Born c. 650
Athens, Greece
Died c. 710
Annually, Giles Abbot is remembered in both Roman and Anglican communions on 1 September. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer recalls our attention to this saint in history.There also is St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, where John Knox preached. Giles, on this timeline, lived shortly after the humble Bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great, who sponsored Augustine (the lesser) to England and Canterbury; also, this humble Bishop of Rome, refused universal supremacy of jurisdiction--unlike subsequent Roman bishops. We believe Giles was unaffected by such claims to lordship and sovereignty--pompophilia.
The superstitious Romanists in later centuries, their idol factories, unabated propensities for embellishments, skilled marketeering, famed advertising, shameless trading on the weak, poor, and even desperate, and their unmitigated supremacism and tyranny, turned Giles into a patron saint for beggars, blacksmiths, breast cancer, breast feeding, cancer patients, disabled people, epilepsy, fear of night, forests, hermits, horses, lepers, mental illness, noctiphobics, outcasts, poor peoples, rams, deerns, spur-makers, and sterility. God alone knows if there were others put into Rome's famous factories. Good, hearty, and thorough repentance by the Vatican would be appreciated; Rome, tempermentally, however, is enslaved to idolatry; she is intoxicated with herself, a lusty strumpet.
The photo below a detail of "Saint Giles and the Hind" by the Master of Saint Giles, a pre-Reformation painting, c. 1500.
The English Reformers returned to the Triune God, giving praise to the LORD Jesus Christ alone, the sole source of all holy desires, good counsels and just works--not departed saints.Rome continues these follies to this day, impenitently, unlike classical Anglicans who attempt, with sanitizing efforts, to retain the day with a memorial--while cleaning out the stables in the Roman "Barn of Fictions."
Rome insults--and continues to insult without insight--the supreme majesty of Christ Jesus and His solitary mediation by making departed saints the source of varied protections and blessings. As this scribe has done for a number of years, this foolishness is best witnessed by living and travelling throughout Italy--the practice is unabated, widespread and celebrated. There are patron saints for hamlets, villages, towns, and cities. There are patron saints for almost anything one might see or face in life. Idolaters, all under the Roman banner and all under the sanction of the Vatican Curia.
What can best be retained is that Saint Giles (650-710) was a Greek-born, converted, godly and, allgedly Christian hermit from Athens. Yet, how much of an "hermit" was he if so widely known? If truly an hermit, he never would have been known. We can never trust Papist accounts or their encyclopedias. St. Giles allegedly went to Provence, France. He also lived in retreats near the mouth of the Rhône and by the River Gard, in Septimania, in southern France. If so, enough was known about him to have left an impact on observers, including kings. How monastic he might have been, Giles was on the move and was well known. Again, Romanist traditions are untrustworthy and deconflicting them is difficult.
Whatever story underlay the embellishments, he was held in high regard in the early eighth century for his holiness and dedication. He was widely known throughout Europe. This is a Psalm 1-man, known to the LORD. He was a "blessed" man. This is a Psalm 16-man, preserved by God. We doubt that Giles would have approved have of Rome's behaviours and postulations in subsequent centuries.
Romanists, like the Pentecostalists with Benny Hinn, attributed to Giles many miracles. Both Rome and Hinn have been and are famed marketeers, famed advertisers, skilled traders, and shameless fabricators--plying a profitable trade.
In 1562, the relics of the saint were transferred to Toulouse to save them from the anger of the Huguenots, French Protestants, or French Calvinists. As a result, pilgrimages declined to his burial site. Rome had created not just idol factories, but often charged fees for reductions in time in purgatory, fictions that are abominated in classical Anglicanism and explicitly repudiated in the Thirty-nine Articles (the Anglo-Catholics have similarly repudiated their classical Anglican patrimony...essentially as Romanists).
St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (photo to the left), attests to Popedom's presence in Scotland by the time of the Reformation. It also attests to Giles's widespread notoriety, although an Athenian, a German and Frenchman by way of his movements. St. Giles' Cathedral is a prominent and historic landmark in Scotland; Queen Mary of the Scots worshipped at St. Giles Cathedral; again, John Knox preached from this pulpit, but not about fictions and superstitious fabrications. Rather, like the early catholic church, Knox preached the Word of God.But however we castigate Rome, we do not--like Americans including the radical Puritans and other sectarians--throw the baby out with the wash. At least Rome has retained a regard for history, unlike Americans Anabaptists, Revivalists and others.
As Anglicans, unlike Presbyterians, we did not ditch the catholicity of the church by tossing out the Prayer Book and memorials to saints of the ages. Like our beloved Lutheran cousins, Anglicanism was conservative, reformatory, cautious and retained the best while cleaning out the Roman barn and stables. To the credit of the Scots Presbyterians, they retained the name of St. Giles for their historic cathedral. The Scots allowed something of a memorial to stand. As American celebrities often do, they name ministries to, or, and after themselves, e.g. Billy Graham Association, Benny Hinn Ministries, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, Kenneth Copeland Ministries (photo to the left), Oral Roberts Ministries and more. That is what RA terms "The Religio Americanorm," the "Religion of Americans," self-absorbed and amnesiacal. As a classical Protestant and Reformed Anglican, we commend our Reformation cousins to the north, the Scots Presbyterians, for not tossing St. Giles, as a name or saint, under the bus--although they tossed other things. We commend Rome for attempts at history, notwithstanding their manifold lies, non-Gospel, and other tomfooleries. We sternly castigate anti-historians in the Protestant Churches--mainline as well as the fissiparous, individualistic and often vociferous sideline churches, said to include, but not limited to, these Pentecostalistists. We are thankful for this occasional to recall a saint who made a large mark on many, quite publicly rather than secretively.Whatever the historical facts may be, St. Giles left enough of a mark to be remembered. St. Giles was born not to bear witness to himself, his own sanctity, or to exalt a self-aggrandizing and self-serving church with all its effronteries and wind-baggeries (Popes), but to bear witness to the One who had begotten him in the faith, motivated him through the Gospel, sustained him and presevered him for Christ's courts of service below and Christ's heavens above. As Anglicans, we praise God for keeping not just Giles Abbott in the way, but all His saints in history--back to Adam and Eve, Abel, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Israel, the remnant of Isaiah's day, the remnant from Babylon, and the elect since. God keeps His saints and His Church through the ages, what Augustine would famously call "The City of God." (Romanism does not belong to that city.)
In this sense only, as a witness to His Majesty, do we remember him on 1 September 2010.
Psalm 12:7. "O LORD, you will keep us safe and protect us from such people forever."
Psalm 16:3. "As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight."
While Roman fools make Giles Abbot a patron saint and protector of others, if truly Godly, Giles Abbot would have denied these tomfooleries and, with the Psalmist and like the Psalmist, would have looked to God alone.
In this sense alone, do we remember Giles as a witness to His Majesty.
God alone is our Rock, Refuge and Redeemer, not a saint.
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