Our Venerable Father Giles the Hermit of Nimes, Abbot
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Healing
Life
Giles (Latin: Aegidius) was a hermit and monastic founder who lived in the forests of Provence in southern France during the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Born traditionally in Athens, he withdrew to a remote valley near the River Gard in Septimania, where he lived as an anchorite in solitude, sustained by prayer and a sparse diet. He became one of the most widely venerated saints of the medieval West and is numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
His vita, while lacking strictly contemporary documentation, centers on his life of radical withdrawal and an episode in which a royal hunting party's arrow wounded him rather than his companion deer — an event that led to his lasting association with the physically disabled and the outcast. A monastery was subsequently built in his valley, over which he presided and which bore his name: Saint-Gilles-du-Gard. He died there in the early eighth century.
Contributions & Legacy
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Hermit Life and the Deer Episode
According to the hagiographic tradition, Giles spent many years in a wooded wilderness near Nîmes, where a doe or red deer served as his sole companion and, in some accounts, sustained him with her milk. When a royal hunting party pursued the deer to his hidden refuge, an arrow shot at the animal struck Giles instead. The wound, by various accounts, permanently disabled him. The saint declined to be healed, embracing the suffering as a gift. This episode became the origin of his patronage of those with physical disabilities, beggars, and the lame.
The king — identified in the legend variously as Wamba or as a Frankish ruler — was moved by the encounter and offered to build Giles a monastery in the valley. Giles accepted, founding what became the abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in Languedoc and placing it under the Benedictine rule.
Veneration and Relics
Giles's cult spread widely across western Europe during the Middle Ages, making him one of the most popular saints of the era. His abbey at Saint-Gilles-du-Gard became an important pilgrimage destination on the route to Santiago de Compostela. During the religious wars of 1562, his relics were transferred to Toulouse; a portion was restored to Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1862. He is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as a pre-schism Western saint, with his feast on September 1.
His companions & kin
A group of Western saints including Giles, collectively invoked in times of serious need
The Fourteen Holy Helpers
Notes
One of the most popular medieval Western saints; patron of the disabled
Sources: Synaxarion; Latin Saints of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome
