Twice ToldStephen of Bourbon on Saint Guinefort, the greyhound (Lecoy de La Marche's edition, 1877, no. 370)
- Language
- Latin
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 17 October 2026
The passage is paragraph 370 of Stephen of Bourbon’s treatise on preaching, in the part on superstitions that insult God. It runs from the middle of p. 325 to the top of p. 328. The edition prints the Latin of the single manuscript it uses, with the medieval spelling (e for ae and oe, “neccessitatibus”, “faunos”). Square brackets are Lecoy’s own additions, and “Ms.” in his footnotes gives the manuscript’s reading; both are kept here. Lecoy’s footnote marks (1 to 3) are left out; his footnote on p. 325 reads “Villars en Dombes. D’après Échard, la localité appelée Novile serait Villeneuve”, and the one on p. 327 reads “Chalaronne, rivière qui se jette dans la Saône”. Page breaks are marked in square brackets.
- Sexto dicendum est de supersticionibus contumeliosis, quarum quedam sunt contumeliose Deo, quedam proximo. Deo contumeliose sunt supersticiones que divinos honores demonibus attribuunt, vel alicui alteri creature, ut facit idolatria, et ut faciunt misere mulieres sortilege que salutem petunt adorando sambucas vel offerendo eis, contemnendo ecclesias vel sanctorum reliquias, portando ibi pueros suos vel ad formicarios vel ad res alias, ad sanitatem consequendam. Sic faciebant nuper in diocesi Lugdunensi, ubi, cum ego predicarem contra sortilegia et confessiones audirem, multe mulieres confitebantur portasse se pueros suos apud sanctum Guinefortem. Et cum crederem esse sanctum aliquem, inquisivi, et audivi ad ultimum quod esset canis quidam leporarius, occisus per hunc modum. In diocesi Lugdunensi, prope villam monialium que dicitur Novile, in terra domini de Vilario, fuit quoddam castrum cujus dominus puerum parvulum habebat de uxore sua. Cum autem exivissent dominus et domina a domo et nutrix similiter, dimisso puero solo in cunabulis, serpens maximus intravit domum, tendens ad cunabula pueri; quod videns leporarius, qui ibi remanserat, eum velociter insequens et persequens sub cunabulo, evertit cunabula, morsibus serpentem invadens, defendentem se et canem similiter mordentem; quem ad ultimum canis occidit [p. 326] et a cunabulis pueri longe projecit, relinquens cunabula dicta cruentata, et terram et os suum et caput, serpentis sanguine, stans prope cunabula, male a serpente tractatus. Cum autem intrasset nutrix et hec videret, puerum credens occisum et devoratum a cane, clamavit cum maximo ejulatu; quod audiens, mater pueri similiter accurrit, idem vidit et credidit, et clamavit similiter. Similiter et miles, adveniens ibi, idem credidit, et, extrahens spatam, canem occidit. Tunc, accedentes ad puerum, invenerunt eum illesum, suaviter dormientem; inquirentes, inveniunt serpentem canis morsibus laceratum et occisum. Veritatem autem facti agnoscentes, et dolentes de hoc quod sic injuste canem occiderant sibi tam utilem, projecerunt eum in puteum qui erat ante portam castri, et acervum maximum lapidum super eum projecerunt, et arbores juxta plantaverunt in memoriam facti.
Castro autem divina voluntate destructo, et terra in desertum redacta est, ab habitatore relicta. Homines autem rusticani, audientes nobile factum canis, et quomodo innocenter mortuus est pro eo de quo debuit reportare bonum, locum visitaverunt, et canem tanquam martyrem honoraverunt et pro suis infirmitatibus et neccessitatibus rogaverunt, seducti a diabolo et ludificati ibi pluries, ut per hoc homines in errorem adduceret. Maxime autem mulieres que pueros habebant infirmos et morbidos ad locum eos deportabant, et in quodam castro, per leucam ab eo loco propinquo, vetulam accipiebant, que ritum agendi et demonibus offerendi et invocandi eos doceret eas, et ad locum duceret. Ad quem cum venirent, sal et quedam alia offerebant, et panniculos pueri per dumos circumstantes [p. 327] pendebant, et acum in lignis, que super locum creverant, figebant, et puerum nudum per foramen quod erat inter duos truncos duorum lignorum [introducebant], matre existente ex una parte et puerum tenente et proiciente novies vetule que erat ex alia parte, cum invocatione demonum adjurantes faunos, qui erant in silva Rimite, ut puerum, quem eorum dicebant, acciperent morbidum et languidum, et suum, quem secum detulerant, reportarent eis pinguem et grossum, vivum et sanum. Et, hoc facto, accipiebant matricide puerum, et ad pedem arboris super stramina cunabuli nudum puerum ponebant, et duas candelas ad mensuram pollicis in utroque capite, ab igne quem ibi detulerant, succendebant et in trunco superposito infigebant, tamdiu inde recedentes quod essent consumpte et quod nec vagientem puerum possent audire nec videre; et sic candele candentes plurimos pueros concremabant et occidebant, sicut ibidem de aliquibus reperimus. Quedam etiam retulit mihi quod, dum faunos invocasset et recederet, vidit lupum de silva exeuntem et ad puerum euntem, ad quem, nisi affectu materno miserata prevenisset, lupus vel diabolus in forma ejus eum, ut dicebat, vorasset. Si autem, redeuntes ad puerum, eum invenissent viventem, deportabant ad fluvium cujusdam aque rapide propinque, dicte Chalarone, in quo puerum novies immergebant, qui valde dura viscera habebat si evadebat nec tunc vel cito post moreretur. Ad locum autem accessimus, et populum terre convocavimus, et contra dictum predicavimus. Canem mortuum fecimus exhumari et lucum succidi, [p. 328] et cum eo ossa dicti canis pariter concremari, et edictum poni a dominis terre de spoliacione et redempcione eorum qui ad dictum locum pro tali causa de cetero convenirent.
Translation
- The sixth thing to treat is insulting superstitions, some of which insult God and some one’s neighbour. Those insult God that give divine honours to demons or to some other creature, as idolatry does, and as wretched sorceress women do when they ask for health by worshipping elder trees or making offerings to them, scorning churches or the relics of saints, and carrying their children there, or to anthills, or to other things, to get them well. They did this recently in the diocese of Lyon. While I was preaching there against sorcery and hearing confessions, many women confessed that they had carried their children to Saint Guinefort. I thought he was some saint, so I asked, and in the end I heard that he was a greyhound, killed in this way.
In the diocese of Lyon, near a nuns’ village called Novile, on the land of the lord of Villars, there was a castle, and its lord had a small son by his wife. The lord and lady had gone out of the house, and the nurse too, and the child was left alone in his cradle. A huge snake came into the house, making for the child’s cradle. A greyhound that had stayed behind saw this and went after it quickly, and chased it under the cradle, overturning the cradle as it attacked the snake with its bites; the snake defended itself and bit the dog in turn. In the end the dog killed the snake and threw it far away from the child’s cradle. It left the cradle, the floor, its own mouth and its head smeared with the snake’s blood, and stood near the cradle, badly mauled by the snake. When the nurse came in and saw this, she thought the child had been killed and eaten by the dog, and she cried out with a very great wail. The child’s mother heard it and ran in, saw the same and believed the same, and cried out in the same way. The knight, coming up, believed it too, drew his sword and killed the dog. Then they went to the child and found him unhurt, sleeping peacefully; and looking further they found the snake, torn and killed by the dog’s bites. When they saw what had really happened, and were sorry that they had killed a dog so useful to them unjustly, they threw it into a well that stood in front of the castle gate, heaped a very great pile of stones over it, and planted trees beside it in memory of what had happened.
By God’s will the castle was destroyed, and the land was turned into a wilderness, left by anyone who lived there. The country people, hearing of the dog’s noble deed, and how it had died innocent for the very thing from which it ought to have had good, visited the place and honoured the dog as a martyr, and prayed to it for their illnesses and needs. The devil led them astray and made fools of them there many times, to draw people into error that way. Above all, women who had sick and ailing children carried them to the place. In a castle about a league from it they would find an old woman who taught them how to do it, how to make offerings to demons and call on them, and she led them to the place. When they came to it they offered salt and some other things, hung the child’s rags on the bushes around, and stuck a needle into the trees that grew over the spot. They passed the naked child through the gap between two tree trunks, the mother standing on one side and holding the child, and throwing it nine times to the old woman, who stood on the other side. They called on the demons and charged the fauns that lived in the forest of Rimite to take the child they called theirs, sick and weak, and bring back their own child, whom they had carried off with them, fat and plump, alive and well. After this they took the child (“matricide” in the printed text; see the notes) and laid it naked at the foot of a tree, on the straw of a cradle. They lit two candles of a thumb’s measure, one at either end, with fire they had carried there, and fixed them in a log laid over the child. They went away and stayed away until the candles had burned out, so far that they could neither hear nor see the crying child. So the burning candles burned very many children to death, as we found out in some cases there. One woman also told me that after she had called on the fauns and was going away, she saw a wolf come out of the forest and go toward her child, and that if she had not run back out of a mother’s pity, the wolf, or the devil in the wolf’s shape, would have eaten it, she said. If they came back and found the child alive, they carried it to the nearby fast-flowing river called the Chalarone and dipped it in the water nine times; and and a child that came through had a very tough constitution (literally “very hard insides”), if it escaped and did not die then or soon after.
We went to the place, called the people of the land together and preached against this. We had the dead dog dug up and the grove cut down, and the bones of the dog burned together with it, and we had the lords of the land post an edict about the plundering and ransoming of anyone who in future gathered at the place for such a cause.
Notes
Stephen of Bourbon, a Dominican from Belleville-sur-Saône who died around 1261, wrote this in a treatise on preaching, as an example for sermons against superstition; the Introduction to Lecoy’s edition says he held the office of inquisitor by papal mandate. The text does not say when the events happened, only that the practice was “nuper” (recent). In “cum eo ossa dicti canis” the pronoun “eo” is masculine and cannot be the dog, whose bones are named in the same phrase, so we read it as the grove (“lucum”); the sentence has the bones burned together with the grove. “Spoliacione et redempcione” is rendered “plundering and ransoming”; the Latin does not say who plunders or what is taken. Stephen writes “we” for the visit and the burning (“accessimus”, “fecimus”); the edict is attributed to the lords of the land.
The text gives no place beyond “Novile” and “Vilario”. Lecoy’s footnote says Villars-en-Dombes; Échard’s 1719 printing glosses Novile as possibly Villeneuve in the Dombes. In our translation “de Vilario” is rendered “of Villars”, following those editors’ reading, and “Novile” is left as printed. “Sambucas” is rendered “elder trees”; the Latin word also means a musical instrument, but the sense here (things worshipped for health) is of trees. The meaning of “formicarios” as “anthills” is the usual one and the plain reading. “Matricide” in “accipiebant matricide puerum” is printed that way on p. 327 (the reading is certain; the meaning is not). It may stand for the mothers (“matres”), which is how the sentence has to run, but we could not confirm that against the manuscript, so the translation leaves the word in quotation marks. “Qui valde dura viscera habebat si evadebat nec tunc vel cito post moreretur” keeps the “if”: the hard insides are a condition, and Stephen does not say who judged them. “Ad mensuram pollicis” is rendered “a thumb’s measure” (it may mean an inch). “In utroque capite” is read as one candle at either end (of the log or the child; the Latin does not say which); it could also mean each candle lit at both ends. “Pro eo de quo debuit reportare bonum” is read as “for the very thing from which it ought to have had good”, the deed; the pronoun could also mean the child (“for him from whom”). In “suum, quem secum detulerant” the subject of “detulerant” is taken to be the fauns, who have carried the real child off, as the changeling belief has it; the Latin does not name them again. “Fecimus” governs the edict as well as the exhumation and the cutting: Stephen has the lords post it. Nobody in the dog story speaks: the nurse and the mother cry out, and the knight draws his sword.
The passage was printed in Quétif and Échard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, vol. 1 (Paris, 1719), p. 193, before Lecoy’s edition. The scan used here is the Internet Archive copy anecdoteshistori185step; the page images for pp. 325 to 328 are leaves n384 to n387, and the Latin above was read from them, not from the OCR.