FEAST OF ST. AEGIDIUS OR GILES, ABBOT.
According to various discrepant dates, he appears to have been born in the seventh, and to have died in the eighth century.
TWO pretty legends are told regarding him.
In his youth, going to Church, he bestowed his coat on a diseased mendicant. The poor man was cured, and our Saint is accounted Patron of Beggars.
Later in life he dwelt as a hermit in a forest cave beside the Rhone, nourished there by milk from a doe. This friendly creature, flying one day for her life, took refuge in his cave, where the hunters overtaking her, found that an arrow shot after the doe had wounded not herself but her associate the venerable hermit. Whereupon the king (for it was a royal hunt) cared for the saint's wound, cultivated his friendship, and caused a monastery to be reared on the site of the woodland cell: of which monastery, famous in aftertimes, St. Giles was chosen Abbot.
Finally:-- "Many witness that they heard the company of angels bearing the soul of him into heaven." [I quote at second hand from "The Golden Legend."]
Pretty legends describes them pretty well.
ReplyDeleteBut - thanks for the September posts!
I do enjoy learning about the legends though. And I like St Giles; the Cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh is really lovely and has beautiful stained glass--some of it, I believe, by Burne-Jones and Morris
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