The original group separated – some departing to seek other fields of missionary work, while Kilian with two companions, the priest Colmán (also called Colonan or Kolonat) and the deacon Totnan, remained in Würzburg. From there they traveled to the castle of Würzburg, which was inhabited by the East Frankish ruler, Herzog ( Duke) Gozbert, who was, like his people, still pagan. In the summer of 686 Kilian, with eleven companions, travelled through Gaul to Rome to receive missionary faculties from the Pope, arriving in late autumn and meeting with Pope Conon. He began his education in Rosscarbery (the School of Ross), County Cork, and completed it in Tuosist in County Kerry. Some records state that Kilian served as a monk in the celebrated monastery at Hy, Hy being an early name for what was later known as Iona.

In Ireland, the preferred spelling is Cillian the name appears thus in the Irish liturgical calendar.Īccording to Irish sources, Kilian was born to noble parents in approximately the year 640 in Cloughballybeg, near Mullagh in the south-east of what is now County Cavan in Ireland. The name has several variations in spelling (e.g. The oldest texts which refer to him are an 8th-century necrology at Würzburg and the notice by Hrabanus Maurus in his martyrology.

Kilian, also spelled Cillian or Killian (or alternatively Irish: Cillín Latin: Kilianus), was an Irish missionary bishop and the Apostle of Franconia (now the northern part of Bavaria), where he began his labours in the latter half of the 7th century. Wearing a bishop's mitre and wielding a sword

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