Saint Thecla (Tygre) of Maurienne

Tygre or Thecla Tygre ou Thècle Virgin from Valloires, known for having brought back the relics of Saint John the Baptist from Alexandria. , as she is commonly called, was born in Va lloires, Valloires Birthplace of Saint Thecla. a parish in the diocese of Maurienne, at the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th. She came from a family illustrious for its nobility and the great wealth it possessed; but she distinguished herself even more by the radiance of her holiness. One virtue shone in her above all others: it was charity towards the poor; it extended to all the needy who appealed to her; nevertheless, the foreign pilgrims who passed through Valloires were the object of her most eager care.

The passage of the Galibier, which connects Valloires to the Briançonnais, was, at that time, one of the main routes of communication between France and Italy. Pious travelers from the western regions of Europe arrived via the Roman road of Mont-du-Chat and headed, via Mont-Genèvre, towards Rome or one of the ports of Italy. Thecla welcomed them into her home, provided for their needs, and lavished the most delicate attentions upon them. To her, they were not strangers, but brothers, according to the word of the Savior; and she thanked Providence for having given her the means to exercise towards them the duties of Christian hospitality. When to the quality of pilgrims they added the dignity of priests, her ingenious charity knew no bounds; there was nothing she would not do to honor and serve Jesus Christ in the person of his ministers. The greatest joy they could give her was to choose her dwelling to rest for a few days from the fatigues of the journey.

Thecla had a sister named Pigmenia. The latter had first been bound in the ties of marriage; but she was restored to freedom by the death of her husband Pigménie Sister of Saint Thecla, a widow who joined her in her religious life. and retired to her sister, to place herself under her direction and help her in her good works.

One day, some Scottish monks asked the two sisters for hospitality: they were returning from the Holy Land and going back to their homeland by crossing Italy and France. Thecla and Pigmenia received them with their customary eagerness. They spent three days with them, and, as they recounted the main details of their journey, God allowed the conversation to turn to the miracles that occurred every day near the relics of Saint John the Baptist and to the var ious translations t saint Jean-Baptiste Biblical figure cited in comparison for his early sanctification. hat had been made of them.

These accounts made a deep impression on Thecla: she felt pressed by an ardent desire to go and visit Alexandria and to procure for her country some portion of the relics of which she was told such wonders. It was God who inspired this thought in her; our Saint did not doubt it. Thus, as soon as the monks had left, she made her travel preparations, entrusted the care of her affairs to her sister, strongly recommended the poor and the pilgrims to her, and, accompanied by a servant, she took the road to Italy. She stopped for a few days in Rome to visit the tombs of the holy Apostles; then, having met travelers who were preparing to cross to the Orient, she joined them and they set sail for Egypt.

A happy voyage brought Thecla to Alexandria. Scarcely had she disembarked, her first care was to go to the church of Saint Joh Alexandrie Place of refuge and study during the persecution. n the Baptist to prostrate herself at the foot of the tomb where the relics of the holy Precursor were enclosed. But how to determine the inhabitants of the city to part, in favor of an unknown and unsupported foreigner, with a portion of the treasure that so many manifestations of divine power made even dearer to them? Thecla foresaw many obstacles from men. Nevertheless, strong in that sovereign confidence which disposes of the heart of God, she vowed not to return to Maurienne before having seen her pious design realized. She first addressed those who had custody of the relics; but they mocked her. This setback, which would have discouraged a less strongly tempered soul, only increased the ardor of her desires and the liveliness of her confidence: having nothing to expect from men, she turned all her hopes toward Him who said: "Everything you ask for with faith, you will receive." Each day, she went to the church and prayed to the Lord not to allow her to have made such a painful journey without having been heard; she showed Him the purity of her intentions and reminded Him with tears of His promises repeated on every page of the Holy Scriptures.

Two years passed in this way. The extraordinary macerations she had imposed upon herself had exhausted her strength and nothing indicated that her vows would be granted: God and men seemed equally deaf to her prayers. Thecla still hoped against all hope. At the beginning of the third year, she resolved to do violence to heaven.

One day she went to the church, prostrated herself face to the ground before the tomb, and, all in tears, protested to God that she would take no food and would not rise until He had granted her the grace she had been asking for so long. Six days passed; the Saint felt her strength failing her and she rejoiced in it; for she would rather that God call her to Him than return to her homeland, deprived of the only treasure she coveted and which she had come so far to seek.

But, oh the power of prayer! On the seventh day, Thecla saw three fingers on the tomb; God ha trois doigts Biblical figure cited in comparison for his early sanctification. d drawn from it the middle finger, the ring finger, and a part of the thumb of the right hand of Saint John the Baptist, blessed fingers that touched the Savior of the world when He willed to receive in the Jordan the baptism of penance. At that same instant, the Lord made known to the Saint that she had been heard; her strength returned to her, she rose, placed the gift that God had given her, amidst a few other relics, in a reliquary prepared for this purpose, and, having rendered thanks to God and to Saint John the Baptist, she returned to her lodging. Her preparations for departure were soon completed; she left the city and headed toward the port to cross back into Europe.

However, God willed to put her faith to a new test. The inhabitants of Alexandria did not take long to notice the disappearance of the three fingers of Saint John the Baptist. Doubtless, learning of Thecla's departure and knowing the vow she had made, they had hastened to open the tomb and were able to convince themselves that, despite their mockery, she had truly fulfilled her vow. Then, instead of recognizing the work of God in such an extraordinary event, they began to reproach one another for what they called their negligence. And they ran in pursuit of her.

Thecla had already traveled several miles when she saw those who were pursuing her arriving. To flee was impossible; she did not even think of it. The thought of losing the object of all her ambition, the fruit of so many hardships and such fervent prayers, filled her at first with deep sorrow. But as soon as she felt her trust in God reborn more vividly than ever. "Lord," she cried out in the bitterness of her soul, "would you then change my joy into sadness, and must I lose the gift that you have given me and that I was so happy to carry to my homeland?" She took the holy relics from the box and hid them on her breast. At that same instant, they disappeared: God, who had drawn them from a stone tomb by His merciful power, enclosed them in the breast of His servant as in a tomb of flesh.

Thecla was soon overtaken by the inhabitants of Alexandria, who ordered her with threats to return the relics she had taken from them. "Alas!" she replied, heaving a deep sigh, "I have lost the object of my hope; my happiness has dissipated in my tears. God had given them to me, but my sins have made me unworthy of them." They opened her reliquary, stripped her of her clothes which they searched, and rummaged even through her hair. Confused by the uselessness of their search, they finally left our Saint and turned back. When they had moved away, Thecla found with joy and gratitude the holy relics in the place where she had put them. God preserved the rest of her journey from any accident, and she arrived happily in Maurienne.

The origin of the city of Saint-Jean is lost in the most remote antiquity. Nothing is known of the time of its foundation, nor of the vicissitudes of its history until the 6th century of our era, at which time it bore the name of Maurienne. In this city, Thecla deposited the fruit of her laborious pilgrimage. She thought that, in these times of trouble and war, the holy relics would be safer in a city, which was probably already fortified, than in her native village, isolated at the summit of the mountains. Moreover, placed in the center of the province, pilgrimages would be easier and more numerous, the wonders that would occur there would have a greater resonance, and Saint John the Baptist would become the patron and protector of the entire Maurienne. Thecla had resolved to build a church worthy of him whom the Savior proclaimed the greatest of the children of men, and the work was already advancing rapidly, when God sent her zeal a providential help. The news of the arrival of the relics of Saint John the Baptist and the numerous miracles by which the Lord did not cease to manifest the power of the glorious Precursor, had not been long in spreading to all the neighboring regions; it reached the holy King Gontran, who wished to take charge of the construction of the church himse lf, and shortly a saint roi Gontran King of Burgundy who welcomed Columbanus upon his arrival in Gaul. fter, made the city of Maurienne the seat of a new bishopric.

However, T hecla, Thècle Virgin from Valloires, known for having brought back the relics of Saint John the Baptist from Alexandria. disgusted with the world and desirous of enjoying the sweetness of the eremitic life of which she had undoubtedly heard much during her stay in the Orient, had retired above the city to a place called Rocheray. The d evotion Rocheray Site of the hermitage of Saint Thecla above Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. of the people subsequently gave it the name of the Saint. Her sister Pigmenia had joined her with twelve widows who wished to place themselves under her direction. Thecla had willingly acceded to their request. Having found a deep cave, hollowed out by nature in the flanks of the mountain, she had a dwelling added to it, the remains of which can still be seen today. Her ordinary abode was a small room, situated above the dwelling of her companions, where she could more easily satisfy her love of prayer and silence.

Thecla had a singular enemy to combat. The oaks that surround the hermitage, sometimes hidden in the folds of the mountain, sometimes proudly raising their leafy tops upon the rocks, were populated by sparrows whose piercing cries came to distract her in her meditations. One day, she prayed to God to deliver her from her noisy neighbors. Her prayer was barely finished when the sparrows arrived, fluttering around her in greater numbers and chirping even louder than usual. It was as if it were a challenge. Thecla ordered them, in the name of Jesus Christ, to depart. Immediately, the poor little birds fled, and since then, none were ever seen in that place again. And, in fact, even today, sparrows do not go to Sainte-Thècle, although the surroundings of the seminary and the entire valley are swarming with them.

It is not known how much longer Thecla lived from the moment she retired to the hermitage of Rocheray.

God finally made it known to her that her last hour was not far off. At this news, her heart thrilled with joy, because she was about to enter the house of her Lord. Nevertheless, she expressed to Him the desire to see once more on earth the feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist and the dedication of the church that she had begun and that Saint Gontran had completed. She wanted, before dying, to say farewell to all that she had loved in this world. The 24th of June, Thecla was able, for the last time, to attend the holy mass, after which she distributed all that she had to the poor, the widows, and the orphans. She then disposed of the goods she possessed. The poor, as one might well think, were her first heirs. She founded a house where twelve widows were to be lodged and maintained for the duration of their lives. The church of the city, which we may henceforth call Saint- Jean de Maurienne, coul Saint-Jean de Maurienne Central town where the relics were deposited and seat of the bishopric. d not be forgotten in her liberality; she gave it her property of Valloires and submitted to its jurisdiction the rectory of that parish, as well as everything that was under her power in that locality. The following day, the Saint received the visit of her friends: they came to ask her forgiveness for the offenses of which they might have been guilty towards her and to commend themselves to her prayers. She said farewell to them with the joy of a prisoner who, after a long captivity, sees the doors of her prison open and shakes the hand of her fellow captives one last time. Then, having received the sacraments of the dying, she fell asleep gently in the Lord.

## CULT AND RELICS.

When arriving in Saint-Jean by the road from Italy, the first thing one notices is the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle, which dominates the city like a citadel. Follow the path to the right of the sanctuary that climbs through the last vineyards. Do you see that high wall set into a ravine whose slopes it joins, and that large white cross that a pious hand has just planted on the rock like a blessed sign?

It is the hermitage of Saint Thecla and her companions.

It is divided into two floors. The lower part is a space now without an entrance, which receives light through four openings. This floor formed, according to the Bollandists, the common dwelling of Saint Thecla, her sister Pigmenia, and the twelve widows.

The upper floor has long been without a roof; one enters through a low tuff portal. At the back, in the rock that serves as a boundary on this side by sinking into the mountain, opens a cave wider than it is long. In the courtyard or on the rock itself, for the passage of the Bollandists, which gives us these details, is not very clear, was located the cell where Saint Thecla liked to withdraw to attend with more freedom to prayer. It seems, however, according to the same authors, that the cave was part of this cell and served as an oratory for the Saint; for they say at once that she was buried in her cell and in the underground chapel, next to the high altar.

The chapel of Saint Thecla possessed, in the 13th century, considerable income, the fruits of the pious generosity of the faithful. Everything disappeared into the revolutionary abyss, and the chapel today possesses only a worthless strip of rocks and forest.

It itself had fallen into the most deplorable state. A few worm-eaten planks as a vault; a small wooden altar, poor and degraded; a grille also made of wood in front: such were still, in the month of May 1858, the only ornaments of this cave which recalls such precious memories to the Maurienne. Since then, the vault placed by the hand of God has been cleared of its woodwork; an iron grille closes the cave, the back of which is decorated by a white marble altar, as simple as the virtue of the virgin of Valloires. The retaining wall of the courtyard still awaits a pious and intelligent hand to raise it from its ruins and finish the restoration work begun by the Chevalier Anselme, former councilor at the Court of Appeal of Chambéry, who donated the altar and the grille.

What became of the body of the Saint in the course of the centuries? Did it remain in the underground chapel, or, transported to the cathedral, did it disappear in the disasters of the 8th, 10th, and 15th centuries? All that is certain is that the cathedral preserved until the French Revolution one of the arms of the Saint, enclosed in a magnificent reliquary. This distinguished relic shared the honors rendered by the devotion of the faithful to the venerated fingers of Saint John the Baptist. Twelve centuries had passed since this hand had brought to the Maurienne the blessed fingers that showed the Jews the Savior promised to their fathers. God had shielded it from the profanations of the Saracens; He did not permit it to escape the philosophical barbarity of the end of the 18th century.

In the month of December 1793, the Directory of the Mont-Blanc department sent citizen Cherrillon to the Maurienne, with the mission of removing the sacred vessels and other precious objects used for divine worship. On the 21st (1st Nivôse, Year II), the representative of the Convention, accompanied by the mayor of the city, Dominique Favier, and followed by some fanatics, entered the cathedral; crosses, reliquaries, gold and silver chalices, all the riches accumulated by the piety of the centuries and kept in the sacristy and the treasury room, above the chapel of Saint Thecla, were removed and shipped to Chambéry. The holy oil was spilled on the ground, the relics trampled underfoot and thrown into the street. The fingers of Saint John the Baptist were saved by the mayor of the city who hid them at his home and returned them in 1864 to the cathedral.

Saint Thecla had a chapel in the cathedral. It is today what is called the old sacristy. During the disasters of the flood of 1439, which submerged the city and did so much harm to the cathedral, it appears that the chapel of Saint Thecla alone escaped the ravages of the devastating torrent. What remains of it today, with the exception of the ogives that decorate its vault, seems to belong, according to M. de Caumont (History of Medieval Religious Architecture), to the period running from the 5th to the 11th century. This chapel having been transformed into a sacristy at the end of the 10th century, an altar was then raised to our Saint in one of the most visible places of the church, between the main nave and the choir. This altar subsisted until the Revolution.

At Valloires, a small chapel is dedicated to Saint Thecla. The nobles of Rapin had it built in their fief of La Chaudane, before the beginning of the 18th century. It was ruined during the Terror; but in 1817, M. J.-B. Grange made a bequest to the commune for its reconstruction and founded an annual procession and mass there on the day of the Saint's feast. Various obstacles delayed the complete execution of his wishes, and the blessing of the new chapel could only take place on July 28, 1846.

At another extremity of the diocese, the parish of Le Bourget-en-l'Huile has, since time immemorial, chosen Saint Thecla as its titular patron: the minutes of the pastoral visit of 1571, the oldest we have, already give this parish the name of Sainte-Thècle du Bourget.

We do not know at what time the feast of Saint Thecla was instituted and fixed for June 25, the anniversary of her birth into heaven, as the Church admirably says. The great manuscript Breviary, written, it seems, between the 13th and 14th centuries, for the use of the Chapter, contains the legend of Saint Thecla and her entire office. Cardinal Louis de Gorrevoé, having a Breviary printed in 1512 specifically intended for his diocese of Maurienne, placed the office of this Saint there on June 25 with eight proper lessons. However, until the Revolution, the feast of Saint Thecla, under the double rite, was peculiar to the city of Saint-Jean and the parish of Valloires. This is, at least, what we see in several calendars of the 18th century. Since the restoration of the cult, one was content to make a commemoration of the Saint, until 1849, when Bishop Viber established her feast and extended it to the whole diocese. The office, with the proper lessons, was approved by His Holiness Pope Pius IX. Furthermore, at the solicitation of the pious restorer of the chapel of Saint Thecla, the same Pontiff, by his brief of Se Pie IX Pope who canonized Josaphat in 1867. ptember 7, 1858, granted to those who visit the cave a plenary indulgence on the day of the Saint's feast, and an indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines on the other days of the year.

Taken from the Hagiological History of the Diocese of Maurienne, by Abbé Trochet, parish priest of Saint-Jean d'Arves.