Biography
Born to a wealthy noble family, when his parents died, Giles gave his fortune to help the poor. Known as a miracle worker. To avoid followers and adulation, he left Greece c.683 for France where he lived as a hermit in a cave in the diocese of Nimes, a cave whose mouth was guarded by a thick thorn bush, and a lifestyle so impoverished that, legend says, God sent a deer to Giles to nourish him with her milk. One day after he had lived there for several years in meditation, a royal hunting party chased the hind into Gilesâ cave. One hunter shot an arrow into the thorn bush, hoping to hit the deer, but instead hit Giles in the leg, crippling him. The king sent doctors to care for hermitâs wound, and though Giles begged to be left alone, the king came often to see him. From this, Gileâs fame as sage and miracle worker spread, and would-be followers gathered near the cave. The French king, because of his admiration, built the monastery of Saint Gilles du Gard for these followers, and Giles became its first abbot, establishing his own discipline there. A small town grew up around the monastery, and upon Gilesâ death, his grave became a shrine and place of pilgrimage; the monastery later became a Benedictine house. The combination of the town, monastery, shrine and pilgrims led to many handicapped beggars hoping for alms; this and Gilesâ insistence that he wished to live outside the walls of the city, and his own damaged leg, led to his patronage of beggars, and to cripple Born: at Athens, Greece Died: • between 710 and 724 in France of natural causes • legend says that those who attended his funeral heard choirs of angels singing and then fading away as they carried his soul to heaven • his tomb is in the crypt of the abbey church of Saint-Gilles in Gard, France • in 1562, Huguenots burned the abbey, murdered the monks, looted the church, and vandalized the tomb; the surviving relics of Saint Giles were distributed to other churches • in Scotland in the seventeenth century, his relics were stolen from a church which triggered a great riot