January 18 is the feast of Saint Dicuil (Deicola), a companion of Saint Columbanus and founder of the monastery of Lure. He is but one of the many Irish missionaries who laboured in Europe and is one of those mentioned in the article below taken from a Catholic newspaper of 1835. Sixty years later Saint Dicuil was also among those whose steps were retraced by scholar Margaret Stokes in her 1895 work Three Months in the Forests of France – A Pilgrimage in Search of Vestiges of the Irish Saints in France and her account of Saint Dicuil is available at the blog here:
IRISH MISSIONARIES.
From Moore’s Ireland.
In order to convey to the reader any adequate notion of the apostolical
labours of that crowd of learned missionaries whom Ireland sent forth,
in the course of this century, to all parts of Europe, it would be
necessary to transport him to the scenes of their respective missions;
to point out the difficulties they had to encounter, and the admirable
patience and courage with which they surmounted them; to show how
inestimable was the service they rendered, during that dark period, by
keeping the dying embers of learning awake, and how gratefully their
names are enshrined in the records of foreign lands, though but faintly,
if at all, remembered in their own. It was, indeed, then, as it has
been ever since, the peculiar fate of Ireland, that both in talent, and
the fame that honourably rewards it, her sons prospered far more
triumphantly abroad than at home; for while, of the many who confined
their labours to their native land, but few have left those remembrances
behind which constitute fame, those who carried the light of their
talent and zeal to other lands, not only found on a lasting name for
themselves, but made their country also a partaker of their renown,
winning for her that noble title of the Holy and Learned, which,
throughout the night that overhung all the rest of Europe, she so long
and proudly wore. Thus, the labours of the great missionary, St Columbanus, were, after his death, still vigorously carried on, both in
France and Italy by those disciples who had accompanied or joined him
from Ireland; and his favourite Gallus, to whom, in dying, he
bequeathed his pastoral staff, became the founder of an abbey in
Switzerland, which was in the thirteenth century erected into a
princedom, while the territory belonging to it has, through all
changes, borne the name of St. Gall. From his great assiduity in
promulgating the Gospel, and training up disciples capable of succeeding
him in the task, this pious Irishman, has been called, by a foreign
martyrologist, the Apostle of the Allemanian nation. Another disciple
and countryman of St. Columbanus, named Deicola, or in Irish Dichuill,
enjoyed like his master, the patronage and friendship of the monarch
Clotaire II., who endowed the monastic establishment formed by him at
Luthra, with considerable grants of land.
In various other parts of
France, similar memorials of Irish sanctity may be traced. At the celebrated
monastery of Centula, in Ponthied, was seen a tomb, engraved with
golden letters, telling that, there lay the remains of the venerable
priest, Caidoc, “to whom Ireland gave birth, and the Gallic land a
grave.” The site of the hermitage of St. Fiacre, another Irish Saint,
was deemed so consecrated a spot, that to go on a pilgrimage thither
was, to a late period, a frequent practice among the devout; and we are
told of the pious Anne of Austria, that when in 1641, she visited the
shrine of this saint, so great was the humility of her devotion, that
she went the whole of the way, from Monceau to the town of Fiacre, on
foot. Among the number of holy and eminent Irishmen who thus extended
their labours to France, must not be forgotten St. Fursa, who, after
preaching among the East Angles, and converting many from Paganism,
passed over into France; and, building a monastery at Lagny, near the
river Marne, remained there, spreading around him the blessings of
religious instruction, till his death.
In like manner,
through most of the other countries of Europe, we hear or the progress
of some of these adventurous spirits, and track the course of their
fertilizing footsteps through the wide waste of ignorance and paganism
which then prevailed. In Brabant, the brothers of St. Fursa, Ultan and Foillan,
founded an establishment which was long called the Monastery of the
Irish; and the elegant scholar, St. Livin, whom, by his own verses, we
trace to the tomb of St. Bavo, in Ghent, proceeded from thence, on a
spiritual mission, through Flanders and Brabant, prepared at every step
for that crown of martyrdom, which at length, from the hands of
Pagans, he suffered. With the same enterprising spirit we find St.
Fridolin, surnamed the Traveller, — a native it is supposed, of
Connaught, —exploring the Rhine for some uninhabited island, and at
length fixing himself upon Seckingen, where he founded a church, and a
religious house for females, which he lived to see prosper under his own
eyes. Next to the generous self-devotion of these holy adventurers,
thus traversing alone the land of the infidel and the stranger, the
feeling of gratitude with which after-ages have clung to their names,
forms one of the most pleasing topics of reflection which history
affords; and few if any of our Irish missionaries left behind them
more grateful recollection than, for centuries, consecrated every step
of the course of Fridolin the Traveller, through Lorraine, Alsace,
Germany, and Switzerland.
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