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St. Guinefort
By Gary Macy
Human beings had no monopoly on sanctity in the Middle Ages,
as Bernard Hamilton relates in his delightful book, Religion in the Medieval
West: Thus, shortly before 1261, the Dominican inquisitor, Stephen of
Bourbon, discovered that women in the Dombes, a region in southeast France,
venerated St. Guinefort as a child-healer. Stephen was much edified by this
until he was told that this saint was not, as he had supposed, a holy man, but
a greyhound. A legend was associated with this hound, which is common to most
Indo-European peoples: He had defended his masters child against a wild
beast (in Guineforts case, a huge snake), but had been suspected by his
master of killing the child and had been wrongly stabbed to death by him.
(An expurgated version of this story still survives in the Walt Disney movie,
Lady and the Tramp.) Stephen of Bourbons reaction was to
immediately disinter and burn the poor dog saints bones. This may have
been hasty -- I have known some rather saintly animals. Too bad Stephen
wasnt a Franciscan. Things might have gone differently for St.
Guinefort.
Gary Macy is a theology professor at the University of
San Diego. His e-mail address is macy@pwa.acusd.edu |