Born at Bile Fechin (Connaught), Ireland; died c. 665. Fechin, the
abbot-founder of several Irish monasteries, was trained by
Saint Nathy (f.d. August 9)
at Achonry, County Sligo. After a life of sanctity, he
died during the great pestilence which came upon Britain and Ireland in
the year after the Council at Whitby and felled four Irish kings and
nearly two-thirds of the populace.
Fechin's name is particularly connected with that of Fobhar (Fore or
Foure) in Westmeath, which was his first monastic foundation, and an
important one for its manuscripts. Fechin was the son of Coelcharna,
descendant of Eochad Fionn, brother to the famous king Conn of the
Hundred Battles, and his mother Lassair was of the royal blood of
Munster. When fit to be sent to school he was placed under St Nathy of
Achonry.
Having finished his studies he was ordained priest, and retired to a
solitary place at Fore in Westmeath, there to live as a hermit. But he
was followed by many disciples, and Fore became a monastery. Here he
eventually governed over 300 monks. He is said to have pitied the monks
engaged in grinding their corn in querns, he therefore brought water
from a marsh to the monastery, by cutting a tunnel through the rock, and
then established a water mill. Of this Giraldus Cambrensis relates the
following :-
There is a mill at Foure, which St Fechin made most miraculously with
his own hands, in the side of a certain rock. No women are allowed to
enter either this mill or the church of the Saint; and the mill is held
in as much reverence by the people as any of the churches dedicated to
him.
His influence was very great with the kings and princes of his age. The
Saint finding a poor leper, full of sores one day, took him to the
Queen, and bade her minister to him as to Christ. She bravely overcame
her repugnance, and tended him with gentle care. of three hundred monks.
He also established a religious house in the island of Immagh, near the
coast of Galway. The inhabitants were then pagans, but Fechin and his
monks converted them.
The monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary which he founded in Cong is
renowned because of the Cross of Cong, one of the great treasures of
Ireland, which had been hidden in an old oaken chest in the village, and
now resides in the National Museum in Dublin. Both the church and
monastery at Cong were rebuilt in 1120 for the Augustinians by Turlough
O'Connor, who gave them the bejewelled processional cross he had made to
enshrine a particle of the True Cross. Cong Abbey also served as the
refuge for the last high king of Ireland, Roderick O'Connor. The
monastery was suppressed by King Henry VIII.
St. Fechin's other foundations include those at Ballysadare (his
birthplace?),Imaid Island, Omey and Ard Oilean, from which came the
oldest manuscript about his life. All of these are now in ruins. His
memory, however, is also perpetuated at Ecclefechan and Saint Vigean's
(the name under which he is invoked in the Dunkeld Litany), near
Arbroath in Scotland, where a fair was held on his feast day.
(
Attwater2,
Benedictines,
Coulson,
D'Arcy,
Farmer,
Husenbeth,
Kenney,
Montague,
Moran,
Muirhead,
Neeson,
Stokes).
Troparion of St Fechin
Tone 3
Thy God-pleasing life, O Father Fechin,
is an inspiration in our
spiritual struggles. As thou didst guide souls to Christ in the abbey of
Fore,
cease not to intercede for all who call upon thy name,
that our souls may be saved.
Cong, its history and geography:
http://www.galway.net/galwayguide/history/wrwilde/chapt6.html
Another Life of St. Fechin
St. Fechin was probably the most active and influential of the Irish
saints of the seventh century. He is the first priest that is named in
the Third Order of the Irish saints in the famous Catalogue published by
Ussher in the
Brittanicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates.
Unlike his master, Nathy, who has never found a biographer, Fechin has
had his life written by several persons. Colgan gives three lives of the
saint; one composed by Augustine Magraidin, who was a Canon Regular of
the island of All Saints, in the Shannon, and died there ... in 1405;
another in twenty seven Latin hexameters, ... and a third, compiled by
Colgan, who tells us he made the compilation from four different lives
of the saint.
(O'Rorke)
Those who have written about Fechin are almost unanimous that he was
born in Bella, a townland in Collooney (Kilvarnet) parish. Traditionally
his mother's name was Lassara and she also is venerated as a saint.
Fechin's name still lives on in parts of the locality: an area called
Parc-Ehin (Fechin's field); Fechin's Well in the neighbouring townland
of Kilnamonagh; Fechin's Bed, once a place of pilgrimage; Fechin's
Strand near Ballysadare.
It is probable that Fechin belonged to the O'Hara family, and that his
early education was directed by St. Nathy. Later he joined Nathy at
Achonry and acquired his learning there. After becoming a priest he
founded Ballysadare and several other churches in his native territory
of Leyney.
Fechin then left the West of Ireland and some time later set up his most
famous foundation, that at Fore in Co. Westmeath. Fechin is so closely
associated with this - later famous - abbey that he is generally called
'St. Fechin of Fore' (Naomh F??ch??n Fabhar). There are considerable
ruins still at Fore, though they are almost entirely of buildings much
later than Fechin's foundation.
In later life Fechin returned to the West where he was associated with
foundations in Cong - later a famous abbey - and in west Galway and at
High Island and Omey Island off the Galway coast.
St. Fechin died of the Yellow Plague on 20th January 665. O'Rorke says,
"From the frequent mention of the holy man, ... it is clear that this
fame continued unimpaired down to the period of the Reformation, when we
find Dr. Hammer in the Chronicle of Ireland observe:
Ireland remembreth
the feast of St. Fekin, that he was the king's bloud, and an Abbot,
cured many of the flixe or fluxe, and dyed thereof himselfe.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~jas/fechin.html
(with a stained glass window of St. Fechin, and the monastery ruins at
Fore)
http://www.mayo-ireland.ie/Mayo/Towns/CgCrssTN/Photos/CongAbby.jpg
Cross of Cong
