Deicolus

Saint Deicolus was an Irish monk, a disciple and companion of Saint Columbanus, who reposed in Gaul, at Lure, on 18 January around 625. He is also called Deicola, Desle or Dichuil.

He was born in Leinster around 530, an elder brother of Saint Gall, and studied with him at the monastery of Bangor in County Down. He was chosen as one of the twelve companions of Columbanus on his missionary journey. In 576 he spent a short time in Britain, then crossed to Gaul and laboured with Columbanus in Austrasia and Burgundy, and from about 590 he lived with him at Luxeuil, helping to found the monastery. When Columbanus was expelled by Theuderic II in 610, Deicolus, then eighty years old, wished to follow him but had to give up after a short time, and he remained alone, establishing a hermitage at a church of Saint Martin in a place called Lure, in the diocese of Besancon, to which a swineherd had directed him.

Until the end of his life he was the apostle of the district. Berthelde, widow of Weifar, lord of Lure, gave him a church and a tract of land, and soon an abbey was built for his disciples. Feeling his end near, he handed the government of the abbey to a young monk named Columbanus and withdrew to a small oratory dedicated to the Holy Trinity, where he reposed. His acts were written by a monk of his own monastery in the tenth century. His name, in the form Deel or Deela, is still borne by many children of the Lure district, and a spring associated with him was held to cure the illnesses of children. He is a saint of the undivided Church, commemorated on 18 January (new style).