Hermit Life and the Deer Episode
According to the hagiographic tradition, Giles spent many years in a wooded wilderness near Nîmes, where a doe or red deer served as his sole companion and, in some accounts, sustained him with her milk. When a royal hunting party pursued the deer to his hidden refuge, an arrow shot at the animal struck Giles instead. The wound, by various accounts, permanently disabled him. The saint declined to be healed, embracing the suffering as a gift. This episode became the origin of his patronage of those with physical disabilities, beggars, and the lame.
The king — identified in the legend variously as Wamba or as a Frankish ruler — was moved by the encounter and offered to build Giles a monastery in the valley. Giles accepted, founding what became the abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in Languedoc and placing it under the Benedictine rule.