Saint Fursey

Bede says plainly where his account comes from. Twice he sends the reader to "the little book of his life," and his translator, A. M. Sellar, notes that the whole chapter is taken from an ancient Latin Life of Fursa that still survives. ² Butler points to the same Life, printed by the Bollandists, as the source "from which Bede extracted an account of his visions." ³

The 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia follows the same tradition in more detail, with his parents' names, the places in Ireland and a long list of his monks in Gaul, and it marks some episodes as legend. ¹ Bede and the encyclopedia therefore agree on the visions because they are reading the same book; where they part, on smaller things, this page gives both. ¹²

The encyclopedia makes him the son of Fintan, of a princely family of South Munster, and of Gelgesia, daughter of a prince of the Hy-Briuin in Connaught, and says he was probably born among the Hy-Briuin. ¹ It says he was baptized by Saint Brendan, his father's uncle, who ruled a monastery on the island of Inisquin in Lough Corrib, and was taught by Brendan's monks. ¹ He entered religious life in the same monastery under the abbot Meldan, his "soul-friend." ¹

Bede calls him "of noble Scottish blood, but much more noble in mind than in birth," and Sellar's note explains that Scottish here means Irish. ² From boyhood, Bede says, he gave himself to reading the sacred books and to monastic discipline. ² The encyclopedia records a legend that his prayers raised two dead children of a chieftain, and says that after some years he founded his own monastery at Rathmat on the shore of Lough Corrib, which the historian Colgan identified as Killursa. ¹ Butler also places his first abbey by the lake, where the church of Kill-fursa stood. ³

According to the encyclopedia, he was on his way to Munster to bring some of his family into the new monastery when he fell gravely ill near his father's home and lay in a trance from the ninth hour of the day until cockcrow. ¹ Bede tells it the same way: taken from his body from evening until cockcrow, he saw the choirs of angels and heard them sing, "The saints shall go from strength to strength." ² Three days later he was taken up again and saw the evil spirits trying to block his road to heaven by accusing him of every idle word and thought, while the angels defended him. ²

One part Bede thought worth copying in full. Looking down from on high, Fursey saw a dark valley and four fires in the air, and was told that these would kindle and consume the world: falsehood, when we do not keep the promises of our baptism; covetousness; discord, when "we do not fear to offend our neighbour even in needless things"; and ruthlessness, when we think it light "to rob and to defraud the weak." ² When the flame came near, he said he was afraid, and the angel answered, "That which you did not kindle will not burn you." ²

On the way back, a demon hurled at him a burning soul, a man whose garment Fursey had accepted when he died, and it scorched his shoulder and jaw. ¹² "That which you kindled burned you," the angel said. ² Bede says he carried the mark of that fire on his body for the rest of his life. ² The encyclopedia adds that among the just he recognized Meldan and Beoan, and that a third vision a year later laid on him twelve years of preaching. ¹

Bede also says what he did with the visions. He spoke of them only to people who asked "from desire of repentance." ² An old monk of Bede's own monastery used to tell of a man who had heard Fursey describe them in East Anglia: it was a hard frost, Fursey was sitting in a thin garment, and he sweated as if it were midsummer from the terror or the joy of what he was telling. ²

After his years of preaching in Ireland, the encyclopedia says, his brothers Foillan and Ultan joined him, and he lived for a time on a small island before setting out. ¹ Bede gives another reason for leaving: he could no longer bear the crowds who came to him. ² With a few monks he crossed through the lands of the Britons into East Anglia, where King Sigebert received him, in 633 by the encyclopedia's date. ¹²

The king gave him land, and he built a monastery within the walls of a fort that the English called Cnobheresburg. ² Bede says it was "pleasantly situated in the woods, near the sea," and that King Anna later enriched it; Sellar and Butler identify it as Burgh Castle in Suffolk, where a Roman fortress stood. ²³ Bede says Fursey converted many unbelievers there by his preaching and example. ² The encyclopedia adds that he received King Sigebert into religious life. ¹

Then he gave the monastery to his brother Foillan and the priests Gobban and Dicull and went to live with Ultan, who had become a hermit, for a whole year of prayer and work with his hands. ² Butler says the same in a sentence: Ultan went into the desert, and Fursey followed him there. ³

When pagan raids threw the province into confusion, Bede says, Fursey foresaw the danger to the monasteries and sailed for Gaul. ² Sellar's note names the raiders as Mercians, and Butler names their king, Penda. ²³ The encyclopedia dates his arrival to 648; Nominis says about 646. ¹⁵ He was received by Clovis II and by Erchinoald, the mayor of his palace, and built a monastery at Lagny, on the Marne. ²³ The encyclopedia describes the place as a wooded spot by the river, rich in vineyards, close to Chelles and about six miles from Paris, and lists the Irish monks who followed him there. ¹ It also tells of miracles on the road through Gaul, a dead boy restored and a robber converted, as the Life reports them. ¹

Not long after, sensing his end, he set out to visit Foillan and Ultan, and fell ill on the way. ¹² The places are named differently. The Roman Martyrology puts his death at a village by the river Authie, called Mézières in the Italian text and Mézerolles in the French. ⁴⁵ Butler calls the place Froheins, "Fursei domus," in the diocese of Amiens, and the encyclopedia says the village was afterward called Forsheim, "the house of Fursey." ¹³

Erchinoald took the body to Péronne, on the Somme, and laid it in the porch of the church he was building there until it could be dedicated. ¹² Bede says that came twenty-seven days later; the encyclopedia says the body lay there thirty days. ¹² Both say it was found incorrupt, and that four years later it was moved, still whole, to a new chapel east of the altar. ¹² The encyclopedia names Saint Eligius, bishop of Noyon, among those who moved it, on February 9. ¹ Sellar notes that the monastery founded at Péronne came to be called "Perrona Scotorum," for the number of Irish who went there, and Ultan later became its abbot. ²

The sources do not settle it. The encyclopedia says it is disputed and that he may have been a chorepiscopus, a kind of assistant bishop. ¹ Butler says the bishop of Paris made him his vicar for the diocese, "on which account some have styled him bishop." ³ Nominis says he was probably chorepiscopus to Saint Landry of Paris. ⁵

The encyclopedia adds that a litany attributed to him survives in a manuscript at Trinity College Dublin. ¹ In art, it says, he is shown with two oxen at his feet, from a legend about the claim to his body; or striking water from the ground at Lagny with his staff; or gazing at a vision of angels or at the flames of purgatory and hell. ¹

Saint Fursey is the patron of Péronne, the town on the Somme where he is buried; Butler says he is honored there as its patron and that his relics were kept in its great church. ³ No source used here names any other patronage for him. ¹³

Saint Fursey's feast is January 16. ⁴ The Roman Martyrology lists him that day, and Nominis gives the same date; the encyclopedia gives January 16 as the day of his death, and Butler places him on that day. ¹³⁴⁵

What Bede kept from his visions is not a map of the other world but a list of four sins that set it on fire: broken promises, greed, quarreling, and taking from the weak. ² None of them is exotic. The angel's answer to his fear, that the fire would not burn what he had not kindled, is as much a judgment on ordinary life as a comfort. ²

He carried a burn for the rest of his life because he had once accepted a dying man's garment. ² The visions did not make him easy to be around, either: he told them only to people who asked in order to repent, and the man who heard him in a hard frost remembered him sweating as he spoke. ²

Three times he built a monastery and three times he left it, once because of the crowds, once to live a year as a hermit with his brother, and once because war was coming. ¹² He died on the road, going back to see his brothers. ¹²