Fountain St Patrocle in Colombier

In addition to the church, the devotion with Patrocle saint is centered on the fountain. This water, always fresh, is famous to have therapeutic virtues. The legend reports that this one lacking water when it built the monastery, it launched a hammer of such force that it fell down to nearly 300 meters by creating the source. Others call the place “the hammer of Thor”. However, it is Sucellus, the Gallic god, who would have been placed best: “Sucellus, god with the mallet and the cauldron, guard of fruitfulness, it makes spout out the woodland sources by striking the ground of its mass. It was compared to Sylvain or Vulcan. One represents it in the shape of an old man or a man of ripe age, vêtu with Gallic of a tunic with hood, braies and boots, and carrying a mallet and sometimes a cauldron, often accompanied by a dog. It is often accompanied by the Nantosvelta goddess. Contrary to the other Gallic gods, who have their equivalent in Ireland and in Wales, one finds it only in Gaule. ”
The source is famous for the cure of the skin diseases and so that the girls to be married find a partner. It is enough for celà that they soak twice their foot right in the last basin. A procession with the fountain takes place last Sunday of July. The pélerinage with Saint Patrocle, survival probable of a Gallic worship, ceased only in 1970.

Born in the area from Bourges, Patrocle intruisit very quickly in sciences, the letters crowned and profane. The bishop of Bourges ordered it deacon at the twenty-five years age, then archdeacon. One regarded it as one of the most cultivated holiest men and of his time.
Become the tutor of wire of Clodomir, king of Frank, it had been able to live at the court, to be one of the advisers of the kingdom. The honors did not try it, a sumptuous existence was not appropriate for its character. The secular clergy appeared to him even too much attached to the wordly goods. It had the burning desire to be devoted only to God and it was withdrawn in loneliness, there to live, request, meditate. Caption of Patrocle Saint

It stopped in Neris where it built a house, an oratory and a school. The cures which it operated were worth him the reputation of holiness. Seeking loneliness, it left with its spade and its axe to two edges, and settled as a hermit with That, in the forest. Ten years later, it set out again for Colombier where it melted a monastery. The monastery was sold to the priory of Souvigny to XIème century.

We thus have there a saint carrying the francisque one, or the expensive hammer with the Scandinavian gods, a miraculous source, i.e. mud-laden water, the hermitage in the forest, the hind partner of the saint… Here are many ingredients leaving paraitre a bottom of druidism. When with the shape of the fountain itself, with its three basins, round, rectangular square and, us y plunged here. The waves of form of the basins make the remainder.
One can see, in the first basin of round form, the water which bubbles.

the place was christianized, but of very beautiful trees still surround this miraculous fountain which flows in the field downwards.

With the Saint-Patrocle fountain, christianization of an old pagan worship, probably with Dispater, L one thus finds the remainders preserved well of collectings Gallo-Roman of the source.

The collecting of the source is a Gallic well of beams, as in Voingt.