The patron saint of France

With 'Paddy's Day' (St Patrick's Day, March 17th) upon us this week, and the patron saints of the constituent parts of the UK well known (Saints Andrew, George and David) we take a look at the Patron saints of France.

Yes - Saints plural! There are several with varied claims, and further than that, most villages, towns and cities also have their own nominated patron saints, so there is an interesting debate as to who is right and wrong wherever you travel.



The Kings of France dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary, and her feast day, 'L'Assomption de Marie' on 15th August survived the secularisation of France following the 1792 Revolution It remains a National Holiday, but very much in the shadow of 'Fête Nationale' or Bastille Day which falls on the 14th July annually, commemorating the Fall of the Bastille during the French Revolution.

There are then six other saints with claims to being national patron saints, three males and three females.

The males are headed by St Martin of Tours, a 4th Century Hungarian who came to France as a soldier in the Roman army. He is best remembered for 'The Cutting of the Cloak' in which he met a scantily clad beggar on a cold winter day, and cut his large military cloak in two, giving half of it to the beggar.
Soon after this he left the Roman Army, and was baptised into the Christian church to become a disciple of St Hilary of Poitiers, and established an abbey there in 361 AD. He became Bishop of Tours ten years later,
Dying in 397AD, by his own request he was buried in the Cemetery of the Poor on 11th November, which was to become his Feast Day.

The relics of Martin of Tours were placed in the Cathedral, and became a focus for pilgrimage and reported miracles throughout the Middle Ages.

The next male saint is St Remigius, another early saint of the 5th and 6th century AD. He was a favourite of the French king Clovis, and Clovis bestowed on Remigius gifts of land for the establishment of abbeys and churches. Clovis was a great warrior, winning large areas  in the north east of France from the Visigoths, as the result of which he moved his capital from Soissons to Paris.
The miracle for which Remigius is best known is the turning of empty vials into vials filled with oil when he baptised a dying beggar, and he was also responsible for the baptising of Clovis which was seen as a major achievement to convert the warrior king. 

St Denis (or Dionysious in Latin) was one of a group of Roman Bishops sent to Gaul in the 3rd century to convert the Gauls to Christianity. He went on to become the Bishop of Paris, but ended up being beheaded at what is now Montmartre during a persecution of Christians by the Emperor Decius. It is believed that this martyrdom was what gave the highest hill in Paris its name.
It is said that after his beheading he picked up his head, and then walked ten kilometres, preaching a sermon of repentance all the way.

Of the females, St Clothilde is very much the earliest, being the wife of Clovis who was baptized by St Remigious above. She was born a princess, daughter of king Gondioc of what is now Burgundy, and seemingly survived a number of patricides, infanticides and matricides among her quite large family.
She and her sister Croma went into a nunnery when still quite young - presumably to escape her bloodthirsty siblings and parents, and lived exceptionally pious lives.
Aged 28, one of Clovis' ambassadors noticed her, and the marriage was arranged, and of five children she bore, three became kings of various parts of the Frankish tribe, and a daughter married the king of the Visigoths.
Clovis died in 511, and Clothilde retired to the Abbey of St Martin at Tours, but in seeking revenge for earlier murders of members of her family seemed to trigger off a number of further murders of which only her grandaughter Clodoald survived while the three kings also fought battles against each other.
She founded a number of convents and other religious orders and is also venerated for helping to persuade her warrior husband to convert to Catholicism.

Ste Thérèse de Lisieux  had an unusual path to sanctity, as she was a cloistered nun who only lived to the age of 24 in the later years of the 19th century. Nobody met her, and she met nobody outside the Discalced Carmelite  (OCD) order of nuns in which she lived and worked. She has risen to levels of popularity similar to Francis of Assissi.
This has been achieved by the stunning archive of autobiographical and other writings she left at her death, including poems, plays and letters. These were collected together under the title 'Story of a Soul' which found its way to Rome, and around thirty years after her death she was canonized, and the basilica at Lisieux is now the second most visited place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.

The last patron saint of France needs little introduction - Joan of Arc. Like St Thérèze, she died in her 20s, but not before establishing a formidable reputation as a warrior in the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years War.
Born a peasant, she claimed that visions of angels and saints instructed her to support the French king Charles VII and help him recover France from the English domination of the later part of the Hundred Years War early in the 15th Century.  She was sent to Orléans on a relief mission for the siege there, and the siege was lifted nine days later.
Several victories later led to Charles VII being crowned at Reims, before the final victory.
Shortly after she was captured by the Burgundian Faction who handed her over to the English, who burned at the stake on 30 May 1431.
Over succeeding centuries she was declared a national symbol by several leaders, including Napoleon Bonaparte, and was finally canonized in 1920.

There is a long list of other saints who might be considered as secondary patron saints of France, but these seven appear to have the strongest claims, and a variety of interesting stories among them.