Meanwhile, in southwest France
As the Tour de France enters its third and final week, here's a new batch of saints related to the riders' route.
Louis of Toulouse
The 11th stage concluded in Toulouse, home to the relics of Thomas Aquinas, arguably the most influential saint, as well as a certain prince Louis, who was canonized for quite a bit less. At 24, he became a bishop for six months, resigned, and promptly died.
About the Pyrenees
I haven’t found any saints stories along the 12th stage’s Pyrenean route as interesting as this explanation of the mountain range’s name: once upon a time, when the land was flat, Hercules sought to marry a girl there by the name of Pyrene. Her father refused, so the girl ran away, but before Hercules could catch up with her she was eaten by a wildcat. When he found her, he buried her remains, covered the grave with stones, and the stones became the fabled mountains.
Mariam Baouardy
The 13th stage started and finished in Pau, where Mariam Baouardy entered the monastery 150 years ago. Getting there required rejecting — in fact, surviving — two marriage proposals. The first came at the of 13, from her uncle’s wife’s brother. When she refused, her uncle beat her severely. As she was recovering, a servant at the house tried to woo her himself. When she turned him down, he slashed her throat and dumped her body in an alley, presuming her dead. Mariam was rescued and nursed back to health by an unnamed nun in blue; unsurprisingly, she thereafter vowed to remain a virgin.
Our Lady of Lourdes
Sick pilgrims to Lourdes are healed by the waters of Our Lady of Lourdes’s shrine, where Mary once appeared to speak with a 14-year-old named Bernadette Soubirous. (“The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust,” Bernadette said. “When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again.”) There is a replica of the shrine on an island in Canada, another in Cleveland, and thousands more in the form of little garden statues.