Saint-Jean-du-Doigt, la relique et le feu

Saint-Jean-du-Doigt

The village bears the name of what it keeps: a phalanx of the right index finger of Saint John the Baptist. Albert Le Grand, who gives the account of it in 1637, has the finger escape the pyre ordered in 363 by the emperor Julian, then return from the Holy Land to Normandy, from where a young man of Plougasnou is said to have stolen it around 1420 or 1437 to bring it here; on its arrival, the legend says, the candles lit by themselves and the bell rang of its own accord. The relic made the fortune of the place: the church, begun in the 15th century, was finished and consecrated in 1513, the triumphal gate reworked in 1584 by Jean Le Taillanter, and the ossuaries date from the 15th century and from 1618. Tradition holds that Anne of Brittany, ill in the eyes, came in 1505 to have the finger applied to her eyelid and paid for the completion of the works; historians observe that the chronicler Alain Bouchart, her contemporary, says nothing of it, and that the visit is not established. The devotion, on the other hand, is well attested: people wash their eyes at the fountain, then have their eyelid touched with the relic. At the centre of the enclosure, the fountain of 1691, the work of the sculptor Jacques Lespaignol, sets three basins one above another around a baptism of Christ; an older fountain existed from 1520.

Wikipédia — Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Jean-du-Doigt ↗

Getting there : By the D 46 from Morlaix, towards Plougasnou and then Saint-Jean-du-Doigt; parking in the village, the enclosure is a few steps away. The church and the fountain, in the middle of the enclosure, are freely accessible during the day. The great pardon is held on the last Sunday of June, with the tantad, a bonfire of moorland faggots to which every household in the commune brings its share.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound