Deicolus

Saint Deicolus (also known as Deicola, Dichul, Deel, Deille, Delle, Desle, and Dicuil) was an Irish monk and missionary of the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Later tradition, repeated in medieval and modern hagiography, presents him as an elder brother of Saint Gall and as a disciple and companion of Saint Columbanus. He was born in the province of Leinster in Ireland during the sixth century; no reliable source preserves an exact year of birth. Like other leading Irish monastic figures of his generation, he is said to have received his formation at Bangor Abbey in Ulster under Saint Comgall, where Columbanus also trained. From Bangor he joined the group of monks who, around 590, left Ireland as peregrini to preach and plant monastic life on the Continent.

Deicolus accompanied Columbanus and his companions, among them Saint Gall, to Gaul. The band first settled at Annegray in the Vosges and soon established the monastery of Luxeuil, which became a principal centre of Irish monastic influence in Burgundy. For some two decades Deicolus shared the austere Columbanian observance at Luxeuil. When conflict with the Merovingian court, especially King Theuderic II and Brunhild, led to the expulsion of Columbanus from Luxeuil around 610, Deicolus, already aged and infirm, could not follow his master on the journey that eventually took Columbanus to Bobbio in Italy. He remained in the wooded country of what is now Franche-Comté and sought a solitary life.

The principal narrative of his later years is a tenth-century Life composed at Lure, centuries after the events it describes, and must be used with caution. According to that tradition, Deicolus wandered until he found a remote place where he built a hermitage. A well-known legend tells that a wild boar pursued by King Clothar II (or, in some versions, a local magnate) took refuge with the hermit; Deicolus protected the animal, and the impressed ruler granted him land on which to found a monastery. That house, known as Lure (Lutra), in the diocese of Besançon in present-day Haute-Saône, grew into an important abbey. Deicolus governed it as abbot, implanting the Irish monastic customs he had learned at Bangor and Luxeuil. Later writers attributed to him miracles of healing and of provision, including the springing up of a fountain.

He died at Lure on 18 January, according to the date long kept in his cult, and the year 625 is the date given in standard hagiographical compilations such as the Catholic Encyclopedia. He was buried at his monastery. His cult developed locally and was maintained by the monks of Lure; the abbey later passed under Benedictine observance and remained the centre of his veneration through the Middle Ages. Relics associated with him were preserved at Lure. He is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology and in Irish and French calendars on 18 January. Because the main Life was written so long after his death, many personal details remain uncertain, and the fraternal link with Saint Gall, though constantly repeated, cannot be confirmed independently. What is reasonably clear is that Deicolus belongs to the first generation of Irish peregrini who planted monastic life in eastern Gaul, and that the abbey of Lure was the lasting monument of his work.