FIACRE encyclopedia topics

Legends

The legend of Fiacre goes that St Faro allowed him as much land as he might entrench in one day with a furrow; Fiacre turned up the earth with the point of his staff, toppling trees and uprooting briers and weeds. A suspicious woman hastened to tell Faro that he was being beguiled and that this was witchcraft. Faro, however, recognized that this was the work of God. From this point on it is said St Fiacre barred women, on pain of severe bodily infirmity, from the precincts of his monastery.

Veneration

His relics are installed in Meaux Cathedral. His feast day is under debate; in Ireland it is 1 September; elsewhere it is variously 18 August, August 1, or August 30, with August 11 growing in acceptance as an official compromise.

St Fiacre is most renowned as the patron saint of growing food and medicinal plants, sometimes more broadly referred to as simply gardening.

His reputed aversion to women is believed to be the reason he is known as the patron saint of venereal disease sufferers.

Saint Fiacre is also sometimes invoked to help heal people of ills. This is not his patronage (as bestowed by the Vatican), but rather a common invocation based on his reputed skill with medicinal plants.

Fiacre (carriage)

Saint Fiacre is also the patron saint of taxi drivers. The connection arose from the fact that the Hotel de Saint Fiacre in Paris, France, rented carriages. People who had no idea who Fiacre was referred to the small hackney coaches as "Fiacre cabs", and eventually as "fiacres". Similarly, Viennese horse-drawn buggies are referred to as Fiaker.