¹ Saint Fiacre the Confessor, a man of admirable life, was sprung of most noble parentage in the parts of Ireland; but freed from the care of his kinsfolk and unencumbered by the turmoil of the world, desiring to lead a solitary life, he left his parents and his country, and, the Lord guiding him, came into the parts of France. At that time Saint Faro, having left the soldiership of the world, held the bishopric of Meaux; him Saint Fiacre sought out with his companions for the sake of hospitality. The most pious Faro received him gladly, and, that he might be able to discover the bent of his mind, granted that he should remain with him as long as he wished. And seeing his simple and devout face, he said: “I pray you, dearest one, that you make known to me your origin and your country, and the secret intent of your mind — where you are bound, and by what name you are called. If afterwards I can offer you fitting counsel, with God as witness I will gladly give it.” To him Saint Fiacre answered: “Most reverend Father, Ireland, the island of the Scots, gave origin to me and to my parents; and because I long to lead a solitary life, I have fled and left my country and my parents, and I seek any place fitting for hermits; but by name I am called Fiacre. Now therefore I earnestly beg your gracious fatherhood, that if you know of any wooded place in these parts where I may give myself to holy prayers, you will not delay to grant it me.”

² Hearing these things, the blessed Faro, made glad, said to him: “I have indeed, not far from here, a certain wood of my own, which the inhabitants call Breuil, which I believe suitable enough for the pursuit of a solitary life. If you desire to see it, let us go there.” When it had been shown him, the bishop said: “Dearest brother, this place belongs to me by hereditary right; and if it please you to dwell in this place, as much of it as shall be needful for you I devoutly offer, and cheerfully grant.” At these words blessed Fiacre, at once falling at his feet, and returning thanks for the benefit conferred upon him with abundant tears, said: “Most blessed Father, at sight alone this place delights me exceedingly. For it is enough, and wholly removed from all concourse of men.”

³ The saints having parted from one another, the man of God Fiacre, the wood being torn up, built a monastery in honour of the Blessed Mary; and increasing day by day in virtues, and grown austere towards himself, he subjected himself the more closely to Christ’s service; and what he daily withheld from his famished body, he mercifully bestowed upon pilgrims and the poor. If any, deprived of the strength of their arms, or made speechless, or shrivelled by dryness of sinew, or harassed by the assault of the evil spirit, or hindered by sickness of the whole body, came to him or were brought, by the mere laying on of his hand they were restored through God’s help to their former soundness. The fame of his holiness therefore spread abroad on every side, and many came to him; and that he might have with which to relieve the needs of those arriving, and relieve the want of the poor from the labours of his hands, it seemed to him that a larger and more spacious place would be useful and necessary for making a garden, for planting vegetables and various kinds of other herbs.

⁴ And although the blessed Faro had formerly granted him as much of his wood as suited his needs, yet the humble hermit presumed not to enlarge the place and make a garden without the bishop’s licence. He approached the bishop, therefore, and begged him that it might be permitted him to take up around his house as much ground for a garden as he could enclose in a circuit by digging with his own hand in one day. The bishop, kind to all, and hoping that the garden might supply them with herbs which the works of their hands did not afford, granted him his will. Then the saint, bowing his head and giving thanks, returned to his place; and having made his prayer, he drew his staff along the ground, and at the touch of the staff the earth gaped open, and the wood fell down on this side and on that. Meanwhile a certain woman came by, who, seeing the yawning of the earth and amazed at the strangeness of the thing, made all haste to report it to the bishop, asserting that the hermit was a sorcerer, no worshipper of God, but a magician and an enchanter. Returning, therefore, the woman presumed to heap insults, revilings, and blasphemies upon the holy man, and by the bishop’s authority ordered him to cease from the work begun, and announced that the bishop himself would come. The holy man, ceasing from the work begun, sat down angry and sorrowful upon a rock. And see, the hardest rock, softened at the divine nod — that it might be the better suited for the holy man’s sitting — yielded a hollow place beneath him. That same rock is kept in the monastery of this saint to this day, and the place of his sitting is shown, by whose touch the weak and sick have been restored to health.

⁵ The bishop, therefore, seeing the stone hollowed out contrary to nature, and that the earth had gaped at the touch of the staff, and the wood had fallen on this side and on that, and that deep ditches had been made in a moment, loved the hermit the more fervently afterwards, and clung to him the more closely. The man of God, provoked to anger by the woman, prayed that God, the Lord of vengeances, would so avenge the wrong done Him that every woman entering his monastery should incur a bodily infirmity. After that, a certain woman, rich and noble, desiring to see what would happen to a woman who should enter the same monastery, thrust her handmaid into it; and the mistress lost an eye, while the handmaid remained unharmed. Another woman set one foot within the monastery, which foot at once swelled, and the swelling mounting took hold of the shin, the knee, and the leg.

⁶ Blessed Fiacre, then, shone in his lifetime with signs and virtues; and at his tomb the limbs of the languishing, in whatever sickness they are weighed down, are now restored to health. He passed to the heavenly joys on the fifteenth day before the kalends of September, and flourished about the year of our Lord six hundred and twenty-two.

Other miracles of his from Surius, which are not found in Capgrave #

¹ Among which it happened that a certain man of Montécheroux, who had two little sons long afflicted with sickness, set them at last upon his beast to bring them to blessed Fiacre, one before him and one behind, while he himself sat between. And when, having begun the journey, he had come to the bridge which is called the Rapid Bridge, his beast stumbled and fell into the river, with father and sons crying out: “Saint Fiacre, come to our aid!” And while the onlookers awaited the outcome of the matter, suddenly the father emerged, and the sons. The water, moreover, deep as the height of two men, offered itself as a footing to the father, who, catching his sons in his right hand and his left, brought them back to land without difficulty, declaring that Saint Fiacre had stood by him. And that it might be the more manifest, just as they were delivered from the peril, so in that very moment they were freed also from the sickness under which, as was said, they had long laboured.

² Four boys bathing at Noyen in the river called the Sarthe were accidentally drowned, and sought by the fishermen from the sixth hour until sunset but not found; at last Saint Fiacre was invoked by the mother of two of them — whom Saint Fiacre had formerly delivered from drowning and from sickness — and begged by her to show by a like deed how much he could do with God. After the woman’s prayer, the boys at once emerged alive, saying that they had been bound by four demons but were now loosed through Saint Fiacre.

³ A certain man of the territory of Amiens, having a polyp like an egg upon his nose, hissing like a goose and appearing a monster to all, came to the monastery of the man of God, and praying there fell asleep, and rising at once found himself healed.

⁴ Seven pilgrims coming from Saint-Denis, when they were not far from the monastery of Saint Fiacre, four of them said: “Let us go to Saint Fiacre.” But the other three said: “We have no sores, we have no need to go to him; he has no pilgrims save the sore-ridden.” Nevertheless, as the four went on to the saint, the same three, mocking them, kept crying: “Go, you scurvy ones, to the physician of the scurvy!” Without delay they were struck blind, and with open eyes saw nothing. Repenting, therefore, they cried after their four companions who were hastening to the man of God. But they, thinking that they mocked them as before, took no heed of them. At length, when they had visited Saint Fiacre and returned, they found those same three companions blind, wandering through the fields. Knowing their fault, they brought them to Saint Fiacre, and imploring the saint’s mercy together with them, obtained that sight should be restored to them. So great are the miracles worked daily by the merits of the blessed Confessor in various places, that it is not within our power to write of them singly.

From the Bordeaux Breviary #

¹ The blessed Fiacre, from the parts of Ireland, having left his country in the territory of Meaux, living under the protection of blessed Faro, flourished with innumerable virtues, etc. See also the Breviary of Auxerre, where his life is drawn out at length in several Lessons. See also the ancient tablet at the church of Saint Mathurin of the Trinitarians at Paris, hung on the wall in the chapel of the same saint, on which is read this very Sequence which follows, marked also in Jodocus Clichtoveus in his Elucidarium Ecclesiasticum.

Sequence of Saint Fiacre the Confessor, taken from his ecclesiastical office #

¹ By the mirror of a new lamp
Ireland is illuminated,
The isle of Meaux gleams bright
With the presence of so great a light.
The one sent forth Fiacre,
The other holds the sent one’s radiance;
They share a common joy —
The one the father, the other the son.
Sighing for the solitary life,
He went forth from his country;
At Meaux he found Faro,
To whom he opened his desire:
Him in a solitary place
He lodges on his own soil;
He becomes like John,
A dweller in the barren desert.
While he marks out the place with his staff,
By a new miracle the wood
Is cast down, as if felled;
It is ringed with mould, not with a trench.
So the holy man’s merit
Enlarges the compass of the place;
The thing becomes known to the woman; Protesting, as at a crime,
She condemns the work as sorcery,
And slanders it as magic’s art.
Brought before the bishop,
Weary, he sat upon the stone:
The stone yields, yet is not yielded;
A seat is sculpted in the rock.
O the wickedness of woman —
Harder than the rock was she!
He prays that no woman enter the bounds
Of that place — none remains exempt.
This is the reason why women
Are kept from his threshold.
Here is a refuge for the wretched,
A refreshment for the sick,
A hospice for pilgrims,
Hope for the fallen, joy for the sorrowing.
He narrowed his life by fasting,
By brief sleep, by the hair-shirt;
But though he hid in secret places,
To the world he grew more famed:
He shines with titles of virtues,
He heals blind eyes,
Polypus, fig, and stones,
Fevers and every ill:
Whoever trusts in Fiacre,
No corruption shall harm;
Whose devotion is holy
Is purged of every vice. Amen.