Sending My Love

“The most unusual martyr of the Middle Ages was a dog. This was St. Guinefort, a greyhound that had been wrongly killed by its owner on suspicion of taking the life of a baby, when in fact it had bravely protected the child. The site where the dog was buried, at a castle north of Lyons, quickly became a shrine: “the country people, seeing the dog’s noble deed and how it was killed although innocent, visited the place and honoured the dog as a martyr, invoking its help in illness and need.” The outraged Dominican Stephen de Bourbon eventually had the dog’s bones dug up and burned. The essence of martyrdom, a brave and innocent death, here transcended the line between species, at least in the eyes of the local people.”