The church in Gillaumé is home to a 16th-century polychrome stone statue of Saint Barbara, 133 cm high, which has been listed as a historic monument since 1965. It was renovated in 2006. Saint Barbara is said to have lived in Bithynia (in north-western Anatolia) in the middle of the third century AD, during the reign of Emperor Maximian. His father, Dioscorus, was a wealthy pagan official of Phoenician origin. One day, her father decided to marry Saint Barbara to a man of his choice; she refused and decided to consecrate herself to Christ. To punish her, her father locked her in a tower with two windows, but a Christian priest, disguised as a doctor, broke into the tower and baptised her. On her father's return from a trip, Barbe told him that she had cut a third window in the wall of the tower to represent the Holy Trinity and that she was a Christian. Her father was furious and set fire to the tower. Barbe managed to escape, but a shepherd discovered her hiding place and warned her father. Her father dragged her before the Roman governor of the province, who condemned her to the ordeal. As the young girl refused to recant her faith, the governor ordered the father to cut off his daughter's head himself. She was tortured first: parts of her body were burnt and her breasts torn off, but she still refused to recant her faith. Dioscorus beheaded her, but was immediately punished by heaven. He died struck by lightning. When the Christians came to ask for the body of the young martyr, they did not want to use her Persian first name and could not reveal themselves by using her Christian baptismal name, so they could only refer to her as "the young barbarian woman", hence the name Saint Barbara that was given to her.
Eglise Saint-Martin de Gillaumé
