St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Rôle in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular CustomsMcKnight, George Harley
History
St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Rôle in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular Customs
McKnight, George Harley
Christmas; Nicholas, Saint, Bishop of Myra
In Catholic Brittany, too, one will find similar forms of saint
worship. One will find the so-called “Pardons,” or pilgrimages on
different days of the year to different ones of the famous shrines of
Brittany, occasions celebrated with festal processions accompanying
the image or the relics of the saint honored. In the Breton churches
also one will find the same form of testimony, as in Sicily, to the
protection offered by the various saints. In the church of St. Sauveur
at Dinan, in the chapel of St. Roch, one will find a representation of
the saint over the altar and on the wall a framed _vœu_, to the effect
that St. Roch confers many benefits, especially in case of pestilence,
that he saved the city from pestilence in 16--, and that the _vœu_ is
for the sake of preserving the memory of his goodness to the city. On
the wall also are framed litanies to St. Roch and individual votive
offerings with dates, many in the form of hearts, others framed
inscriptions with “_Merci Bon St. Roch_,” accompanied by the date of
the benefit received. Over the door of a house in Brittany also one
often finds the image of the patron saint of the occupant.
In Brittany down to our own time honor continues to be paid to a
great number of saints not known elsewhere, never canonized by the
Roman church and probably in their origin having little of Christian
character, more than likely Christian representatives of earlier,
local, pagan divinities. The functions of these local Breton saints
are specialized to an extent hardly found elsewhere at the present
time. Ailments are subject to the cure of particular saints. The
specialization is hardly equalled even by that in the modern practice
of medicine. Saint Mamert is invoked in case of pains of the stomach,
Saint Méen for insanity, Saint Hubert for dog bites, Saint Livertin for
headache, Saint Houarniaule for fear, Saint Radegonde for toothache.
There is a certain beauty in the intimate relations existing between
simple people and their divine representative, but the naïve character
of the practice, in a striking manner, brings to one’s realization
the superstitious mode of thought prevalent in medieval times. The
Reformation, in the sixteenth century, did much to dispel these older,
superstitious forms of religious thought. As already remarked, among
Protestants the old reverence of the saints is hardly understood. In
the modern Catholic church, too, the extravagant features of saintly
legend and of saint worship have been largely eliminated, only vestiges
surviving in those provinces little affected by modern progress.
[Illustration: Images of Breton Saints, Preserved at
Moncontour-de-Bretagne.]
Evidence of similar specialization in earlier forms of saint worship,
and of Protestant ridicule of it, is to be found in Barnabe Googe’s
sixteenth-century translations from Naogeorgus[77]:
To every saint they also doe his office here assine,
And fourtene doe they count of whom thou mayst have ayde divine;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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