Saint Fiacre
Irish saint
Fiacre (Irish: Fiachra, Latin: Fiacrius) is the name of three different Irish saints, the most famous of which is Fiacre of Breuil (c. AD 600 – 18 August 670), the priest, abbot, hermit, and gardener of the seventh century who was famous for his sanctity and skill in curing infirmities. He emigrated from his native Ireland to France, where he constructed for himself a hermitage together with a vegetable and herb garden, oratory, and hospice for travellers. He is the patron saint of gardeners and hemorrhoids.
Fiacre of Breuil
Name
Fiachra is an ancient pre-Christian, Irish name. It has been interpreted to denote "battle king" or to derive from fiach ("raven"). The name is found in ancient Irish folklore and stories such as the Children of Lir.
The appellation "of Breuil" can in present times be misleading: the site of the hermitage, garden, oratory, and hospice of Fiacre was in an unattested *Brogilum in Medieval Latin, whose Gallo-Roman form had regularly evolved into Breuil and Breil (Monasterium quod dicitur Breilum, tribus distans millibus ab urbe Meldis, 11th century in Vita S. Faronis), forming his epithet. However, Breuil was then renamed Saint-Fiacre in his honor, which is the name of the present commune on the same site, in the Department of Seine-et-Marne, Île-de-France. The commune of Breuil-sur-Vesle (Department of Marne, Broilum 847-857), France is located quite far from and is not the same as the commune of Saint-Fiacre (formerly named Breuil), although the two communes probably were both in the ancient French Province of Brie, which adds to the confusion.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Saint Fiacre” as irish saint. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as irish saint. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q953927. VIAF identifies the subject as 57743610. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saint Fiacre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.