Deicolus

Deicolus (also Déicole, Domgall, other variations; January 18, 625) is venerated as a saint in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. He was an elder brother of Saint Gall.

Life Born in Leinster, Deicolus and his brother, Gall, studied at Bangor Abbey in County Down. He was selected to be one of the twelve followers to accompany Columbanus on his missionary journey. After a short stay in Great Britain in 576 he journeyed to Gaul and laboured with Columbanus in Austrasia and Burgundy. Deicolus is believed to have resided with Columbanus at Luxeuil from c.590 onwards.

When Columbanus was expelled by Theuderic II, in 610, Deicolus, then eighty years of age, determined to follow his master, but was forced, after a short time, to give up the journey, and remained behind alone, establishing a hermitage at a nearby church dedicated to Saint Martin in a place called Lutre, or Lure, in the Diocese of Besançon, to which he had been directed by a swineherd. Feeling his end approaching, Deicolus gave over the government of his abbey to Columbanus, one of his young monks, and retreated to a little oratory he had built a small chapel in honor of the Holy Trinity, where he died on 18 January, about 625.

Veneration His feast is celebrated on 18 January. So revered was his memory that his name (Dichuil), under the slightly disguised form of Deel and Deela, is still borne by most of the children of the Lure district. His Acts were written by a monk of his own monastery in the tenth century.

His cultus was strong in the area of Lure well into the nineteenth century, when children's clothes were washed in a spring associated with Deicolus that was reputed to cure childhood illnesses.