Saint Guinefort

The tradition & historical record

Saint Guinefort (modern French pronunciation: [ɡinfɔʁ]) was a legendary 13th-century French greyhound that received local veneration as a folk saint. ¹

Guinefort's story is a variation on the well-travelled "dog defends master's child against animal assailant" motif, as indexed in the international classification system as B524ff, similar to the Welsh story of the dog Gelert. In one of the earliest versions of the story, described by the Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon in 1250, Guinefort the greyhound belonged to a Lord who lived in a castle near Lyon. One day, the unnamed Lord and Lady of the castle left their infant son home alone, sleeping in his cradle. When the nurse returned to the house, she found the nursery in chaos – the cradle spattered with blood and Guinefort sat beside it with bloody jaws. Her screams drew first the Lady of the house and then the Lord. He, believing Guinefort to have devoured his son, slew the dog with his sword. Only then did the family approach to find their son sleeping in his cradle, safe and sound, along with the body of a snake killed by dog bites. Guinefort had killed the snake and saved the child. On realizing the mistake the family dropped the dog down a well, covered it with stones and planted trees around it, setting up a shrine for Guinefort. Upon learning of the dog's martyrdom, the local peasants venerated the dog as a saint and visited his shrine when they were in need, especially mothers with sick children. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Saint Guinefort”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Saint Guinefort is legendary figure, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²