Saint Viergue

Saint Viergue was a simple shepherdess, who sanctified herself like Saint Germaine Cousin and others through the obscure virtues of a piety whose eminence her miracles would reveal even upon her tomb. This tomb was venerated in the parish church until the Revolution of 1793, which overturned it and scattered her ashes. What remains of her tomb in the church o f the village of Sainte village de Sainte-Verge Village and parish named after the saint. -Verge, which has approximately 1,000 to 1,200 inhabitants, is gradually turning to dust, as the faithful claim it to mix the debris with the water of a fountain that bears the Saint's name, in the park of the neighboring château. This beverage is given against the Sèvre. The Saint is said to have lived on the very edge of this fountain, which is 100 meters from the church and now also bears her name; the spring appears miraculous, for in years of great drought it still flows with invariable regularity, while the wells themselves run dry.

The people in this region still believe that Saint Viergue was a great maiden whom the persecutions of her family forced to go and hide in the woods, where a cow nourished her for a long time with its milk, which it brought to her every day. Her feast is celebrated in the parish on January 7.

This dates from a remote era, without it being possible to determine the precise time. The church in which Saint Viergue was buried, probably by the religious inhabiting the adjoining cloister, is from the 11th century, and had Notre-Dame as its titular before the miracles performed at the Saint's tomb: the tomb itself appears to be from the 13th or 14th century.

According to Poitevin archives, the body of this blessed one was transported to the abbey church of Saint-Vincent in Metz , wi Metz City where the saint received his theological training. tness Meu risse, s Meurisse Suffragan bishop and historian of Metz. uffragan bishop to Theodoric, forty-seventh bishop, in his Book III of the Bishops of Metz (970). We have conducted the most active research to know what the truth was regarding this translation. Saint Viergue is completely forgotten in Metz, and the fact of the translation appears fabricated to a very competent hagiographer from Eastern France, Canon Guillaume, chaplain of the ducal chapel of Nancy, whom we consulted on this subject. There exists in the canton of Dieuze, diocese of Nancy, a parish named Vergaville. Some hav e thought Vergaville Place where the saint's relics rested until the French Revolution. that this locality had borrowed its name from the saint of Poitou whose relics would have enriched an abbey that once stood on the territory of Vergaville and on the site of which the plow has long since roamed. Now, if one goes back to the foundation charter of this abbey, one sees that the place where it rose was called, before the very foundation which took place in the 10th century: *Widirgadesdorf*, that is to say the virgin of the village. And in fact the holy virgin was the principal patroness of the abbey.

Abbé Auber, his M. l'abbé Auber Author of the work on the saints of Poitiers. torical canon of the diocese of Poitiers, and M. Gouin, parish priest of Sainte-Verge: the latter kindly translated for us an ancient legend from a *Propre de Poitou*.