St Helier

Helier is one of the most dramatically legendary of the early Celtic saints. Born in what is now Belgium, he renounced his wealthy family and made his way to Jersey, where a hermit named Marculf directed him to a rock exposed at low tide in what is now St Aubin's Bay. There he lived alone for years, visited by Marculf by boat, and drew enough local following to trouble the Saxon pirates who raided the island.

The manner of his death became the centre of his legend: he was beheaded by Saxon raiders around 555 AD, and the tradition holds that he then walked headless back across the tidal causeway carrying his own head — a cephalophoric miracle of the kind recorded for Saint Denis in Paris and a handful of other early martyrs — before collapsing and dying. His body was discovered by Marculf, who had been warned in a vision.

Jersey's capital bears his name, and the tidal rock where he lived — now accessible from the seafront — is still known as the Hermitage Rock. A small chapel stands there, maintained by the local Catholic diocese.