The incident most insistently retold about Valerie is that she was beheaded for her faith and then carried her own head to set before her bishop, Martial, who had converted her.

[1] This firmly places her in the Roman period, although later hagiographers had Martial himself sent to Gaul by Peter rather than by Pope Fabian, according to earlier tradition.

In St Valerie's case, the severed head is returned to where it belongs, the deceased person's bishop, pastor and confessor.

An obvious source of parallels is the deuterocanonical book of Judith, in which we find a young woman pledging herself to virginity after seducing and decapitating a tyrannical enemy of the faith and presenting his head to her countrymen.

Here we find not only a beheading, but a problematic marriage (with suggestions of incest rather than exogamy), defiant denunciation of tyranny, a centrally important young woman and presentation of the head to a third party.

Nevertheless, the thematic parallel, was strong enough for the builders to back St Valerie's shrine in St. Michel des Lions with a fine stained glass window depicting John the Baptist.