Saint Ghislain

Butler is blunt about the sources: "The lives of St. Guislain are all modern." ² His name survives, Butler says, chiefly in the lives of others, of Saint Amand, Saint Aubert and Saint Aldegund. ² The 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia builds a fuller picture, but much of it is the record of his dealings with those neighbors, and it hedges where it must, with "probably" for his origin and "it is probable" for his influence on the women he advised. ¹

The Roman Martyrology gives him one sentence: in Hainaut, Saint Ghislain, who led the monastic life in a cell he had built himself. ³ The French text, which Nominis prints, dates his death between 681 and 685. ⁴

He was born in the first half of the seventh century, the encyclopedia says, and was probably of German origin. ¹ A booklet of the Diocese of Cambrai, quoted by Nominis, tells it differently: that he was of noble family, a monk and then bishop of Athens, called to evangelize the north of Gaul. ⁴

With two disciples whose names are unknown, the encyclopedia says, he cleared a patch of forest near Castrilocus, now Mons, and later settled at a place called Ursidongus, where he built an oratory dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. ¹ Butler places his hermitage in a forest of Hainaut on the river Haine, and says that for the sake of the many who wanted to serve God under him he founded a monastery there in 651, in honor of the same two apostles. ² He governed it, Butler says, for thirty-six years, which would run past the date Butler himself gives for his death. ²

Butler adds that the community followed the rule of Saint Basil, or of the eastern monks. ² Nominis says that his little monastery drew many disciples, who cleared the land as they evangelized the region. ⁴

An unknown hermit on the edge of the diocese was something a bishop would want to look into. The encyclopedia says Aubert, bishop of Cambrai, summoned him in order to sound out his intentions, and afterward gave him real protection. ¹ On that visit, it says, Ghislain stayed for a time at the villa of Roisin and received the estates of Celles and Hornu as gifts. ¹ Nominis names the bishop who helped him enlarge his lands as Saint Ablebert of Cambrai. ⁴

His reputation rests most on the women he advised. The encyclopedia says he came into contact with Saint Waldetrude, or Waudru, and persuaded her to build a monastery at Castrilocus, the place where he had once taken refuge. ¹ Butler dates her house there to 656 and says the place is now Mons. ² Waldetrude later rewarded her counselor, the encyclopedia says, with part of the villa of Frameries and the oratory of Saint-Quentin within the villa of Quaregnon. ¹

It is probable, the encyclopedia goes on, that he influenced the vocations of Saint Aldegund, Waldetrude's sister, abbess of Maubeuge, and of Waldetrude's daughters, Saints Madelberte and Aldetrude. ¹ Butler says plainly that his exhortations led both sisters to renounce the world, Waldetrude at Mons and Aldegund in the double monastery from which the town of Maubeuge grew. ²

The encyclopedia tells one story of him and Aldegund. Her biographer records that in a vision at Maubeuge she saw the death of Saint Amand revealed to her; Ghislain visited her at her villa of Mairieu, near Maubeuge, and told her that the vision was an announcement of her own approaching death. ¹ The friendship between the two, it says, brought "a perfect understanding" between Maubeuge and his monastery at Ursidongus. ¹

He died at Ursidongus, and the monastery he had founded took his name. ¹ The encyclopedia gives the date as October 9, about 680; Butler says October 9, 681. ¹² Nominis says that the town of Saint-Ghislain grew up on his abbey. ⁴

Butler says his monastery was long called The Cell, and that it passed from the rule of regular canons to the Benedictine rule under Saint Gerard in 930. ² The encyclopedia follows his relics. They were first raised about 929, taken to Grandlieu near Quaregnon about the turn of the eleventh century, and moved in 1025 by Gerard I, bishop of Cambrai, to Le Cateau-Cambrésis. ¹ The bishops of Cambrai visited them several times in the Middle Ages, and in 1647 they were brought back to Saint-Ghislain, the town of which he is patron. ¹

In art he is often shown with a bear or a bear cub beside him. ¹ The encyclopedia explains it as an allusion to a popular legend: that a bear hunted by King Dagobert took refuge with Ghislain and later showed him the place to build his monastery. ¹ It adds that the name of the site of his cell, Ursidongus, means "bear's den." ¹

Saint Ghislain is invoked for children. The encyclopedia says his intercession "is sought to ward off convulsions from children," and the Cambrai booklet quoted by Nominis says that families have long invoked him to heal and protect little children. ¹⁴ Nominis also quotes the town of Saint-Ghislain, which calls him patron of pregnant women and of early childhood. ⁴ The encyclopedia names him patron of the town itself. ¹

Saint Ghislain's feast is October 9, the day of his death. ¹ The encyclopedia says his feast "is celebrated 9 October," the Roman Martyrology lists him that day, and Nominis gives the same date. ¹³⁴

He went into the forest to be alone and kept being found. ¹² Disciples came, a bishop sent for him to find out who he was, and he persuaded a noblewoman to build a monastery where he had once sheltered. ¹⁴

Much of what is remembered of him is what he did for other people's vocations. ¹² The women he counseled became founders themselves, and the double monastery Aldegund built, Butler says, gave rise to the town of Maubeuge. ²

The story the encyclopedia tells of him and Aldegund is a hard one: she brought him a vision and he told her, plainly, that it meant her own death was near. ¹ Nothing in the account suggests he softened it. ¹

Families still bring their children's illnesses to him, the Cambrai booklet says, and the encyclopedia recorded the same custom in 1909. ¹⁴ The sources do not explain how it began, and this page does not either. ¹⁴