Saint Fiacre

Catholic Saint

st.Fiacre-Irish miracle-worker and healer who established a cult in France

Feast Day : September 1

Patronage: cab and taxi drivers; all drivers; gardeners; against hemorrhoids; against syphilis

Also known as: Fiachra, Fiaker, Fiacrius, Fevre

Fiacre is not mentioned in the earlier Irish calendars. He was born in Ireland and became a hermit at Kilfiachra. In 630, desiring greater solitude, he went to France and settled at Meaux. St. Faro, bishop of that city, gave him land in a forest that was his own patrimony called Breuil, in the province of Brie. According to legend, Faro offered him as much land as he could turn up in a day. Instead of driving his furrow with a plough, Fiacre turned the top of the soil with the point of his staff. He cleared the ground of trees and briers, made himself a cell, cultivated a garden, built an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and made a hospice for travelers, which developed into the village of Saint-Fiacre in Seine-et-Marne. He is said to have built the first hostel for Irish pilgrims on the Continent, and used the produce of his vegetable garden to feed them. Fiacre’s generosity and cheerful disposition attracted many people, who sought him out for advice, alms and especially healing, for he had the miraculous touch. However, his goodwill did not extend fully to women: He never allowed any woman to enter the enclosure of his hermitage or his chapel. Those who dared defy this prohibition, even centuries later, met with punishments. According to one story, a woman from Paris entered the oratory in 1620.

She instantly became distracted and never recovered her senses. Anne of Austria, Queen of France, mindful of the prohibition, offered her prayers outside the doors. Fiacre died in 670 and was buried at Meaux. The fame of Fiacre’s miracles of healing continued after his death and crowds visited his shrine for centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Meaux was a major site for pilgrimages. High-ranking people and royalty testified to the healing power of Fiacre’s relics and shrine. Mgr. Seguier, Bishop of Meaux in 1649, and John de Chatillon, count of Blois, gave testimony of their own relief. Anne of Austria credited the intercession of Fiacre with the recovery of Louis XIII at Lyons, where he had been dangerously ill. She expressed her thanks by making a pilgrimage on foot to the shrine in 1641. She also sent to his shrine a token in acknowledgment of his intervention in the birth of her son, Louis XIV. Before Louis XIV underwent a severe operation, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, began a novena of prayers at Saint-Fiacre to ask a divine blessing. Fiacre is invoked against all sorts of physical ills, including venereal disease. Many miracles have been claimed through his working the land and interceding for others. He is especially the patron saint of the cab drivers of Paris. French cabs are called fiacres because the first establishment to let hackney carriages for hire in the mid-17th century was in the Rue Saint-Martin, near the hotel Saint-Fiacre in Paris. In art Fiacre is often shown with a spade in his role as patron of gardeners.