Avoye

Avoye (Avoye of Sicily, Auré) is, according to tradition, a martyr of the 3rd century, originally from Sicily, who is said to have died around 234 at Boulogne-⁠sur-⁠Mer in France. She is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church and commemorated on 6 May (according to some sources on 2 May). The record places her in the 9th century, but the sources place her in the 3rd. The account is legendary and closely tied to the legend of Saint Ursula.

The account says she was born in Sicily, daughter of the pagan Quintian and the Christian Gérasine, a native of the province of Britain, and had eight brothers and sisters. She prayed that her beauty be taken from her so that she might remain a virgin, and she became a hermit to avoid temptation and suitors. In the year of her death she went to Cornwall to help her aunt, Saint Ursula, at her wedding, but discovered that Ursula had consecrated herself to God and meant to remain a virgin. The two fled to Cologne, where Ursula and her companions were killed by a band of barbarians. Avoye was spared by a barbarian who wished to marry her; she refused and was imprisoned and deprived of food. She received weekly apparitions of the Virgin Mary, who brought her food "kneaded by the angels themselves". She was finally killed at Boulogne-⁠sur-⁠Mer. A variant makes her English, fleeing to Pluneret to become a hermit, escaping a Saxon whom her father wanted her to marry.

Her cult is found at the chapel of Sainte-⁠Avoye at Pluneret in the Morbihan, and at St. Ewe in Cornwall, a village named after her. At the chapel in Pluneret parents often bring toddlers and children with delays in speaking and walking so that they can be seated in the stone boat of Avoye and blessed; the boat is said to have carried Avoye across the ocean.