ST. FIACRE 



pen, and the device of Christ on their hearts. Illumina- 

 tion, one of the marvels of monkish accomplishment, 

 was spread throughout Europe by bands of Irish monks, 

 who, taking the wonderful traditions of such work as 

 " The Book of Kells," and those works written and 

 illuminated at Lindisfarne, went their ways from country 

 to country spreading their culture as well as their 

 message. 



Saint Fiacre stayed a certain time in the monastery 

 until, indeed, the voice within him calling for more 

 solitude and for another mode of life, forced him to 

 go to the Bishop. To him he spoke of his vocation, 

 of those feelings within him that prompted him to 

 become a hermit. 



The good Bishop seeing in Fiacre a good intention, 

 and perceiving doubtless the holy nature of the monk, 

 granted him a space on his own domain, some way 

 from the monastery, on the edge of the woods and the 

 plain of Brie. To this place the monk repaired and 

 began the great work of his life. 



Now it is not easy for the best of men at the best of 

 times to live solitary in a wood without becoming 

 something of a self-conscious or morbid person. Not 

 so with these old hermits. They seemed to have the 

 grace of such excessive spirituality as to have been 

 uplifted above ordinary men, and to have lost all sense 

 of loneliness in conversation with the Saints, and in 

 communion with God. 



What finer means of reaching this exalted condition 

 than by labouring to make a garden in the wilderness ? 

 Saint Fiacre cleared a space in the woods with his own 

 hands, and in this space he built an oratory to Our 

 Lady, and a hut by it wherein he dwelt. All must 

 have been of the most primitive order ; one of those 

 beehive shaped buildings, such as still remain in Ireland, 



89 n 



