The legend of Giles connects him to Caesarius of Arles, who died in 543. In 514, Caesarius sent a messenger, Messianus, to Pope Symmachus in the company of an abbot named Aegidius. It is possible that this abbot is the historical figure at the basis of the legend of Saint Giles.[2]
There are two forged Papal bulls purporting to have been issued by Pope John VIII in 878.[2] Sometimes taken as authentic, they record that the Visigothic king Wamba founded a monastery for Giles and that Pope Benedict II granted a charter to this foundation in 684–685.[3][4] In actuality, the monastery was not dedicated to Saint Giles before c. 910. The tomb of Giles dates to the correct historical period, but the inscription is from the 10th century.[2]
Legend
Giles is the subject of an elaborate and largely unhistorical anonymous Latin legend first attested in the 10th century.[3] He was a Greek,[5] and, according to the Legendae Aurea, he was the son of King Theodore and Queen Pelagia of Athens.[6]
Although born in Athens,[7] Giles lived in retreats near the mouth of the Rhône and by the River Gard in Septimania in the Visigothic Kingdom. The Legenda Aurea links him with Arles, but finally he withdrew deep into the forest near Nîmes, where in the greatest solitude he spent many years, his sole companion being his beloved deer, or red deer, who in some stories sustained him on her milk.[8] Giles ate a Christian vegetarian diet.[9] This retreat was finally discovered by the king's hunters, who had pursued the deer to its place of refuge. An arrow shot at the deer wounded the saint instead, who afterwards became a patron of the physically disabled. The king, by legend, was Wamba, an anachronistic Visigoth, but must have been a Frank in the original story due to the historical setting.[10] He held the hermit in high esteem for his humility in rejecting all honours save having some disciples. Wamba built him a monastery in his valley, Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, which Giles placed under the Benedictine rule. He died there in the early part of the 8th century, with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.
A 10th-century Vita sancti Aegidii recounts that, as Giles was celebrating Mass to pardon Emperor Charlemagne's sins, an angel deposited upon the altar a letter outlining a sin so terrible Charlemagne had never dared confess it. Several Latin and French texts, including the Legenda Aurea refer to this hidden "sin of Charlemagne". This legend, however, contradicts the well-established later dates for the life of Charlemagne (c. 742 – 28 January 814).
A later text, the Liber miraculorum sancti Aegidii ("The Book of Miracles of Saint Giles") served to reinforce the flow of pilgrims to the abbey.
His cult spread rapidly far and wide throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, as is witnessed by the churches and monasteries dedicated to him in France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Great Britain; by the numerous manuscripts in prose and verse commemorating his virtues and miracles; and especially by the vast concourse of pilgrims who from all Europe flocked to his shrine. He was one of the most popular saints in the Middle Ages.[12]
In 1562, the relics of the saint were secretly transferred to Toulouse to protect them from the Huguenots and the level of pilgrimages declined. The restoration of most of the relics to the abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1862 and the publicized rediscovery of his former tomb there in 1865 helped the pilgrimages recommence.[13]
^Girault, Pierre-Gilles (2002). "Observations sur le culte de saint Gilles dans le Midi". Hagiographie et culte des saints en France méridionale (XIIIe-XVe siècle). Cahiers de Fanjeaux. Vol. 37. pp. 431–54. ISBN2-7089-3440-6.
Chaucer, Geoffrey; Schmidt, Aubrey Vincent Carlyle (1976). The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale. Holmes & Meier. ISBN0-8419-0219-4.
