GILES (Gil, Gilles), ST, the name given to an abbot whose
festival is celebrated on the 1st of September. According to
the legend, he was an Athenian (Λἰγίδιος, Aegidius) of royal
descent. After the death of his parents he distributed his
possessions among the poor, took ship, and landed at Marseilles.
Thence he went to Arles, where he remained for two years with
St Caesarius. He then retired into a neighbouring desert,
where he lived upon herbs and upon the milk of a hind which
came to him at stated hours. He was discovered there one day
by Flavius, the king of the Goths, who built a monastery on the
place, of which he was the first abbot. Scholars are very much
divided as to the date of his life, some holding that he lived in
the 6th century, others in the 7th or 8th. It may be regarded
as certain that St Giles was buried in the hermitage which he
had founded in a spot which was afterwards the town of St-Gilles
(diocese of Nîmes, department of Gard). His reputation
for sanctity attracted many pilgrims. Important gifts were
made to the church which contained his body, and a monastery
grew up hard by. It is probable that the Visigothic princes who
were in possession of the country protected and enriched this
monastery, and that it was destroyed by the Saracens at the
time of their invasion in 721. But there are no authentic data
before the 9th century concerning his history. In 808 Charlemagne
took the abbey of St-Gilles under his protection, and
it is mentioned among the monasteries from which only prayers
for the prince and the state were due. In the 12th century the
pilgrimages to St-Gilles are cited as among the most celebrated
of the time. The cult of the saint, who came to be regarded as
the special patron of lepers, beggars and cripples, spread very
extensively over Europe, especially in England, Scotland,
France, Belgium and Germany. The church of St Giles,
Cripplegate, London, was built about 1090, while the hospital for
lepers at St Giles-in-the-Fields (near New Oxford Street) was founded by Queen Matilda in 1117. In England alone there
are about 150 churches dedicated to this saint. In Edinburgh
the church of St Giles could boast the possession of an arm-bone
of its patron. Representations of St Giles are very frequently
met with in early French and German art, but are much less
common in Italy and Spain.
See Acta Sanctorum (September), i. 284-299; Devic and Vaissete,
Histoire générale de Languedoc, pp. 514-522 (Toulouse, 1876);
E. Rembry, Saint Gilles, sa vie, ses reliques, son culte en Belgique et
dans le nord de la France (Bruges, 1881); F. Arnold-Forster, Studies
in Church Dedications, or England’s Patron Saints, ii. 46-51, iii. 15,
363-365 (1899); A. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 768-770
(1896); A. Bell, Lives and Legends of the English Bishops and Kings,
Medieval Monks, and other later Saints, pp. 61, 70, 74-78, 84, 197
(1904). (H. De.)