14 Facts About Saint Giles

Saint Giles, known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhone most likely in the 7th century.

The legend of Saint Giles connects him to Caesarius of Arles, who died in 543.

Saint Giles is the subject of an elaborate and largely unhistorical anonymous Latin legend first attested in the 10th century.

Saint Giles was a Greek, and, according to the Legendae Aurea, he was the son of King Theodore and Queen Pelagia of Athens.

Saint Giles 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.

Saint Giles died there in the early part of the 8th century, with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.

That abbey remained the centre of his cult, which was particularly strong in Languedoc, even after a rival body of Saint Giles appeared at Toulouse.

Saint Giles's 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.

Saint Giles was one of the most popular saints in the Middle Ages.

Saint Giles is the patron saint of people with disabilities and is invoked as a saint for childhood fears, convulsions, depression, particularly in Normandy, for example in Eure Iville, Saint-Germain-Village or Bernay or in Calvados, Gilles Touques.

Saint Giles is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and the only non-martyr, initially invoked as protection against the Black Death.

Cities that possess relics of St Giles include Saint-Gilles, Toulouse and many other French cities; Antwerp, Brugge and Tournai in Belgium; Cologne and Bamberg in Germany ; Rome and Bologna in Italy; Prague in the Czech Republic; and Esztergom in Hungary.

Saint Giles is the patron saint of Graz, Nuremberg, Osnabruck, Sankt Gilgen, Brunswick, Wollaberg, Saint-Gilles and Sint-Gillis-Waas.