Solange (died 10 May, c. 880) was a
Frankish
Frankish may refer to:
* Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture
** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages
* Francia, a post-Roman state in France and Germany
* East Francia, the successor state to Francia in Germany ...
shepherdess
A shepherd or sheepherder is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. ''Shepherd'' derives from Old English ''sceaphierde (''sceap'' 'sheep' + ''hierde'' 'herder'). ''Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations, i ...
and a locally
venerated
Veneration ( la, veneratio; el, τιμάω ), or veneration of saints, is the act of honoring a saint, a person who has been identified as having a high degree of sanctity or holiness. Angels are shown similar veneration in many religions. Etym ...
Christian saint and
cephalophore
A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying their own severed head. In Christian art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Depicting th ...
, whose cult is restricted to
Sainte-Solange
Sainte-Solange () is a commune in the Cher department in central France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Cher department
The following is a list of the 287 communes of the Cher department of France.
The communes cooperate in the fo ...
,
Cher. Saint Solange was the patron of the traditional
Province of Berry, of which Cher is a part.
Solange was born to a poor, but devout family in the town of Villemont, near
Bourges, and consecrated her virginity at the age of seven; according to some, her mere presence cured the sick and
exorcised
Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be ...
devils. The son of the count of
Poitiers was highly taken with the beauty and popularity of Solange and approached her when she was tending to her sheep, but she rejected his suit. He argued with her to no avail, and so he decided to abduct her.
At night, he came and took Solange by force, but she struggled so violently that she fell from his horse while he was crossing a stream. Her abductor grew enraged and beheaded her with his sword. According to the fully-developed legend, Solange's severed head invoked three times the
Holy Name
In Catholicism, the veneration of the Holy Name of Jesus (also ''Most Holy Name of Jesus'', it, Santissimo Nome di Gesù) developed as a separate type of devotion in the early modern period, in parallel to that of the ''Sacred Heart''. The ...
of Jesus, and like
Saint Denis and other saints in
Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
ish territories, Solange picked up her head in her own hands and walked with it as far as the church of Saint-Martin in the village of Saint-Martin-du-Crot (which now bears the name of Sainte-Solange, the only commune in France to bear this name), only dropping truly dead there.
"Sainte Solange, bergère..."
/ref>
Veneration
Immediately, a cult surrounding her grew up. Many miraculous cures were attributed to her intercession. In 1281, an altar was erected in her honor at that church, and it preserved her severed head as a relic and began to call itself the church of St. Solange, while a nearby field where she had prayed began to be referred to as the "Field of St. Solange". It was a habit of the locals, in times of great stress, to form a procession through Bourges with the reliquary head before them and to invoke her against drought.
Solange's feast day in the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
is May 10.
File:Sainte-Solange (CHer, Fr), l'église.JPG, Church of St. Solange. Sainte-Solange, Cher, France.
References
External links
{{authority control
880 deaths
9th-century births
9th-century Christian saints
9th-century French people
9th-century French women
Saints of West Francia
Catholic martyrs
Cephalophores
Christian child saints
Female saints of medieval France
Executed French people
Executed people from Centre-Val de Loire
Kidnapped French children
Medieval French saints
Women from the Carolingian Empire
Miracle workers
Murdered French children
Year of birth unknown