St. Giles Badge

This interesting hermit was living in southern France sustained by roots and berries – and the milk of a pet hind (female red deer). One day the king and his hunters were out enjoying themselves by shooting things, and they pursued the hind, which ran to Giles for protection. Giles made a vast thicket spring up around them, but an arrow found its way through and wounded the man rather than the deer. When the king met Giles he was so struck by his holiness that he built a monastery and installed Giles as the abbot.

The abbey at Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was an important stop on both the pilgrimage to Compostela and that to Rome. The shrine flourished from 1050 to 1250 and this badge is dated 1171-1250.

Like most saints with longstanding veneration and numerous churches dedicated to them, St. Giles is counted as a patron and protector for a wide range of illnesses and afflictions. From the mid-fourteenth century, he was named as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and was invoked against the plague, mental illness, depression, epilepsy, and nightmares. His story made him the patron of people with disabilities, beggars, and breast-feeding mothers (because of the hind). His patronage was extended later to forests, hermits, blacksmiths, spur makers, horses, rams, breast cancer, leprosy, and sterility.

His feast day is September 1.