. Saint Judoc developed a local
cultus. Built in the eighth century at the place where Judoc's
shrine was kept, the
Abbey of Saint-Josse was a small
monastery situated on the site of his retreat. In 903, some monks of the abbey fled
Norman raiders for England, where they bore Judoc's relics, which were enshrined in the newly built
New Minster in
Winchester. became popular names for both men and women, and a number of chapels and churches were dedicated to him. The
mal Saint-Josse was the term for an illness resulting from a snakebite, against which the saint's name was invoked by the fifteenth-century French poet
Eustache Deschamps in an
imprecatory ballade: "...Du mau saint Leu, de l'esvertin, Du saint Josse et saint Matelin... soit maistre Mahieu confondus!". According to
Alban Butler,
Charlemagne gave the abbey to
Alcuin who turned it into a hostel for those crossing the
English Channel. It later became a site of pilgrimage, especially popular with
Flemings and Germans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
La vie de Saint Josse was written in
Old French verses by the poet and translator Pierre de Beauvais in the thirteenth century. The
Suaire de St-Josse, or "Shroud of Saint Judoc," is a rich, silk
samite saddlecloth that was woven in northeastern
Iran prior to 961. When Saint Judoc was reinterred in 1134, the shroud was used to wrap his bones. The
Louvre Museum currently houses his shroud. The
abbey was closed in 1772, and subsequently sold and dismantled in 1789, leaving no traces of the buildings. The abbey church then became the parish church of the
French commune of
Saint-Josse. In the village church (dedicated to St. Peter) is the shrine of Saint Josse, containing his relics. ==Cultural depictions==