His shrewd legal mind was of service to the poor in other ways than in the giving of advice. A story is told of how two rogues brought a heavy chest to a widow, declaring it to contain twelve hundred pieces of gold and asking her to take charge of it. Some weeks later one of them returned, claimed the box, and removed it. A few days later the second of the men arrived and asked for the box, and when the poor woman could not produce it he took her to court and sued her for the gold it had contained. Yves, on hearing that the case was going against the woman, offered to defend her, and pleaded that his client was ready to restore the gold, but only to both the men who 353 had committed it to her charge, and that therefore both must appear to claim it. This was a blow to the rogues, who attempted to escape, and, failing to do so, at length confessed that they had plotted to extort money from the widow, the chest containing nothing but pieces of old iron.
Yves was so eloquent and earnest a preacher that he was continually receiving requests to attend other churches, which he never refused. On the Good Friday before his death he preached in seven different parishes. He died at the age of fifty, and was buried at Tréguier. Duke John V, who founded the Chapelle du Duc, had a special regard for Yves, and erected a magnificent tomb to his memory, which was for three centuries the object of veneration in Brittany.
During the French Revolution the reliquary of St Yves was destroyed, but his bones were preserved and have been re-enshrined at Tréguier. His last will and testament—leaving all his goods to the poor—is preserved, together with his breviary, in the sacristy of the church at Minihy.
The Saint is generally represented with a cat as his symbol—typifying the lawyer’s watchful character—but this hardly seems a fitting emblem for such a beautiful character as St Yves.
St Budoc of Dol
The legend of St Budoc of Dol presents several peculiar features. It was first recited by professional minstrels, then “passed into the sanctuary, and was read in prose in cathedral and church choirs as a narrative of facts,” although it seems curious that it could have been held to be other than fiction.
A Count of Goelc, in Brittany, sought in marriage Azénor, “tall as a palm, bright as a star,” but they had not been wedded a year when Azénor’s father married again, and his new wife, jealous of her stepdaughter, hated her and determined to ruin her. Accordingly she set to work to implant suspicion as to Azénor’s purity in the minds of her father and husband, and the Count shut his wife up in a tower and forbade her to speak to anyone. Here all the poor Countess could do was to pray to her patron saint, the Holy Bridget of Ireland.
Her stepmother, however, was not content with the evil she had already wrought, and would not rest until she had brought about Azénor’s death. She continued her calumnies, and at length the Count assembled all his barons and his court to judge his wife. The unfortunate and innocent Countess was brought into the hall for trial, and, seated on a little stool in the midst of the floor, the charges were read to her and she was called upon to give her reply. With tears she protested her innocence, but in spite of the fact that no proof could be brought against her she was sent in disgrace to her father in Brest. He in turn sat in judgment upon her, and condemned her to death, the sentence being that she should be placed in a barrel and cast into the sea, “to be carried where the winds and tides listed.” We are told that the barrel floated five months, “tossing up and down”—during which time Azénor was supplied with food by an angel, who passed it to her through the bung-hole.
During these five months, the legend continues, the poor Countess became a mother, the angel and St Bridget watching over her. As soon as the child was born his mother made the sign of the Cross upon him, 355 made him kiss a crucifix, and patiently waited the coming of an opportunity to have him baptized. The child began to speak while in the cask. At last the barrel rolled ashore at Youghal Harbour, in the county of Cork. An Irish peasant, thinking he had found a barrel of wine, was proceeding to tap it with a gimlet when he heard a voice from within say: “Do not injure the cask.” Greatly astonished, the man demanded who was inside, and the voice replied: “I am a child desiring baptism. Go at once to the abbot of the monastery to which this land belongs, and bid him come and baptize me.” The Irishman ran to the abbot with the message, but he not unnaturally declined to believe the story, till, with a true Hibernian touch, the peasant asked him if it were likely that he would have told ‘his reverence’ anything about his find had there been “anything better than a baby” in the barrel! Accordingly the abbot hastened to the shore, opened the cask, and freed the long-suffering Countess of Goelc and her son, the latter of whom he christened by the name of Budoc, and took under his care.