Above : Picture of St. Patrick

The Irish missionaries were wholly absorbed by the great mission which they had undertaken, and in the execution of it they took but little thought of their own welfare. They wandered about from place to place, sometimes through trackless solitudes, always trusting that God would provide for their support. King Clothaire the Second, while hunting the wild boar in the forest of Sequania, met one of them, St. Deicola, and asked him what were his means of livelihood, and how his brethren fared in such a wilderness as that. “It is written, said Deicola, ” that they who fear God shall want for nothing. We are poor, it is true, but we love and serve the Lord, and that is of more value than exeat riches.” Special hostelries had to be founded for their support in many parts of the Frankish realm by the charity of their fellow-countrymen. In one of the capitularies of Charles the Bald drawn up after the Council of Meaux, in 845, there is mention made of the hostelries of the Scots, which holy men of that nation built and endowed with the gifts acquired by their sanctity.

It is to be remembered that the Irish monks had been trained in a hard and severe school, where it was the rule that the members of the community were to support themselves by the labour of their own hands. Mendicant orders whose members were dependent chiefly on the offerings of the faithful for subsistence did not exist in Ireland at this time, and were not introduced until many centuries later. The stronger brothers in the early monasteries devoted themselves mainly to manual labour, and all the brethren, including even the scribes and artists, were required to work in the fields. Thus everything that the little community needed was produced by themselves, and it became self-supporting. The companions of St. Colum­banus by their incessant labour transformed one of the wildest and most deserted regions in France into fertile cornfields and vineyards. St. Fiacre and his fellow monks changed the portion of La Brieu, near Meux, from a wild forest into a smiling garden. The biographer of St. Remi tells us how he received certain pilgrims from Ireland and settled them in suitable places near the Marne,
where they might visit and help one another. ” They did not,” he says, ” live only on the charity of those to whom pious Eemi had commended them, but also on their own industry and the labour of their hands, in accordance with the custom of the religious bodies in Ireland. This life, united to wonderful holiness and constant prayer, won for them a great love among the natives of the country.”

The Irish missionaries usually travelled in groups as it would have been dangerous in that age of violence to journey alone. The group consisted generally of a dozen individuals and their chief, who was to be the Abbot of the future settlement. They set sail first for Great Britain, and then passing through that country, re-em­barked at some Kentish port for the Continent. In Europe they travelled for the most part on foot, and according to the rules of certain orders of monks could not travel in any other way, as these rules permitted only an Abbot to use a carriage of any kind. They were clad in coarse woollen garments, worn over a white tunic, their hair was tonsured from ear to ear across the front of the head and long flowing locks hung behind; they carried long staves, and bore at their sides leather water bottles and wallets in which they kept their food, writing tablets and manuscripts. They appeared thus amidst the Franks and Allemani, speaking to them with fiery eloquence, at first through an interpreter, and afterwards in the language of the country which they acquired.Wherever they settled down they erected little wooden huts and a church within a large enclosure. They supported life by cultivation of the land and fishing and asked for nothing for themselves but a space where they might found their settlement and, at times, a little food. They laboured all day to teach and civilise and sought to influence the people who surrounded them by precept and example. They won the people by their gentleness, earnestness and humility, and both Franks and Romans joined them, so that eventually similar colonies were formed far and near from the first settlement as a starting point.

The Irish missionaries were wholly absorbed by the great mission which they had undertaken, and in the execution of it they took but little thought of their own welfare. They wandered about from place to place, sometimes through trackless solitudes, always trusting that God would provide for their support. King Clothaire the Second, while hunting the wild boar in the forest of Sequania, met one of them, St. Deicola, and asked him what were his means of livelihood, and how his brethren fared in such a wilderness as that. “It is written, said Deicola, ” that they who fear God shall want for nothing. We are poor, it is true, but we love and serve the Lord, and that is of more value than exeat riches.” Special hostelries had to be founded for their support in many parts of the Frankish realm by the charity of their fellow-countrymen. In one of the capitularies of Charles the Bald drawn up after the Council of Meaux, in 845, there is mention made of the hostelries of the Scots, which holy men of that nation built and endowed with the gifts acquired by their sanctity.

Below : St. Columbanus Picture

It is to be remembered that the Irish monks had been trained in a hard and severe school, where it was the rule that the members of the community were to support themselves by the labour of their own hands. Mendicant orders whose members were dependent chiefly on the offerings of the faithful for subsistence did not exist in Ireland at this time, and were not introduced until many centuries later. The stronger brothers in the early monasteries devoted themselves mainly to manual labour, and all the brethren, including even the scribes and artists, were required to work in the fields. Thus everything that the little community needed was produced by themselves, and it became self-supporting. The companions of St. Colum­banus by their incessant labour transformed one of the wildest and most deserted regions in France into fertile cornfields and vineyards. St. Fiacre and his fellow monks changed the portion of La Brieu, near Meux, from a wild forest into a smiling garden. The biographer of St. Remi tells us how he received certain pilgrims from Ireland and settled them in suitable places near the Marne,
where they might visit and help one another. ” They did not,” he says, ” live only on the charity of those to whom pious Eemi had commended them, but also on their own industry and the labour of their hands, in accordance with the custom of the religious bodies in Ireland. This life, united to wonderful holiness and constant prayer, won for them a great love among the natives of the country.”

The Irish missionaries usually travelled in groups as it would have been dangerous in that age of violence to journey alone. The group consisted generally of a dozen individuals and their chief, who was to be the Abbot of the future settlement. They set sail first for Great Britain, and then passing through that country, re-em­barked at some Kentish port for the Continent. In Europe they travelled for the most part on foot, and according to the rules of certain orders of monks could not travel in any other way, as these rules permitted only an Abbot to use a carriage of any kind. They were clad in coarse woollen garments, worn over a white tunic, their hair was tonsured from ear to ear across the front of the head and long flowing locks hung behind; they carried long staves, and bore at their sides leather water bottles and wallets in which they kept their food, writing tablets and manuscripts. They appeared thus amidst the Franks and Allemani, speaking to them with fiery eloquence, at first through an interpreter, and afterwards in the language of the country which they acquired.Wherever they settled down they erected little wooden huts and a church within a large enclosure. They supported life by cultivation of the land and fishing and asked for nothing for themselves but a space where they might found their settlement and, at times, a little food. They laboured all day to teach and civilise and sought to influence the people who surrounded them by precept and example. They won the people by their gentleness, earnestness and humility, and both Franks and Romans joined them, so that eventually similar colonies were formed far and near from the first settlement as a starting point.

They were men whose whole mind was devoted to the great work in which they were engaged, to the exclusion of all thoughts of their own personal iiiteresfs. When King Segebert offered gifts to Columbanus, the Saint replied:—” We are followers of Christ, who has plainly said, ‘ Whosoever will be my disciple, let him deny himself, fake up the Cross and follow me.’ The things which are in your power to bestow do not attract us, for in these things there is nothing to satisfy the heart of myself and my companions. Wre seek not comforts, nor to dwell in fertile lands, nor to gratify the flesh. We seek for solitude and some secluded place wherein to live in penitence and devotion.” They took no thought of the dangers which they might encounter in travelling to foreign and hostile peoples. A story is told in King Alfred’s Chronicle of three Iris!) missionaries who were washed on the shores of Cornwall. “They came,” writes Alfred, “in a boat without oars from Hibernia, whence they had stolen away, because for the love of God they would be on pilgrimage— they cared not where. The boat in which they fared was wrought of three hides and a half, and they took with them enough meat for seven nights.” An old French chronicle tells of the arrival about the year 589 of two Irishmen named Caidoc and Fricor with twelve companions at the little town of Qucntonvic, at the mouth of the Somme, and how they followed the great Roman road into the country, preaching the gospel on their way. They arrived at Centule (now St. Riquier) and, as the chronicler puts it, “fought on, perceiving that the inhabitants were blinded by error and iniquity, and were subjected to the most cruel slavery; they laboured with all their strength to redeem their souls and wash them in their Saviour’s blood.” The people could not understand the language of these missionaries, and rebelled against their teaching. They asked angrily what these adventurers, who had just escaped out of a barbarous island, were in search of, and by what right they sought to impose their laws on them. Violence would have been used towards the missionaries, were it not that a young noble named Riquier interfered in their favour. He took the strangers under his protection, and entertained them at his house. He learned from them to love God above all things, and was filled with sorrow for his past life which he had spent as an unfruitful servant. He resigned all the splendour of his high rank, cut the long locks which were a symbol of his nobility, and became a servant of God. Henceforth his life was one of prayer and mortification, and when he had taken orders he became the founder of the celebrated Abbey of St. Riquier, where Caidoc and Fricor were buried, and where two Latin epitaphs written by St. Angilbert commemorate their virtues and the land of their nativity.

Below : Abbey of Church St. Riquier