ST. FRIDIAN, ERIGDIAN, OR FRIGDIAN, C. BISHOP OF LUCCA

HE is said to have been son to a king of Ulster in Ireland, at least he is looked upon as of Irish extraction. Travelling into Italy, to improve himself in ecclesiastical learning and virtue, he made such progress that, upon the death of Geminian, bishop of Lucca, he was chosen bishop of that extensive diocese, the eleventh from St. Paulinus, founder of that church, said to have been a disciple of St. Peter. St. Gregery the Great assures us, that he miraculously checked an impetuous flood of the river Auser, now called the Serchio, when it threatened to drown great part of the city. St. Fridian died in 578, and was buried in a place where the church now stands, which bears his name. Pope Alexander II. sent for some regular canons from this church to establish that order in the churches of St. John Lateran, and of the cross of Jerusalem, at Rome, but, in 1507, the congregation of St. Frigdian was united to that of St. John Lateran.1 See St. Gregory the Great,1. 3, Dial. c. 9, Bede, Notker, Raban, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology, on the 18th of March. Also Innocent III. c. 34, de Testibus et Attestationibus. In Decreto Gregoriano. Rursus id. c. 8, de Testibus cogendis. lb. iterum, de Verborum Significatione. See also Dempster (of the family of the barons of Muresk, a Scotchman, public professor, first in several towns in Flanders, afterwards at Pisa, and lastly, at Bononia, where he died in 1625) in his Etruria Regalis, t. 2,1. 5, c. 6, p. 299, which work was printed with many cuts, in two volumes, folio, at Florence, in 1723, at the expense of Thomas Coke, late earl of Leicester, then on his travels. And principally, see the Ecclesiastical History of Lucca, printed in that city, in 1736, and again in 1741, in 12mo.