In Chapter Four, ‘Pyrenean Patrons’, saints local to the Pyrenees and its foothills are explored. Examined are their lives, miracles, associated sites and the traditions of those who came (and come) to seek intercession at their tombs, chapels or churches. In this extract we focus on the Hautes-Pyrénées, whose landscape is honeycombed not only with Marian apparitions (as seen in the previous chapter), but also a plethora of local saints who are intrinsic to the identities of many villages and towns across the region’s valleys.
Extract I from Chapter Four, ‘Pyrenean Patrons’
The Bigorre appears to have been one of the last regions to be the focus of evangelising efforts in Novempopulania, and one of the key figures in this process was Saint Justin of Tarbes. Thought to be a priest of the nascent diocese in the fourth century, Justinius is mentioned by Gregory of Tours in his ‘De Gloria Confessorum’ in connection with his preaching at Sexciacum and when ‘loud raging men’, likely epileptics, came in to contact with Justinius’ tomb they were cured. If the historicity of this timeframe is correct, then it is likely that Saint Justin came into contact with those who preached the Priscillian heresy, a fourth-century dualistic belief derived from the teachings of the wealthy nobleman Priscillian of Hispania,[1] who derived his teachings from the earlier Gnosticism of the Egyptian Marcus. The location of Sexciacum is confusing, as some suggest it to be at Saux, a neighbourhood in the north of Lourdes, however the more popular suggestions is at Sers in the Barèges valley. A priory was founded by the saint on a promontory overlooking the village and Justin is said to have retired to this spot before his death. It fell into ruin in the twelfth century, was rebuilt in the sixteenth century and definitively ruined in the eighteenth century, with the church at Barèges recovering the font. Photographs from the 1920s and 1930s show the ruins of this building with sheep grazing on the nearby pasture and in 1990 a modern oratory and cross was built on this site in honour of the saint. Saint Jerome’s extensive eighth-century ‘Martyrology’ places Saint Justin’s feast day on May 1st, the day of his body’s reputed deposition in the Bigorre, however the site of his tomb which is said to have attracted pilgrims and epileptics looking for a cure has yet to be found, with no excavations taking place at either the priory site nor in Saux, and the diocese of Tarbes has little information on the saint outside of its martyrology which specifies neither the reason for nor the manner of Saint Justin’s martyrdom.[2]
Associated with Saint Justin is Saint Misselin de Bigorre, the patron saint of the commune of Arcizac-Adour, south of Tarbes, and posited as a successor to Saint Justin’s position as archpriest of Tarbes. However, a number of chronological details from his legend make it difficult to place the saint in an exact historical timeline. According to oral tradition, Misselin was born in Arcizac-Adour and aside from healing the sick is said to have also saved Tarbes from Islamic forces who, whilst retreating from their defeat at Tours, attempted to sack the town. However, Misselin’s prayers allowed the Tarbais to fight off the soldiers at the Battle of Lanne in 733 and his feast day falls on May 24th, the commemoration of this battle.[3] The sarcophagus which popularly constitutes Saint Misselin’s tomb in Tarbes is kept behind the High Altar of the church of Saint-Jean. Unlike the chapel at San Vincente, the sarcophagus is empty and local tradition states that the relics of this saint are lost, as the tomb was opened in 1697 under the orders of the Bishop of Tarbes and it was found to contain no remains. Nineteenth-century archaeologist Alexandre du Mège asserted that Misselin was descended from a patrician family under Roman rule in Novempopulania and that he and his sister were the last of this noble line, attaching themselves to the work of Charles Martel.[4] This would indeed place the saint’s life within the eighth-century and the retreat from the Battle of Tours and, given that the presence of an Islamic force returning to over the Pyrenees on the way back from a military defeat is a constant in all the legends, this seems the most likely timeframe. A statue of the saint on horseback was displayed in a niche in the church of Arcizac-Adour before being destroyed during the Revolution. This statue was the subject of great veneration by the locals, being decorated with ribbons and flowers on the saint’s feast day, and a report from the nineteenth-century records the memory of this ceremony:
Every year, before the revolution, the young girls of Arcizac, in the department of the Hautes-Pyrénées, went, on May 24th, to decorate with flowers the equestrian statue of the priest Missolin,[5] who had, at that time, delivered the country from the tyranny of the Saracens. Scattered on the northern side of the mountains, these fierce Conquerors learned that Missolin had gathered the inhabitants, and that he was marching against them: they met at Ossun, Juillan and Louey; but Missolin, triumphant in numbers and experience, cut them to pieces, in this plain which bears the name of Lande-Mourine. Nevertheless, his statue, placed in a niche in the church of Arcizac, was only made of wood at the foot of the marble mountains!!! It was burned in 1793. Let us hope that a lasting monument will be erected in the same place. Who in France could refuse to subscribe to perpetuate the memory of the Liberator of the Pyrenees? [6]
The story of Saint Misselin is not unlike that of Saint Mercurial, whose legend is also attached to violence inflicted by Islamic soldiers and has been adopted by the commune of Vielle-Louron as their patron saint. This commune is adjacent to that of Cazaux-Fréchet, whose patron Saint Calix (Calixtus) was the first cousin of Saint Mercurial and a statue of which also survives in the church of Arcizac-Adour. Like Saint Calix, Saint Mercurial was Aragonese by birth and both men answered the call of the Arois to defend the Aure valley from Islamic forces who, being driven out of Upper Aragon, flowed over into the valley in order to seek refuge. Both Saint Calix and Saint Mercurial were killed in 1010, Saint Mercurial for attempting to convert the Muslim soldiers and Saint Calix as a prisoner of the same soldiers, although apparently not on the same day nor in the same place but in closely linked locations. Saint Mercurial was buried on the site of his martyrdom and a chapel was raised there, before his remains were re-interred in the church of Vielle-Louron, whose Romanesque nave, western wall and northern apse date to the eleventh century and possess sixteenth-century paintings displaying the saint’s martyrdom. His feast day falls on the 26th August.[7] Saint Calix suffered a similar fate and was also firstly interred where he was killed, above the village of Cazaux-Fréchet, where first a chapel was raised in his honour, followed by a church in the eleventh century. Subsequent repairs and revisions of the building took place in the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. The relics were kept in the church until at least the eighteenth century, with Bishop Brisay de Denonville of Comminges authenticating them during a pastoral visit between 1693 and 1710. His feast day is the 14th of October.[8]
Across the Adour river from Tarbes sits the village of Aureilhan, of whom the mysterious Saint Gérin (Girinus) is the patron saint. Little is known about this saint. Two legends surround the saint, one placing him in the third century and the other in the fifth. In the case of the former he was persecuted by the Romans for his evangelism, and in the case of the latter by the Arian, who took against his anti-Arianism and captured him. In both timeframes, Gérin was beheaded on the Adour Bridge between Tarbes and Aureilhan. Both legends state that his head and body were thrown into the river, and the former washed up on the river bank at Aureilhan, where an old blind woman was washing herbs in the water. The head rolled into her hands and she was immediately cured of her blindness. When the inhabitants of the village witnessed this miracle, they located Gérin’s body and built a chapel to house it and the head, these relics becoming a site of local veneration.[9] This sanctuary was mentioned in the edicts drawn up by Bishop Siagrane in 406, where it was designated as a place of pilgrimage and a stopover for those going to or returning from Santiago de Compostela, functioning as the first parish church of Aureilhan.[10] In 1569 it was fired and partially destroyed by the Huguenots during the Wars of Religion, then abandoned and destroyed during the French Revolution, after which the site was sold to make way for a residential building. Its remains now form part of the Route de Bours and is the namesake for the district of Aureilhan which is bordered by Montagna and Fornets. Despite the destruction by the Huguenots, it still functioned as a place of worship up to the French Revolution, with the local priest Abbot Bitaubé writing in 1783 that between fifteen and twenty masses were said per year in the chapel, primarily in order to cure headaches, with some being ‘miraculously’ healed. The current church dedicated to Saint Gérin dates to the nineteenth century, however the baptismal font bears the date 1603, suggesting that it may have been salvaged from the chapel and rehoused in the new church. Saint Gérin’s feast day falls on the 19th October. [11]
In contrast to Saint Gérin’s obscurity, Saint Bertrand de Comminges is known well beyond the village of which he is patron saint, Saint-Lucy, and his diocese. Despite being covered in the previous chapter, it is worth recapping Saint Bertrand’s essential points in order to demonstrate how his cult began to take shape before his death unlike other saints in this region. Bertrand de Comminges primarily derived his fame not from miracles or martyrdom but rather from his tireless restoration of the episcopal seat known as Lugdunum Convenarum, rebuilding the dilapidated cathedral and promoting the town as an important stopover for pilgrims travelling through the Pyrenees towards Santiago de Compostela. Born Bertrand d’Isle in 1050 at L’Isle Jourdain in Gers with the town nicknamed the ‘Mother of Occitania’ as here the ‘Croix de L’Isle de Jourdain’ has its origin; a hollowed and pommelled cross with twelve points representing the twelve disciples of Jesus. It is said that the cross was adopted by the Count of L’Isle during the Crusades when he fought beside the Count of Toulouse as a vassal, and the symbol later became more universally used across the region, firstly known as the Cross of Languedoc and then the Cross of Occitania. Whilst Bertrand’s father intended for him to become a knight, he became an Augustinian canon in Toulouse and then an archdeacon of that city in 1070, before being appointed the Bishop of Lugdunum Convenarum in 1083, a position which he occupied until his death in 1126. From the fifth century to the arrival of Bertrand, bishops had been appointed periodically but the settlement remained largely in ruins since the destruction wrought by the Vandals in 409. Aside from rebuilding the cathedral and adding a cloister, Bertrand implemented a number of Gregorian reforms across his diocese, removing his clergy from the dominance of local lords and reshaping the local clergy into a moral and religious example for the laity, and being an influential voice in the reform councils of Bordeaux, Clermont and Poitiers from 1093 to 1100. From the moment of his death Bertrand was locally considered to be a saint, the town electing to take his name over Lugdunum Convenarum, and in 1167 the Archbishop of Auch commissioned a cleric known as Vital to write his Vita in order to begin the process of petitioning the Pope for Bertrand’s canonisation. Of the fifteen miracles recorded as worked by Bertrand during his lifetime, only two are related to healing. The others range from blessing hunters’ traps, filling a fisherman’s net and making a sterile walnut tree fertile to weeding a harvest and filling an innkeeper’s barrel with wine; these miracles were used to promote the cult of Saint Bertrand from the moment of his death as a man deeply involved in the daily lives of his flock. His posthumous miracles also display characteristics which stretch beyond the typical category of healing. Whilst nine are indeed curative, seven deal with liberating hostage victims and those wrongfully imprisoned, fates which were not uncommon in the turbulent borderlands of the Pyrenees. In 1218, an investigation into these miracles resulted in Bertrand’s canonisation in 1222, however it would not be until 1309 that Pope Clement V, formerly known as Bertrand de Got, Bishop of Comminges, would elevate his relics, with a tomb being built in the cathedral during the fifteenth century to house them. The stuffed crocodile which hangs within the cathedral is attributed to the saint’s taming of a dragon in the Labat-d’Enbès valley; it is likely a Nile crocodile brought to the cathedral by a returning crusading knight. His feast day falls on the 16th October, when a Mass is said within the cathedral and his relics are paraded around the town afterwards.[12]
Two valleys west of Saint Bertrand de Comminges, the communes of Rebouc and Sarrancolin share Saint Ébons (or Ebontius) as their patron. The Vita of Saint Ébons states that he was born in Sarrancolin in the eleventh century (date unknown), before becoming a Benedictine monk at the monastery of Sainte-Foi in Tomieres (Hérault) where he quickly gained a reputation for piety and wisdom. He was then appointed as the abbot of San Victorian in Ainsa (Huesca), where he set about making that monastery a model for others in the region. His leadership skills made him the preferred choice for the position of Bishop of Roda de Isábena (Huesca), however with to the persistent threat of Islamic forces this diocese was moved to Babastro (Huesca). Here Saint Ébons set about bolstering the clergy and the faith of the laity through various initiatives, as well as combatting corruption in the former and heresy in the latter. His death is recorded as taking place in 1104, and in the Aure valley, where Sarrancolin and Rebouc lie, there is a local legend that his death took place in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges during the saint’s return journey from Rome, and as per his wishes Saint Ébons’ remains were buried at the Benedictine priory of Simorre in Sarrancolin. The Romanesque parish church of Saint Ébons was once part of this Benedictine priory, with the priory’s foundations still visible and dating to the eleventh century, prior to the saint’s death. Part of the monastic lodgings are recorded as having burnt down in 1570, possibly in relation to the Wars of Religion, and these were restored, as was the church, and much of the monastery was renovated to include numerous chapels and galleries. During the French Revolution, the priory was sold off and transformed into a coal depot, its remains finally destroyed by fire in 1871. These were then abandoned, cleared and replaced by private homes. However, the church survived and its thirteenth-century shrine of Saint Ébons remained an object of great local veneration, containing the saint’s relics. It would seem that the saint was venerated throughout the Aure valley, with the first recorded celebration of Saint Ébons’ feast day (September 12th) taking place not in Rebouc or Sarrancolin, but in nearby Ilhet in 1307. The reliquary was made in Limousin in the first quarter of the fourteenth century and during the French Revolution it was forced open by soldiers however the local priest prevented the relics from being looted and resealed the shrine.[13] The saint’s popularity reached its peak in the seventeenth century, however his feast day is still honoured annually in the presbytery gardens in Sarrancolin, where the nineteenth-century banner and processional cross are both used to commemorate his memory. [14]
[1] Priscillian (born c. 340, died c.385) was born into a noble family in northwestern Hispania and advocated for a strict form of Christian asceticism, using both the Bible and apocryphal texts to support his views. Despite his views and those of his followers being denounced at the Council of Zaragoza in 380, he became the Bishop of Ávila that same year. However, in 385 he was charged with sorcery and executed under the authority of Emperor Maximus. After his death, Priscillian’s views continued to find favour in some circles across Hispania and Gaul well into the fifth century. See: Conti, Marco, Priscillian of Avila: Complete Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[2] Bascle de Lagrèze, 1862, p. 105.
[3] Confusingly, there is also a Saint Misselin d’Aure from the mid-tenth-century. This later Misselin was born in 985 to a local religious family, studying Latin and helping to raise an army against incursions by Islamic forces near Ossun at ‘Lanne-Maurine’, after which he went to Spain in order to dedicate himself to prayer. On the way, he met the hermit Froylán at Sobrarbe on the slopes of the San Vincente mountain. Here he became seduced by the eremitic lifestyle, joining Froylán and his two disciples Firminiano and Clemencio. Misselin and the two younger men were then killed by Islamic archers whilst celebrating Mass and the priest of nearby Banastón saw the cave on fire and retrieved the bodies, which were buried in the church of San Vincente. In 1644, a chapel was raised on the mountain to Saint Misselin, containing some of the saint’s relics and on the mountain a spring is locally known as the ‘Misselin fountain’.
[4] du Mège, Alexandre, Archéologie Pyrénéenne, Vol. II (Toulouse: Delboy, 1860).
[5] This is a spelling variation of ‘Misselin’.
[6] Cénac-Moncaut, Justin, Histoire des Pyrénées, Vol II(Paris: Amyot, 1853), p. 34. Translated by author.
[7] Ministère de la Culture, ‘Église Saint-Mercurial’ in Plateforme Ouvert du Patrimoine. Entry created 30th August, 1993. Available here: https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00095444
[8] Ministère de la Culture, ‘Église Paroissiale Saint-Calix’ in Plateforme Ouvert du Patrimoine. Entry created 5th September, 1996. Available here: https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/IA65000016
[9] Guérin, Paul, Les Petits Bollandistes Vies des Saints, Vol. XII(Bar-le-Duc: Louis Guérin, 1873), p. 288.
[10] The date quoted here of 406 would be congruent with the existence of the Diocese of Tarbes, however appears rather early to be used in reference to pilgrims travelling to and from Santiago de Compostela, whose fame as a pilgrimage destination did not truly begin to rise until the eighth and ninth centuries. It is possible that a typographical error has occurred, i.e. 1406, however in the absence of confirmation the original date is given as it is presented in the source.
[11] Anon., Aureilhan Quartiers et Lieux-Dits (Aureilhan: Les Amis du Patrimoine d’Aureilhan, 2009), pp. 11 – 12. Published in 2009 using texts by local researcher Lucien Carmouse (born 1907 in Aureilhan, died 2001 in Tarbes). Available here: https://api.neopse.com/rest/site/files/download/327623?projectId=1734
[12] Lawlor, Danys, Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1870), pp. 507 – 539.
[13] Ministère de la Culture, ‘Prieuré de Bénédictins, Église Paroissiale Saint-Pierre, Saint-Ébones’ in Plateforme Ouvert du Patrimoine. Entry created 7th June, 2000. Available here: https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/IA65000350
[14] Garrigue, Gérard, Les Grandes Heures de la Vallée d’Aure: Histoire de Sarrancolin (Pau: Imprimerie Marrimpouey, 1974).
Perennial Pyrenees 