Saint Assicus of Elphin (Archdall)

From Mervyn Archdall's Monasticon Hibernicum:

Of St Asicus who also had a hermitage on Slieve Leagne we have ample information. The Rev. Mathew Kelly in his notices of the "Patron Saints of Ireland" writes of him:- "St Asicus Asaach bishop patron of Elphin. A disciple of St. Patrick who obtained from a Druid the land on which the church of Elphin was founded Asicus was its first bishop. Among the different members of St. Patrick's household to whom provision for all the ecclesiastical wants of the infant church was committed St. Asicus is described as an artificer in brass "faber acris Patricii." In a penitential spirit St. Asicus renounced the govemment of his diocess and retired to the mountains of Sliebh Ling, in the present county of Donegal, from which he could not be persuaded to return. He died in his retreat and was buried in the church of Rathcunga in Tirhugh Donegal. His name is in the Martyrology of Tallaght on the 26th of April. His festival is observed on the following day in the diocess of Elphin."

This notice is not so full as the one given by Colgan who writes:- "The most holy and chaste bishop Asicus when on a certain occasion it was necessary to state a certain fact uttered a falsehood having spoken without sufficient reflection. In consequence of this fault he became so great a penitent that he determined never to be seen in the place where he had given so great a scandal herefore having resigned his see and the government of the monastery in which he lived heretier to the northern parts of Ireland and on a certain mountain in the country of Tir Eoghaine called Sliabh Liag he led a solitary life for seven long years. Meanwhile his monks by their untiring exertions discovered him in that desert and implored him to return to his deserted see and monastery but he refused sternly because he considered himself guilty of a great scandal in telling a falsehood and that he therefore ought not be seen where he had given the scandal. They prevailed however on him to remove to another solitary place where he shortly after slept in the Lord and was buried by his disciples in the country of Serthe at a place called Rathcunga. Not far from this hermitage on the mountain there is in the townland of Rinnakill another holy well which is called the Well of the Female Saints. Local tradition says that a convent of nuns stood here at an early period but not a trace of it can now be seen.