Saint Giles

Giles is one of those saints whose legend is bigger than his biography, but that doesn't make him any less worth knowing. He was likely a Greek monk who eventually settled in southern France, somewhere in the wild forests near the mouth of the Rhône, and lived as a hermit. He wanted solitude. He wanted God. He mostly got both.

The most famous story about him involves a deer. According to the legend, a hind (a female deer) used to visit Giles and, in a pinch, even nursed him back to health with her milk. One day, a royal hunting party chased the deer into Giles's cave. An arrow meant for the animal struck Giles instead. The king, reportedly horrified, offered to build him a monastery as an apology. Giles accepted, became its abbot, and apparently never fully healed from the wound.

That injury is part of why he became a patron of people with disabilities and those who live on the margins. He knew what it was to be vulnerable. He'd chosen poverty and dependence on God long before the arrow hit, and he kept choosing it after.

His cult spread fast across medieval Europe. Hundreds of churches were dedicated to him in England alone, including the famous St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh. Pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela passed through Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, the town that grew up around his monastery, making it one of the great pilgrimage sites of the Middle Ages.

We don't know much about the real man. But the tradition that gathered around him says something true: holiness and vulnerability aren't opposites.