St Giles

Today is the feast of St Giles, Abbot and Confessor.

I usually try to post something in his honour on this day as I was baptised in a church under his patronage and for a number of years was a very active part of its congregation and served as Parish Clerk there. My previous posts can be accessed by using the search facility at the bottom of the left margin of the blog and entering: St Giles.

Looking on the Internet I came upon several online articles about him which I had not linked to before. They all include a number of historic representations of him as well as information about his life and, in some instances, prayers and meditations about his life.

St Giles Church Alderton  has a useful illustrated introduction to his life at St Giles

City Desert has an article at Saint Giles, Hermit and Vegetarian

catholicharrbourof faithandmorals.com reproduce some older material in a quite lengthy article at St. Giles, Hermit and Abbot

Finally anastpaul.com has a quite lengthy account of his life and his place in popular devotion, folklore and custom att Saint of the Day – 1 September – St Giles

A happy feast day to you all.

May St Giles, pray for us

St Giles

Were today not a Sunday, unless it is the patronal feast of a particular church and hence a local solemnity, today would be the feast or commemoration of St Giles.

Because of my baptism in the church dedicated to him in Pontefract, and many years of worshiping and working there, St Giles occupies a prominent place in my personal calendar of Saints. He has also appeared frequently on this day on this blog.

Looking on the internet I came upon an article from the V&A Blog..Although its occasionally flippant style rather grates with me I think it worth sharing, not least for its illustrations of items from the V&A collection. I do not think I have linked to it beforehand. The article can be viewed at St. Giles • V&A Blog

My previous posts about his life and legend, and to devotion to St Giles, can be accessed, with quite a collection of images of this saint who was very popular with medieval people, starting from 2010 with  St Giles by Thomas of Coloswar

In 2012 I wrote St Giles and his shrine

2014.had St Giles in art and devotion and 2015 has St Giles

After an interval I returned to the subject with in 2021 St Giles and in 2022 St Giles

 

In 2023 I concentrated on his burial place with St Giles and his shrine church.

In respect of other churches under his patronage I wrote in 2013 about my baptismal church in St Giles in Pontefract and in 2020 about St Giles in Edinburgh

May St Giles pray for us all

St Giles

Today is the feast of St Giles, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, patron of cripples and many others, and of many churches built in Britain in the years following the Norman Conquest, when his cult arrived from France. In England 162 ancient churches were dedicated to him and at least 24 hospitals. Amongst those is the church of St Giles in Pontefract where I was baptised and where I worshipped for many years. He is therefore a saint whose aid I invoke in my prayers and for whom I have a special regard.

St Giles 

Image: saint-giles-church.org

The story of the Greek-born hermit who was discovered when he was wounded by a royal huntsman who had shot at the hind who provided Giles with milk, and of how the King Wamba (?) founded a monastery for the holy man is well known. There are online accounts of his life at  The Life of St Giles at Saint Giles  and at A Catholic Life: St. Giles.

Devotion to him spread across most of Catholic Europe in the middle ages.

Here are some depictions of the most famous incident in the life of the saint. I do rather like the aggrieved look on the faces of both the saint and his hind in the first example.

 

 Image;pinterest.com 


 

Image: 365rosaries.blogspot.com

This is one of the panels of the Garamszentbenedek Altarpiece, which in now in the Christain Museum in Esztergom

.

Nicholas, a canon of Győr, who was also cantor of the royal chapel in Buda Castle, in 1427 commissioned Master Thomas, painter of Coloswar (Kolozsvár) to make a polyptych for the high altar of the Abbey Church at Garamszentbenedek (today Hronsky Benadik, Slovakia). 

Ending in a pointed arch, the central picture of the polyptych (which consists of nine panels) represents the Crucifixion, the internal wings are decorated with four episodes of the Passion and the external ones with scenes taken from the lives of several saints. (One of the latter has been lost, and so has the predella with the inscription about the donation.) The panel representing St Giles is the top quarter of the external wing on the right, its rounded corner following the line of the arch of the central picture.

The hermit, who lived in a forest, was nurtured by the milk of a tame hind. The king's huntsmen pursued the animal, and instead of wounding the deer it pierced St Giles's breast. This moment is recorded in the painting. The saint bears the pain with a meditative, pious countenance. The arrow is depicted in the picture twice, perhaps because a single arrow rushing in the air may have introduced too great a tension and lack of balance into this lyrical scene. The hind taking refuge with the hermit is also characterized by calm stillness. The artist may have used a drawing from a model-book of the period for this work, which is indicated not only by the calmness of the animal as if it were part of a still life, but also by its movement: the model of the animal looks as if it had been drawn with all four legs underneath it, but the painter, adjusting the model to the painting, represented its right foreleg streched out. Though the hunter s figure is much smaller than that of St Giles, the lines of the rock in the foreground and the light colours of the foliage of the forest seem to lead one's eyes to him. In accordance with the style, which had a predilection for elegant, curving lines, the painter stressed the impressive and buoyant line of the bow, which is beautifully set off by the darkness of the forest. A drawing of an archer from an artist's copybook, and of uncertain date and provenance, but of about 1400 and which is closely related to the figure in this painting is now in the collection at Christ Church in Oxford, and currently on display in their 250th anniversary exhibition.

 

In the international life of King Sigismund of Luxembourg's court at Buda, Thomas de Coloswar had an opportunity to become familiar with the leading movements in painting of the period. The panel representing St Giles has similarities to Bohemian art. The rocky, wooded landscape - to quote Antal Hekler - "the colour of a fairytale in spite of its awakening realism" reveals features akin to the art of the Master of Trebon and the illuminators working under his influence. 

 

Adapted from the Web Gallery of Art

 

 

Image:365rosaries.blogspot.com

St Giles and the Hind

The Master of St Giles, circa 1500
The National Gallery London

Image: nationalgallery.org 

 

The Mass of St Giles

The Master of St Giles, circa 1500
The National Gallery London

Image:oilpainting-frame.com

 The miracle depicted has been set before the high altar of the Abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris. Many of the objects shown can be proved to have existed in the church. This is the only surviving representation of the church as it was in about 1500.

Charles Martel (?) (kneeling left) could not bring himself to confess a sin. He asked Saint Giles to pray for him. While Giles was celebrating Mass, an angel placed on the altar a paper on which was written the King's sin and his pardon, dependent on his repentance. The incident is said to have taken place in Orléans in 719. In some forms of the legend Charlemagne replaces Martel.

This and 'Saint Giles and the Hind' are part of an altarpiece which included 'Episodes from the Life of a Bishop Saint' and the 'Baptism of Clovis' (both now in Washington). 

Adapted from the National Gallery website 

St Giles in art and devotion

Today is the feast of St Giles, and having been baptised in and spent years around a church dedicated to him, and about hich I wrote this time last year in St Giles in Pontefract. He is a saint for whom I have a particular interest and devotion.

 

St Giles

Altarpiece by The Master of St Giles circa 1500

Detail from the painting in the National Gallery

Image: Wikipedia

There is an online summary of the legends about him here - the time scale and setting are not that well recorded - and also about the widespread devotion to him.

I have posted about him previously in St Giles, in St Giles by Thomas of Coloswar about a medieval Hungarian painting, in St Giles about his depiction in medieval glass in Wells Cathedral and in St Giles and his shrine.

I imagine that it was the placing of that shrine, one of the assembly points for the pilgrimage to Compostella, that led to the diffusion of the cult of St Giles, both along the route to Galicia and on the return to pilgrims' home countries; St Giles entered the bloodstream of the cult of Santiago. That was a cult which was supported by and supported in return the expansion of the Cluniac vision, and coincides at least with the spread of  devotion to St Giles to England after the Norman Conquest, as well as eastwards to Hungary and Poland.

Bty the later middle ages St Giles was accounted one of the Fourtenn Holy Helpers - and was indeed the only non-martyr amongst them - and frequently appears in devotional images in north-western Europe. Thus there is not only the great work - now sadly disassembled  - by the Master of St Giles, but also by artists such as Hans Memling (c1430-1494), about whom there is an online article here.

St Giles

Figure on the righthand wing of the Passion Altarpiece in Lübeck
Hans Memling 1491

Image; Wikipedia

His cult appears to have rather declined in the post-Tridentine world, yet he remains apopular patron saint of medieval churches in England. These often represent links to his story or patronage - hospital foundations, especially for the lame, or places linked to metal working or in forest areas.

St Giles on the right with St Maurus of Glanfeuil on the left flank St Christopher
The Tripych of William Moreel
Hans Memling 1484
Groeningemuseum Bruges

Image: Wikipedia

St Giles pray for us

St Giles in Pontefract

Today is the feast day of St Giles, and a day on which my thoughts are inclined to stray back to the church of St Giles in Pontefract. It was there that I was baptised and confirmed as an Anglican, and where for a number of years before coming to Oxford I served as Parish Clerk. This was in a voluntary capacity and combined altar serving with practical liturgical chores as well as writing up the marriage registers, and joining the clegy for the saying of the Office.

The church originated as a chapel of ease to the parish church of All Saints, and when that was ruined during the Civil War replaced it as the place of worship. It formally became the parish church of the town by Act of Parliament in 1789 - we had a series of celebrations for the bicentenary in 1989 - and although it still has a fourteenth century north aisle arcade, and a possibly fifteenth century ceiling, most of the church is of the eighteenth century. The distinctive tower was built in 1791 to a design by Mr Atkinson, and is a reworking of the design proposed for the previous tower which replaced an earlier one in 1707. That tower was only completed to the top of the square stage, and the proposed cupola never built - possibly because the whole structure was not stable, hence its replacement by the present dignified composition.

St Giles Church Pontefract

The tower dates from 1791, the south aisle is pre-1742, but with window tracery of 1868-9
In the foreground in the Butter Cross, dating from the 1730s, and attached to it on the left the pump, said to have been first installed in 1571

Image:Stan Walker on picturesofengland.com

St Giles and his shrine

Today is the feast of St Giles, a saint to whom I have devotion having been baptised in the parish church dedicated to him in Pontefract, and where I worshipped for many years and serves as Parish Clerk before coming to Oxford.

My posts about him from 2010 can be read at St Giles and  St Giles by Thomas of Coloswar and from last year at St Giles.

St Giles' cult in medieval England, and indeed across Europe, seems to stem from the network of pilgrimage routes which developed around those to Compostella and Vezeley under Cluniac influence in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries. His shrine at St Gilles in Provence was on the route than linked these other pilgriage roads and attracted pilgrims. There is an account of the abbey and its remains here. 

Severely damaged by both the Huguenots in the sixteenth century and again during the French revolution, only part of the original church is still in use, although it is once again the object of pilgrimage. Its principal and most famous feature is what remains of the monumental west facade with its wonderful sculpture - one of the glories of twelfth century Provencal Romanesque. 



The west front of the abbey of St Gilles

Image: wikimedia commons

There is an interactive site about the facade here and there are  two illustrated sites about it at Introduction and Index to the images of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint_Gilles  and  Images of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Gilles. 

Two other sites which discuss it are an essay on Saint-Gilles-du-Gard which can be read here, the patronage ...  and one from the Carnegie Museum about their casts of the sculpture which can be seen here. 

St John of Bridlington

Today is also the feast of another saint associated with Yorkshire - St John of Bridlington who died in 1379.

This Oxford-educated Yorkshireman also known as John Thwing or Thwenge, from the village of his birth, was a canon regular at Bridlington Priory in the coastal section of his native Yorkshire Wolds, where he rose to be cellarer and then prior. He was recognized locally for his holiness and after his death miracles were reported at his tomb. His first Vita (BHL 4355) was written before his canonization in 1401.

Writing that it strikes me that it is St John rather than St Thomas of Hereford, canonised in 1320, who was the last English-born conessor to be raised to tha altars by the Church before Bl.John Henry Newman. the fact that St Thomas was cited as such points to the loss of the cult of St John from other than very local perception or the interests of medieval historians like myself - very much Jonathan Hughes' Pastors and Visionaries and Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars territory.

There is also an early account in Middle English, the Verse Life of John of Bridlington. A rhymed Latin poem of perhaps contemporary political import, the Vaticinium Roberti Bridlington, circulated under John's name and could conceivably be his (George Rigg thought so in Speculum 63 [1988]; Michael Curley in the Oxford DNB seems less willing to entertain the possibility). That Oxford DNB life can be read here.

He was a popular figure in fifteenth century English devotion amongst both the Lancastrian royal house and at a more popular level. Amongst surviving depictions of him are this one of him at the left, holding a fish, and at the right, St. Giles, on the fourteenth-century rood screen in St Andrew, Hempstead (Norfolk):

St John as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century miniature (betw. 1401 and 1415) in the added prayers to saints in the Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours (London, British Library, MS Royal 2 A XVIII, fol. 7v):

Copyright © The British Library

St John as depicted in the mid-fifteenth-century east window (between 1447 and 1464) of the Beauchamp Chapel, in the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick:

Image: GordonPlumb on Flickr

In the latter two examples there appears to be some similarity in the depiction of St John's face and hair, which may indicate a continuing tradition as to his appearance in life.

Adapted and extended from John Dillon's post for today on the Medieval Religion discussion group.

St Giles

Last year I posted twice about St Giles whose feast it is today. They can be read at St Giles and at St Giles by Thomas of Coloswar which considers a late medieval depiction of him from Hungary.

This year I am marking the day by reproducing this very fine later medieval English image of the patron saint of the church where I was baptised, and to whom I have retained a devotion.

St Giles.

Fourteenth century glass from Wells Cathedral
North choir clerestory.

Image: therosewindow.com

As I wrote in April about the adjacent image at Wells of St Richard of Chichester I obtained a copy of this figure of St Giles for his church in Pontefract. It would, I think, make a handsome design for a statue of him.

St Giles pray for us

St Giles Fair

Today is the second and last day of St Giles Fair here in Oxford. A popular saint in twelfth century England St Giles is the patron of the parish that developed at that time around the northern end of the wide road towards Woodstock and Banbury outside the north gate of the Anglo-Saxon city. As his feast day falls on September 1st it was in past centuries a good time at which to hold a fair to buy and sell as the autumn set in. Many towns held fairs at this season - most famously Winchester - but not many survive. In Oxford it still does.

Here St Giles' Fair is very much part of the life of the city, but not especially of the University, which is not up at this time of year. Oxford, happily, has not, like my home town of Pontefract did in the interwar years, exiled such a fair to waste ground away from the centre but gives up the whole of St Giles Street - still the main route into the city centre from the north - over to the Fair on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday following September 1st.

Picking one's way through a wide rage of ever more spectacular, noisy, flashing, and not infrequently, frankly terrifying, rides and sideshows, not to mention the pervasive smell of the cooking of burgers and hot dogs, gives a new quality to walking to and from Mass on these days. What St Giles - a hermit and then an abbot - would make of it is open for speculation, but it is, nevertheless, and even if the people attending never give him a thought, a celebration of him.

To my mind, what is also good about it, firstly, is that it is a living tradition - loud and
vulgar it may be, but it reasserts a popular way of letting off steam and enjoying oneself. Last nights drizzle and rain did not appear to be damping that.

Secondly, it is really heartening to see so many families there - fathers and mothers taking their children to the fair, rather as I was fifty years ago. The fair may be garish and dressed up in the latest modern fashion, but at heart it is as it was fifty or a hundred years ago. In a simple and unsophisticated way it reasserts popular family values, and long may it do so.

St Giles by Thomas of Coloswar

Following on from yesterday's post about St Giles here is another late medieval depiction of him. This painting is described as The Death of St Giles, but normally the incident is seen as not being fatal to the Saint, but the means whereby he was drawn to the King's attention. St Giles is usually represented as being wounded in the leg - hence his patronage of cripples - but the Master of St Giles shows him with wound in the hand. This version has a wound to the breast.

I have taken this piece from the Web Gallery of Art pages, and edited it slightly.

The Death of St Giles

Thomas of Coloswar

1427

Tempera on pine wood, 89.5 x 69 cm
Christian Museum, Esztergom, Hungary

The picture shows one of the panels of the Garamszentbenedek Altarpiece.

Nicholas, a canon of Gyõr, who was also cantor of the royal chapel in Buda Castle, in 1427 commissioned Master Thomas, painter of Coloswar (Kolozsvár) to make a polyptych for the high altar of the Abbey Church at Garamszentbenedek (today Hronsky Benadik, Slovakia). Ending in a pointed arch, the central picture of the polyptych (which consists of nine panels) represents the Crucifixion, the internal wings are decorated with four episodes of the Passion and the external ones with scenes taken from the lives of several saints. (One of the latter has been lost, and so has the predella with the inscription about the donation.) The panel representing St Giles is the top quarter of the external wing on the right, its rounded corner following the line of the arch of the central picture.

The hermit, who lived in a forest, was nurtured by the milk of a tame hind. The king's huntsmen pursued the animal, but when the saint interceded with the hunter he aimed his arrow at the holy man and instead of wounding the deer it pierced St Giles's breast. This moment is recorded in the painting. The saint bears the pain with a meditative, pious countenance. The arrow is depicted in the picture twice, perhaps because a single arrow rushing in the air may have introduced too great a tension and lack of balance into this lyrical scene. The hind taking refuge with the hermit is also characterized by calm stillness. The artist may have used a drawing from a model-book of the period for this work, which is indicated not only by the calmness of the animal as if it were part of a still life, but also by its movement: the model of the animal looks as if it had been drawn with all four legs underneath it, but the painter, adjusting the model to the painting, represented its right foreleg stretched out. Though the hunter s figure is much smaller than that of St Giles, the lines of the rock in the foreground and the light colours of the foliage of the forest seem to lead one's eyes to him. In accordance with the style, which had a predilection for elegant, curving lines, the painter stressed the impressive and buoyant line of the bow, which is beautifully set off by the darkness of the forest.

In the international life of King Sigismund of Luxembourg's court at Buda, Thomas de Coloswar had an opportunity to become familiar with the leading movements in painting of the period. The panel representing St Giles has similarities to Bohemian art. The rocky, wooded landscape - to quote Antal Hekler - "the colour of a fairytale in spite of its awakening realism" reveals features akin to the art of the Master of Trebon and the illuminators working under his influence.

This painting was the central panel of the Calvary altarpiece at Garamszentbenedek. This altar piece is one of the most significant painting of the period in Hungary; its source can be traced to the court painting in Bohemia, and it is also related to the court painting in Burgundy.

There are more pictures of the altarpiece here.

Now in addition to the fact that the first picture shows St Giles I have the added interest in the picture that the figure of the archer on the right appears to be taken more or less directly from a copy- book drawing now in the collection at the Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford, where I do part-time work. That drawing has been attributed to various possible masters and locations, and to a late fourteenth or early fifteenth century date. There is an article about it in 40 Years of Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford 2008, pp 64-5.

St Giles

Today is the feast of St Giles, the patron saint of the church where I was baptised in Pontefract and where I worshipped for many years before coming to Oxford, and served there as Parish Clerk for a number of years.

One of the many little projects I have in mind is to do a study of the cult of St Giles in medieval England. Devotion to him seems to be post-Conquest, but to have spread rapidly, and as he was invoked as a patron by a wide variety of people churches, chapels and hospitals dedicated to him occur in many places.

Detail of "Saint Giles and the Hind," by the Master of Saint Giles c. 1500

There is an article about St Giles here.

Out of my fees as Parish Clerk at Pontefract I gave copies of three pictures of St Giles to the church - two from the work by the Master of St Giles of circa 1500 now in the National Gallery, and another, of a fourteenth century stained glass figure of him from the choir clerestory of Wells Cathedral.

The first one I gave is that of The Mass of St Giles:

It is a well known image, but still worth reproducing. The painter has set it in the abbey of St Denis near Paris, and it must be one of the best contemporary depictions of the interior of a late medieval church and of the liturgy being celebrated.