There's a story few people know about Saint-Tropez.
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There's a story few people know about Saint-Tropez.
You know the name. You know the beaches, the port, the boats jostling in July. You might even know about the Bravade, that strange festival every May where the people of Saint-Tropez fire rifles into the air in the alleyways.
But do you know where the name Saint-Tropez comes from?
Sit down. I'll explain.
It's the year 68 AD. In Pisa, Tuscany, there's a man named Caius Silvius Torpetius. A brilliant officer, Emperor Nero's personal steward, head of his guard. A trusted, respected, established man.
Except Torpetius has a problem. He has converted to Christianity. Converted by Paul himself, it is said, whose guard he had been during his captivity in Rome.
One day, Nero organizes a grand ceremony in honor of the goddess Diana. He asks Torpetius to sing a hymn in her glory.
Torpetius refuses.
Nero, not exactly known for his patience, flies into a rage. He has him scourged. The lions and leopards unleashed on him lie down at his feet. The column he's tied to breaks and kills his own executioner.
Finally, he is beheaded. On April 29th, 68 AD.
But the story doesn't end there. And that's where it gets interesting.
Nero wants the body to disappear. So that no Christian can retrieve it, turn it into a relic, a symbol. He orders Torpetius's decapitated body to be placed in an old rotten boat. With him: a rooster and a dog, tasked with devouring what remains. The boat is abandoned on the Arno, left to the currents.
That's the idea. A drifting boat, a disappearing body, a story erased.
Except the sea decided otherwise.
For twenty days, the boat follows the Ligurian current along the coast. The rooster and the dog hadn't touched the body. And on the morning of May 17th, 68 AD, the vessel gently enters a calm gulf, on a coast that the Romans then called Heraclea.
An old woman named Celerine was waiting on the beach. The day before, she had had a vision of this boat in a dream.
She collects the intact body. The Christians hide it, bury it, build a chapel for it. And the place takes the name of the martyr. Torpes. Sant-Tropez. Saint-Tropez.
But what happened to the rooster and the dog?
The rooster flew off. It headed inland with a sprig of flax in its beak, and landed on what would become a village. This village is still called Cogolin today. Which means, in Provençal: "little rooster."
The dog, for its part, went to the back of the gulf. It settled where the village of Grimaud stands today. Grimaud, which means "old dog."
Three villages born from the same boat.
Saint-Tropez, Cogolin, Grimaud. Three names pronounced every summer without knowing that they share the same origin, the same night on the Arno, the same Ligurian current that decided everything almost two thousand years ago.
Next time you pass the "Cogolin" sign on the national road, think of the rooster.
And if you see an old dog hanging around Grimaud square, say hello for me.
