Valerie of Limoges

Saint Valerie of Limoges
Close-up of altar relief: St Valerie presents her own head to her confessor, St Martial. Limoges.
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church
Major shrine	Church of St Michel des Lions, Limoges
Feast	December 9

St Valerie of Limoges (also Valeria of Limoges) is a legendary Christian martyr and cephalophore, associated with the Roman period, whose cult was very important in Limousin, France, in the medieval period. She has been an important subject for Christian art since the middle ages and for porcelain figurines over several centuries.

The incident most insistently retold about St Valerie is that she was beheaded for her faith and then carried her own head to set before her bishop, Saint Martial, who had converted her. This firmly sets her in the Roman period, although Saint Martial himself has notoriously been moved by hagiographers among the first three centuries.

On the other hand, Valerie's legend is also retold with a Duke Stephen of Guyenne (Aquitaine) as her antagonist and executioner. According to this version, she was pressured to marry Duke Stephen, who was a pagan. For her refusal, he had her beheaded. This moves her into the medieval period, though precisely how it squares with her being a Christian in a pagan environment is unclear. Obviously the duke's name is Christian. There are neither recorded dukes of Aquitaine with that name nor any pagan dukes of Aquitaine.

Although she was considered the first martyr of Aquitaine, it is probably best to see Valerie as a legendary figure whose cult has nourished a certain amount of narrative elaboration, attracting narrative elements of varied, sometimes inconsistent, origins.

The most obvious parallels to the legendary figure of St. Valerie are those that manifest the distinctive trait of cephalophory. France is fairly rich in these, including most notably the capital's patron saint, Denis. The severed head that goes on preaching is a powerful assertion of autonomy, or perhaps theonomy in the face of persecution, with the bishop Denis continuing his work of prophecy and preaching. In St Valerie's case, the severed head is returned to where it belongs, the deceased person's bishop, pastor and confessor. In both cases there is a continuity in the relationship to the Church beyond death.