St. Germaine Cousin (c.1579-1601)
Feast day: June
15
Devotion to St. Germaine Cousin is almost entirely
limited to France, her homeland. And while she deserves to be
more widely known, her story, to be honest, is not an easy
one to tell.
Germaine was born to a peasant family in the
village of Pibrac near Toulouse. She came into the world with
a withered right arm and a disfiguring skin condition; later
she developed a form of tuberculosis that caused unsightly
swellings on her neck. Her father, Laurent Cousin, couldn't bear the sight of her. We don't know much about Marie
Laroche, Germaine's mother: the poor woman died soon after
her little girl was born.
Not long thereafter Laurent
remarried, choosing a woman who apparently did not know the
meaning of the word compassion. This stepmother would not let
Germaine eat with the family. She forbade Germaine to come
near her stepbrothers and stepsisters lest they become
infected by casual contact with her. She tossed a straw
pallet under the stairs and told Germaine she could sleep
there. If her stepmother were in an especially foul humor,
Germaine would be driven out of the house to spend the night
in the barn.
While she was still a girl, Germaine's father
put her to work tending the family's sheep. Alone in the
fields she kept up a constant conversation with God. She
began to go to Mass each morning, and prayed the rosary many
times over in the course of the day. Germaine's genuine piety
coupled with her meekness in the face of cruelty won over the
villagers of Pibrac who began to admire and show sympathy for
the poor girl. But Germaine's family remained as cold-hearted
as ever.
Then the people of the village began to tell strange
stories about Germaine. They noticed that in order to go to
Mass, Germaine had to leave her sheep unattended, yet the
sheep never wandered off, nor were they ever attacked by
wolves. Once, after a heavy rain, the stream that separated
Germaine's field from the church became a flood. Some
villagers said Germaine arrived at Mass on time by walking
across the surface of the water; others said the torrent
parted for her just as the Red Sea had parted for Moses.
Whether prompted by these reports of miracles or the pangs of
his own conscience, Laurent Cousin finally repented of
neglecting his daughter. He offered Germaine a real bed in
the house and place at the family's table. But she declined.
Years of abuse may have made her suspicious of these
unexpected acts of kindness, or perhaps she felt
self-conscious about joining a family that had never wanted
her.
Whatever her reasons, Germaine kept to her routine of
watching the sheep and sleeping under the stairs. One morning
she did not get up at her usual time. When Laurent went to
wake her he found Germaine dead on her pallet. She was 22
years old.
A fervent local cult grew around her tomb. Today
Pibrac welcomes an annual pilgrimage in honor of St.
Germaine. Visitors line up to enter the Cousin house and pray
at the crawlspace where the patron saint of abused children
lived and died.
Craughwell is the author of Saints
for Every Occasion (Stampley Enterprises, 2001) and
Patron Saints Catholic Cardlinks (Our Sunday Visitor,
2004).
Copyright 2005 Arlington Catholic Herald. All rights
reserved.