Valerie of Limoges - Dating and Hagiography

Dating and Hagiography

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.