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ST. LASERIAN, BY SOME CALLED MOLAISRE, BISHOP OF
LEIGHLIN, IN IRELAND
LASERIAN was son of Cairel and Blitha, persons of
great distinction, who intrusted his education, from his infancy, to
the abbot St. Murin. He afterwards travelled to Rome in the days of
pope Gregory the Great, by whom he is said to have been ordained
priest. Soon after his return to Ireland, he visited Leighlin, a
place situated a mile and a half westward of the river Barrow, where
St. Goban was then abbot, who, resigning to him his abbacy, built a
little cell for himself and a small number of monks. A great synod
being soon after assembled there, in the White Fields, St. Laserian
strenuously maintained the Catholic time of celebrating Easter
against St. Munnu. This council was held in March, 630. But St.
Laserian not being able to satisfy in it all his opponents, took
another journey to Rome, where pope Honorius ordained him bishop,
without allotting him any particular see, and made him his legate in
Ireland. Nor was his commission fruitless: for, after his return, the
time of observing Easter was reformed in the south parts of Ireland.
St. Laserian died on the 18th of April, 638, and was buried in his
own church which he had founded. In a synod held at Dublin, in 1330,
the feasts of St. Patrick, St. Laserian, St. Bridget, St. Canic, and
St. Edan, are enumerated among the double festivals through the
province of Dublin. St. Laserian was the first bishop of Old
Leighlin, now a village. New Leighlin stands on the eastern bank of
the river Barrow. See Ware, p. 54, and Colgan’s MSS. on the
18th of April.
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