Erkembode of Thérouanne

A monk from Ireland, he entered the abbey of Sithiu, the future Saint-Bertin, became its abbot, then bishop of Thérouanne around 720. His diocese covered much of maritime Flanders, then little christianised and hard to cross between marsh and dune; he walked it for twenty years, until he lost the use of his legs and had to be carried. It is that detail, more than his office, that has outlived him. Pilgrims long laid their worn-out shoes on his sarcophagus; today it is parents whose children are slow to walk who leave a pair of small ones in the cathedral of Saint-Omer. The practice has not stopped: the slab is covered all year, and the shoes are of every age and every fashion.