St Laserian or Molaise (d. 639) abbot of Leighlin
Associated with Old Leighlin in Co Carlow
There
are at least four saints of this name: one is associated with Devenish
Island in Co Fermanagh; another is associated with Inishmurray, Co
Sligo; another was the third abbot of Iona.
The one of this feast day is
associated with Old Leighlin in Co Carlow and is the patron saint of
Leighlin diocese.
A disciple of St Munnu
Laserian was the son of
Cairel de Blitha and Gemma, a Scottish princess and may have spent his
early years in Scotland.
He was also said to have been a disciple of St
Munnu (Fintan of Taghmon? See 21st October).
Roman education
He is said then to have spent
fourteen years in Rome and studied under St Gregory the Great, who
ordained him and sent him back to Ireland.
At any rate he was a strong
proponent of the Roman method of calculating Easter.
When he came back
to Ireland, he took over an already established monastery from St Gobban
at Leighlin (Leth-glen, half-glen, a fold in the hills), Co
Carlow.
Leighlin then became a strong centre of support of the Roman
method of calculation.
Contest of miracles with St Munnu
However, his
former teacher Munnu at the Council of Maigh Ailbe on the borders of
Kildare and Carlow challenged Laserian to a contest of miracles.
He
suggested they would throw the books containing the old and new
calculations of Easter in the fire to see which burned, raising men from
the dead. Laserian declined this as unfair, saying: "If you Fintan told
Slieve Margy over there to move to Magh Ailbe, and Magh Ailbe over to
where Slieve Margy is, God would do it for you."
It took some decades
for the Roman way of computing Easter was finally accepted and approved
at the Synod of Whitby (664).
Association with Maighnean of Kilmainham
Another story about Laserian is told in the Life
of Maighnean of Kilmainham. Maighnean found Laserian lying crossways in
a hovel suffering from thirty diseases.
"My sinfulness goes like a
flame through my body, for I want to have my purgatory in this life and
find eternal life in the next. For the grain of wheat must be threshed
and beaten before it is sown in the earth. So it is with me before I am
laid in the grave. I want my body threshed with infirmities."
In the end
Laserian asked Maighnean to preside at his funeral.
St Laserian's Cathedral in Old Leighlin
The
present Cathedral in Old Leighlin was begun by Bishop Donatus of
Leighlin and completed by the end of the 13th century.
One of the oldest
items in the Cathedral is an 11th century font.
The cathedral was taken
over by the Anglican Communion (Church of Ireland) at the time of the
Reformation.
A new Roman Catholic cathedral (Cathedral of the
Assumption) designed by Thomas Cobden was completed in in Carlow in
1833.