Graoully

The Graoully is the dragon of Metz in Lorraine, said to have infested the city's Roman amphitheater until Saint Clement, the first bishop, bound it with his stole and drove it into the river.

The Story

When Saint Clement, traditionally the first bishop of Metz, arrived in the city, he found it plagued by snakes. The worst of them, the Graoully, lived in the ruins of the Roman amphitheater with a brood of serpents, and its breath sickened the people. Clement entered the amphitheater, made the sign of the cross, and tied his stole around the dragon's neck. He led it out of the city and ordered it into the river (the Seille in most versions), where it vanished. The grateful people converted to Christianity.

Versions differ. Some say the dragon drowned; in some pictures Clement spears it instead. Dates for Clement himself are uncertain: legend makes him a disciple of Saint Peter in the 1st century, while historians place the real first bishop of Metz around the 3rd or 4th century.

Appearance and Powers

The written legend says little about its looks. The surviving effigies give it a long neck, gaping jaws, and a coiled tail. It stands for the pagan city, its serpents for the old gods that the saint drives out.

Origins and Sources

Like the Tarasque and the Gargouille, the Graoully is known as much from ritual as from text. The oldest version of Saint Clement's legend, from the late 10th century, tells of serpents whose venomous breath poisoned the air; the single great dragon appears later. A dragon effigy was carried in Metz's Rogation and Saint Mark's Day processions from the Middle Ages, and the 16th-century writer François Rabelais mentions it in his Fourth Book of Pantagruel. An old effigy hangs in the cathedral crypt. The historian Jacques Le Goff used processional dragons like this one to study how medieval clergy and ordinary people read the same symbol differently. The origin of the name is uncertain; it is probably Germanic, related to dialect words such as graulich, "frightening," in the German-speaking Moselle.

Legacy

The Graoully is a symbol of Metz to this day. It appeared on the badge of the local football club, FC Metz, until 2021, and it appears in street names, souvenirs, and festivals. See Western dragons.

Related

• Tarasque: The Tarasque is a river dragon of Provençal legend, a monstrous hybrid said to be the offspring of Leviathan, which Saint Martha tamed at Tarascon on the Rhône and which the town still parades in its festival.
• Gargouille: The Gargouille is the dragon of Rouen in Norman legend, subdued by the 7th-century bishop Saint Romain with the help of a condemned prisoner, whose pardon became the city's annual Privilege of Saint Romain.
• Dragon of Silene: The Dragon of Silene is the lake-dwelling, plague-breathing dragon killed by Saint George in medieval legend after he rescued a princess offered to it, the best-known version appearing in the Golden Legend around 1260.
• Western Dragons
• Dragon Legends

Sources and Further Reading

• Jacques Le Goff, "Ecclesiastical Culture and Folklore in the Middle Ages: Saint Marcellus of Paris and the Dragon," in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (University of Chicago Press, 1980)
• Paul Sébillot, Le Folk-lore de France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1904-1907)

Cite this entry: “Graoully,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/graoully.