St. Giles

Who they were

Giles was a hermit of the Provencal forest, and nearly everything told of him is legend. The legends made him one of the most invoked saints of the entire Middle Ages, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, with his abbey a major station on the Compostela road.

The defining image: a wild hind took refuge with the hermit and nourished him, and when the king's hunt pursued her, Giles stood between and took the arrow, refusing healing afterward and living crippled by choice, in solidarity with the creature he had shielded. From that came his ancient patronage of people with disabilities and of the poor. The second legend gave him a stranger office. An emperor with a sin too shameful to speak found it revealed, and forgiven, through Giles's Mass, and for centuries Giles has been the saint invoked by those who cannot bring themselves to say the thing out loud.

Why people turn to St. Giles

The person circling the confessional for years. Bring Giles, then bring the words; the priest has heard it before. People with disabilities, alongside St. Margaret of Castello and St. Julie Billiart.

How to ask their intercession

Name the unsayable thing to Giles first. That is the old use of him, offered as a warm up and never as a substitute, and then Leopold's door.