acquiring privileges and protection); the pope gave him two doors of cypress wood which the saint threw into the sea but which were transported to a beach near his monastery.
From Provence (called provincia sancti Aegidii) his cult spread, partly through Crusaders, to other parts of Europe. His patronage of cripples, lepers, and nursing mothers (based on the story of his giving shelter to the hind), aided by the belief that the invocation of Giles was so effective that his clients did not need full auricular confession, contributed powerfully to his popularity. In England 162 ancient churches were dedicated to him and at least twenty-four hospitals. The most famous in Britain are St. Giles at Edinburgh and St. Giles, Cripplegate, London. His feast was celebrated by all English Benedictine monasteries and the Sarum rite, as elsewhere in Europe. His artistic representations are either of a simple abbot with staff (as on Norfolk screens at Hempstead and Smallburgh), or of cycles of his life (as in 13th-century glass at Chartres and Amiens or the frescoes in the crypt of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher), or of the incidents mentioned above of his protecting the hind (misericord of Ely Cathedral), or of the Mass of St. Giles (National Gallery, London).
The diffusion of his cult did not save its centre from becoming poverty-stricken in the late Middle Ages when offerings at his shrine, on which the monks had depended too exclusively, were greatly reduced, and the community looked to special exhibitions of the relics, aided by papal indulgences, to restore their income. At least two famous fairs in England are connected with St. Giles' Day: one in Winchester, no longer extant; the other at Oxford, which has lost its original purpose of buying and selling local produce, but survives as a funfair. Late in the Middle Ages Giles was reckoned in Germany as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. His churches are often found at road junctions, which travellers could visit while their horses were being shod in smithies near by, of which Giles was also patron. Feast: 1 September.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Sept. I (1746), 284–304 with Propylaeum, p. 373; G. Paris (ed.), La Vie de Saint Gile (metrical Life by William of Barnwell) (1881); Liber Miraculorum S. Aegidii (ed. P. Jaffé), M.G.H., Scriptores, xii (1861), 316–23, also in Anal. Boll., ix (1890), 393–422; E. E. Jones, Saint Gilles (1914); F. Brittain, Saint Giles (1928); J. Sumption, Pilgrimage (1975)
