After a time Gilles's great renown reached Charlemagne, who wished to confess his sins to so holy a man, and sent an embassy to invite him to Paris. After consultation with his brethren he went there, and was received with the utmost veneration and magnificence. But the honour done to him caused him nothing but shame.
Charlemagne confessed all his sins but one, which he had not the courage to avow. Gilles pleaded with him for twenty days, but in vain. One Sunday, as he was going to celebrate the Mass at St. Croix he saw a demoniac chained to a pillar of the church. His prayers drove out the demon; all the bells in the city began to ring, and the king came with a great crowd to hear the Mass. During the celebration Gilles prayed that the king might be brought to confess the sin that it would cost him so much to acknowledge, and an angel appeared above the altar and deposited near the sacred Host a little letter which God Himself had sent His faithful servant. You can see the scene sculptured on a pillar in the cathedral of Chartres. The letter announced that the famous sin, of which we do not know the details, might be remitted to the king together with all other sins humbly confessed and secretly detested; also that the saint's own life would soon end and his reign in glory begin.
Gilles, refusing the king's rich presents, made the journey back to his monastery in great pain because of his still open wound, but in great joy, and learnt that during his absence his monks had behaved in all respects as he could have wished them. He resumed his customary life of prayer and meditation, but feeling that he would not for long continue to direct the affairs of his flourishing abbey, and that the favour of kings was fleeting, he determined to go to Rome to put his monastery under the protection of the Holy See.
The Pope received him with great honour and granted his request. He also showed his interest in the church that St. Gilles had built by giving him two doors of cypress wood, wonderfully carved. St. Gilles threw them into the Tiber, commanding the water to carry them to his church. He himself arrived at the moment when they stranded on the banks of the river, in perfect preservation, and was made happy by this still further proof of divine favour.
His work was now done, and he prepared himself for death. His monks stood around him, scarcely able to recite the sacred offices because of their sobs. Just before midnight he began to recall to them events in the life of the Saviour, and at the moment of death he had a vision of the glorious resurrection of Our Lord, and prayed St. Michael to conduct him to God. These were his last words; he made signs of blessing those who knelt around him, and two of them saw angels take the soul that issued from his lips, to carry it to Paradise.
Although the story which I have condensed speaks of Charlemagne, it was his grandfather, Charles Martel, in whose reign St. Gilles lived, and who gave him shelter when he fled from the Saracens who had attacked his monastery. But St. Gilles did die in peace in it in 721, and he had long before handed over the property to the Holy See, for the Pope's Bull taking it over in 685 is still extant.
The fine crypt, which fortunately still remains, was constructed in the eleventh century to receive the tomb of the saint, and its high altar consecrated by the Pope in 1095. The church above it was begun twenty years later, and its magnificence can be judged from the ruins of the choir, which stretch far to the east of the present building, as well as from the carving of the front which took over thirty years to complete. In 1562 the victorious Protestant troops murdered the priests and the choir boys and threw their bodies into the well that is still to be seen in the crypt. The church, says Mr. T. A. Cook, "was alternately desecrated by the reformers and used as a fortress by the churchmen." It was completely destroyed in 1622, the tomb of St. Gilles removed and the crypt filled with rubbish; "and the façade itself seems only to have been left standing in order that its carvings might the more openly be debased and mutilated." At the Revolution still further havoc was wrought, and it was not until seventy years later that the crypt was excavated and restored under the auspices of the Commission of "Monuments Historiques," who also restored as far as possible the façade.
Considering the vicissitudes it has gone through this splendid work retains a surprising effect. It stretches right across the front of the church, except for the two narrow towers on each flank, and is of a wonderful interest and richness. Another wonderful relic is the Vis de St. Gilles, the spiral stone staircase that stands among the ruins of the choir, and the tower. It is famous everywhere among architects for the delicacy and preciseness of its stone-cutting and vaulting.
Another thing to see in Saint-Gilles is the Maison-Romaine, a tall town house of the twelfth century which was restored at the same time as the church. It comes as something of a surprise to the inexpert, it looks so very modern—rather like the sort of house an advanced architect might build in Munich today. But its proportions are beautiful, and the quiet wall space contrasting with the decorations of the windows is very effective. Indeed, the advanced architect might do worse than copy such a model. After eight hundred years he could learn more of the twelfth century builder than he could teach him.