The reading
How it began
Germaine dies at twenty-two, a stepmother’s burden, a catechism of children, a bag of bread that became flowers in the legend. In 1644, burying a parishioner, the gravedigger strikes her coffin. The body is whole, flexible, the air sweet. Crowds come. The Revolution hides her; she is returned. The shrine at Pibrac remains a village’s pride.
The day itself
Germaine Cousin died in 1601 at Pibrac, near Toulouse, about twenty-two years old, a shepherdess with scrofula, made to sleep in the stable by a stepmother, known in the village for walking to Mass and for teaching the children the catechism in the fields. In 1644 a gravedigger, opening the floor of the church for another burial, broke into her coffin. Witnesses described a young body, flexible, in the poor clothes she had been buried in. The parish began a cult at once. During the Revolution the body was hidden and damaged; what returned to the shrine was no longer the untouched girl of 1644. The church at Pibrac still has her, and the diocese of Toulouse has kept the pilgrimage. Pius IX canonized her on 29 June 1867. The flower legend — a stepmother finding roses in the apron in midwinter — is the same story Lucca tells of Zita, and it should be marked as legend. The 1644 opening is the part with names and a grave.
Reading
How to read St. Germaine Cousin
The Church’s incorruptibles include a girl nobody wanted at table. That is not an accident of chemistry. It is the Magnificat, in a French barn.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Church-approved
Canonized 1867 by Pius IX. Relics at Pibrac, with diocesan cult from the seventeenth century.
Sources
- Shrine of St. Germaine, Pibrac
- Process of canonization, 1867
For the classroom
St. Germaine Cousin (Died 1601; found intact 1644, Pibrac, near Toulouse). Grade in this encyclopedia: Church-approved. A shepherd girl, scrofulous, neglected, sleeping in the barn. Forty-three years after her death, a workman opens the church floor and finds her intact, a young body in a poor dress. She is the Zita of the fields.
