An Irish Saint.
St. Fursey's day is on January 16th (my birthday!!!). I'm also Irish, which is interesting...
From britanica.com
St. Fusey was a
monk,
visionary, and one of the greatest early
medieval
Irish monastic missioners to the Continent. His celebrated visions had considerable
influence on dream literature of the later
Middle Ages.
First educated under Brendan the
Navigator, Fursey later became a monk at the
monastery of Clonfert, in
County Galway, and was ordained priest. He later founded a
monastery at Rathmat (probably in modern County Clare), which became one of
Ireland's major monastic centres. The extent of his apostolate is evident in places
named for him in
Galway,
Louth, and
Cork.
After 630 Fursey left Ireland with his brothers Foillan and Ultán for
Britain, where they
were welcomed by the
Christian king Sigeberht of East
Anglia. They assisted Sigeberht
and Felix in
Christianizing the kingdom and in introducing
monasticism. About 640
Fursey founded the monastery of Cnoberesburgh, near modern Yarmouth, Norfolk,
which became the centre of his ministry. He sailed to
Gaul some time between 640 and
644 and established himself in Neustria (in present-day
Normandy), where he was well
received by Clovis II. About 644 he founded a monastery at Lagny, near
Paris. On a
later journey he died, and afterward his body was transferred to Péronne, where his
shrine became a great
pilgrimage site; the monastery there remained an Irish centre
through the 8th century.
Fursey's
visions, which he was said to have experienced throughout his life, became
widely known through accounts by the Venerable Bede in his
Ecclesiastical History of
the English People (8th century), which also contains the earliest life of Fursey, written
by an
anonymous contemporary monk; and by Aelfric Grammaticus (10th century). The
visions included
demoniac assaults,
conversations with angels, divinations, and
glimpses of
heaven and hell; the accounts of visions influenced medieval vision
literature, of which they are considered a prototype.