Like fine wine, cheese and oh so many other things, the French do a particularly good line in saints. One of my favourites is the 13th-century St Guinefort of the Dombes region, whose story bears remarkable similarity to Gelert of Beddgelert, a pretty village in North Wales.
In both cases, the protagonists are faithful dogs — Guinefort a greyhound and Gelert an Irish wolfhound —and both save their master’s babies, from a viper and a wolf, respectively, only to be bumped off in a regrettable case of mistaken identity.
Gelert, alas, was never canonised and, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, neither was Guinefort, but the locals were having none of it. They believed Guinefort was a true martyr, declared him a saint and began to pray to him in times of need. A dog in Heaven is a concept, I am confident, that many of us could get on board with today.
'Religious folklore is always a good reason to throw a party and the French are very good at this'
We encountered another random French saint in Provence this summer. St Quinis was born in about AD500, a time when the religious landscape of southern Gaul was changing dramatically. Educated at the famous monastery of Lérins on the island of what is now called Ile Saint-Honorat off Cannes, Quinis became a wandering preacher throughout the Var region of Provence, encouraging people to abandon pagan practices and adopt Christianity.
When this kind man, venerated for his care of young and old, widows, working people and prisoners died some 75 years later, little did he know that a few centuries down the line his name would become associated with a splendid tale of folklore in the Provençal village of Gonfaron, which claims St Quinis as its local saint.
The story goes that one year — in probably the early 17th century — before the annual procession through the village to mark the Feast of St Quinis, the village authorities demanded that everyone whose house lay along the route should clean the area outside their front door. One unruly fellow refused, allegedly saying something along the lines of: ‘If St Quinis finds my doorstep too dirty, he will just have to jump over it.’ A poor neighbour did the clean-up job instead and the procession went ahead.
However, like all good moralistic tales, there was comeuppance to be had and sometime later, when the man was riding his donkey home from the countryside, a swarm of horseflies attacked the poor beast. Agitated by this, the donkey leapt into the air, threw the rider violently from its back, and flew across the nearby ravine. ‘Aha!’ cried the villagers, ‘St Quinis l’a puni, l’âne a volé’ (or 'St Quinis has punished him, his donkey has flown') — or so at least says the blurb outside the tiny chapel dedicated to the saint on a hilltop above Gonfaron.
There is lots to be marvelled at here, not least the fact that the villagers were given a perfect excuse to start a new annual, non-religious festival — the Feast of the Flying Donkey. This takes place each spring and, alongside the blessing of a few real donkeys, involves the parading through Gonfaron’s narrow streets of a giant effigy of a donkey, which is then, somewhat randomly I feel, set on fire outside St Quinis’s chapel.
This makes me think two things: first, that perhaps a more appropriate scenario would be to burn an effigy of the unpleasant man — a bit like our own Guy Fawkes — and not the poor old donkey, even if the burnt bits of paper floating in the afternoon sky are more symbolic of un âne qui vole; second, that religious folklore, however eccentric, is always a good reason to throw a party and the French are very good at this. Perhaps modern Christianity needs a few more martyred dogs and flying donkeys to help us on our way.