St. Fiacre

Who they were

Fiacre was an Irish monk who went looking for solitude in Gaul and was given by Bishop Faro of Meaux as much forest land as he could entrench in a day, which the legend delightedly reports he did by dragging his staff along the ground while the trees fell and the soil turned over behind him. Labelled as legend, and beloved.

What is solidly historical is better. The hermitage at Breuil became a garden of remarkable fame, of vegetables and healing herbs he grew and gave away, with a hospice for travellers he built and served himself, and a reputation for herbal healing that made the place a pilgrimage for a thousand years. The gardeners' patronage is among the best earned in the whole calendar, and French market gardeners still guard it jealously. The second patronage is pure accident: the first hackney carriage stand in seventeenth century Paris operated out of the Hôtel Saint Fiacre, the little coaches took the name fiacres, and the hermit gardener became the patron of cab drivers by street address. His rideshare descendants are welcome to him.

Why people turn to St. Fiacre

Gardeners, herbalists and market growers, with St. Isidore the Farmer and St. Dorothy. And every cab driver, courier and rideshare driver working nights, with St. Christopher and St. Frances of Rome.

How to ask their intercession

At planting, and at the start of the shift. Two different one line blessings, and he answers to both.