Martyr Helier the Hermit of Jersey

Saint Helier of Jersey, Romard and Anquetil

In this series of British saints that I am doing, it is common to see anchorites and monks from the island venture to the continent to convert their kin and countrymen. For example: it is common to see Welsh and Cornish hermits like Malo, Tudwal, Samson and Tysilio venture to Brittany to convert the Bretons. It is also common to see English monastics like Willibrord, Boniface, Leoba and Wihtberht cross the English Channel to witness among the Old Saxons and Frisians. It’s quite a bit rarer to see that missionary journey go the other way.

And yet that is what we see with Saint Helier of Jersey, commemorated on the sixteenth of July in the Orthodox Church. Saint Helier, a continental Saxon by birth, was converted to Christianity by a Breton hermit, and sailed into the English Channel from the continental side to Jersey, where he lived as a hermit himself and converted the native population there.

Helier [also Elier, Hélyi or Hellerius] was born to heathen German parents in what is now Tongeren. His name, which may originally have been Heilbert or some derivation thereof, derives from the Germanic root hailaz, which means ‘healthy’, ‘whole’ or ‘to heal’. His mother, a Swabian woman named Liutgarda, apparently went into complications during labour, leading his Saxon father Sigibert to call for a Frankish cleric (traditionally Kunibert of Köln, though there are some obvious chronological problems with this) to assist in the childbirth with his prayers. The cleric agreed, on the condition that the parents hand their child over to be consecrated to God as Holy Prophet Samuel was. Sigibert, anxious for the lives of Liutgarda and his unborn son, hastily agreed.

Thanks to the cleric’s prayers, Liutgarda lived and her son was born healthy, in thanks of which she and Sigibert gave him his name. However, when the time came to hand him over to the cleric, Liutgarda refused. Only when Helier was seven years old and he fell deathly ill with a sickness that only the cleric could cure, did his parents agree to hand him over to them. The Frankish cleric taught young Helier the Gospel and the lives of the saints; and apparently Helier was such an eager young pupil that it disturbed his heathen parents, who had the cleric put to death.

Then next we hear of Saint Helier, he had become a pupil of Saint Markulf [or Marcouf] at his Nanteuil Abbey in the Cherbourg Peninsula (very near where the Allied troops landed on D-Day, in fact). He was baptised by Abbot Markulf himself, and tonsured. He worked two notable wonders among his fellow monks at the abbey there. He cured the eyes of a brother who had fallen blind, and he removed a venomous asp from the bed of one of his sleeping brothers without it biting him. He was also known for certain ascetic extremities – one of his practices was to dig two holes for his feet and fill them with hard stones and freezing water, surround himself with sharpened stakes to keep from falling, and stand in the holes for hours reciting the Psalms. After studying with Abbot Markulf for several years, and his spiritual father seeing that his desire for an eremitical life was sincere, Abbot Markulf sent him to an island off the coast of Cherbourg – to wit, Jersey.

Jersey, at that time settled by a mix of Gauls and Bretons, had been left struggling, poor and sparsely-populated by repeat attacks by Teutonic invaders from the sea – probably Saxons. They had no one to heal their sick or wounded, or to preach the Gospel to them. It was for this purpose that Saint Markulf sent Helier, together with a companion named Romard, to the island. Though the islanders had prepared a hut for them, Helier instead took up a lonely dwelling on a bare outcrop of rock – appropriately called Hermitage Rock – and lived there in solitary prayer for thirteen years. Romard regularly travelled to and from Hermitage Rock by way of a sandbar that would appear at low tide.

Helier earned the trust of the Jèrriais in several ways. From his perch atop Hermitage Rock, he was the first to be able to see the ships of any would-be invaders, and he would signal the villagers to flee and hide. In this way he saved their lives and spoilt the bloodthirsty sport of the raiders. To this day, dark clouds seen from the horizon at Hermitage Rock are called ‘les vailes dé St. Hélyi’ – ‘the sails of Saint Helier’. He also healed a Jersey man named Anquetil of his lameness. And on another occasion, at the approach of oncoming ships belonging to Saxon pirates, by the sign of the Cross he raised a storm that blew the invaders off-course away from the island.

The raiders returned, however, in the summer of 555. Helier made no attempt to hide from them. Indeed, he was weak in body from his ascetic practices and his extremities of fasting – then but skin and bone loosely strung together. Instead of trying to run, he preached to them in their own tongue the Gospel of Christ, and tried to persuade them to leave the people of Jersey be. The chief of the Saxon pirates, who beheld Helier’s radiance and heard his eloquence, was afraid of him, and ordered that his head be cut off with an axe. Thus Saint Helier was martyred. (The coat-of-arms of Saint-Hélier in Jersey still features a pair of crossed axes.) However, the body of Saint Helier picked up his head and walked toward the sea with it. The Saxon pirates, terrified at this omen, turned tail and fled to their ships.

As it turned out, a gale blew up as the Saxons were leaving and wrecked all their ships on a reef, leaving none of them alive. The villagers mourned the passing of their beloved hermit. When Romard went to Hermitage Rock and saw there Helier with his head literally in his hands, he took up the martyr’s relics and set them adrift on a raft to sea, which washed ashore at Bréville-sur-Mer in Manche. A local farmer found the raft and the body, and he took them both to the village church and graveyard, where the priest rang the bell and bade all the men come to help bury him. Four men bore up the saint’s body, and found it so light they hardly felt it. As soon as they crossed the threshold of the church, however, the body became as heavy as lead, causing the men to stumble and drop him. He was buried next to the threshold, but the next day a fountain of purest water gushed up from where he had been buried. This well’s water was found to have wondrous healing properties, and especially good for those suffering from blindness or lameness. The well at the church of Bréville-sur-Mer is still there today.

As for the island of Jersey, Saint Markulf founded an abbey there in his martyred pupil’s honour, which flourished in later days. This abbey was visited by Saint Samson of Dol. The monastery was razed by another group of invaders – the Normans – in the 900s. The site would later be revived and rededicated by the Catholic Augustinian Order beginning in 1125.

Saint Helier’s parentage and origins may have been Teutonic; however, he witnessed among Gauls and Bretons and belongs very firmly to the Celtic – namely Welsh and Breton – tradition of ascetic eremeticism. Certainly he was treated as such by the later Welsh and Breton saints who visited Jersey. As such, much like Saint Gwenffrewi [Winefride] or Saint Gwen [Wite], his cultus forms a bridge between the disparate peoples and cultures he represents. Venerable Helier, healer, hermit and martyr, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Hermitage Rock, Jersey