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SAINT FIACRE (Fiachra) Saint Fiacre is said to have been born in Ireland and that he sailed to France in quest of closer solitude. He arrived at Meaux and dwelled in a forest which was his own patrimony, called Breuil, in the province of Brie. There is a legend that Saint Faro, the Bishop of Meaux, offered him as much land as he could turn up in a day, and that Saint Fiacre, instead of driving his furrow with a plough, turned the top of the soil with the point of his staff. He cleared the ground of trees and briers, made himself a cell with a garden, built an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin and made a hospice for travelers which developed into the village of Saint-Fiacre in Seine-et-Marne. Many resorted to him for advice and the poor came to him for relief. His charity moved him to attend those that came to consult him. In his hospice he entertained all comers, serving them with his own hands, and sometimes miraculously restored to health those that were sick. He never allowed any woman to enter the enclosure of his hermitage. Saint Fiacre extended the prohibition even to his chapel. The fame of Saint Fiacre’s miracles of healing continued after his death and crowds visited his shrine for centuries. Mgr. Seguier, Bishop of Meaux in 1649, and John de Chatillon, Count of Blois, gave testimony of their own relief. Anne of Austria attributed to the meditation of this saint, the recovery of Louis XIII at Lyons, where he had been dangerously ill; in thanksgiving for which she made, on foot, a pilgrimage to the shrine in 1641. She also sent to his shrine, a token in acknowledgement of his intervention in the birth of her son, Louis XIV. Before that king underwent a severe operation, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, began a novena of prayers to Saint Fiacre to ask the divine blessing. His relics at Meaux are still resorted to, and he is invoked against all sorts of physical ills, including venereal disease. He is also a patron saint of gardeners and of cab-drivers of Paris. French cabs are called fiacres because the first establishment to let coaches on hire, in the middle of the seventeenth century, was in the Rue Saint Martin, near the hotel Saint Fiacre, in Paris. Saint Fiacre’s feast is kept in some dioceses of France, and throughout Ireland on this date. Many miracles were claimed through his working the land and interceding for others. Patron of Gardeners and Cab-drivers. Feast day is September 1st. rosary.team

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