St. Cillian and the whales – by JD Flynn – The Pillar
Cillian arrived near Würzburg Castle in late 686, and set up shop, monastery-wise, with a few of his traveling companions. He was by then a bishop, though it s not clear whether he was consecrated in Ireland or in Rome, by the pope personally.
In either case, Cillian and companions did as Irish monks do, draining some swamp and chopping down trees and building a little monastery, offering Holy Mass and converting people by powerful preaching.
Soon after they arrived, they converted the local Herzog Gozbert, who ruled the Würzburg region. With the duke a Christian, the local minor nobility and hundreds of families followed suit.
Cillian, and his companions Fr. Colmán and Deacon Totnan baptized thousands of people in just a few years.
But then things went wrong.
See, Gozbert attempted to marry his brother s widow then in violation of canon law, and thus invalid. Gozbert wanted to be a faithful Christian, so when Cillian told him to separate, he accepted it.
But Geilana, his consort, had not converted, and she had no wish to be exiled in the name of Gozbert s new religion.
Perhaps Cilian should have taken a more accompanying tone to his exhortation to the couple, I don t know.
But whatever the case, Geilana decided to solve her own problems with the local meddlesome priest.
When Gozbert was traveling July 8, 689 Geilana had soldiers find Cillian, Colmán, and Totnan, and dispatch their heads.
It s not clear whether that worked on Gozbert himself, and whether he stayed with Geilana, but after the monks were killed, Christianity actually did recede in the region, for at least a half century.
The few Christians who remained, though, managed to hang on to the martyrs heads, and keep them as relics. When the place was converted again, and a cathedral was eventually built in Würzburg, the skulls were covered in jewels, and placed in the church s high altar.
I love a story with a happy ending.