My quick-and-dirty scan of what is known about St Finbarr, connects him firmly to the founding of Cork. His itinerary reminds me ever so slightly of St Bruno who was of very different origins. Bruno left the Benedictines, and the Cistercian founders such as St Bernard, to be alone. A whole colony of people followed Bruno to his solitude, and thus it was with Finbar. Historical records long after Finbar's day speak of St Finbar's Cave and St Finbar's Hermitage; and he not only founded the city of Cork but, if I read right, was the bishop of its first cathedral. Bruno died in solitude (read: surrounded by devotees who braved the wilderness with him), in a country not his own; those who came after him and adhered to his way of life, laid the foundations for the Ordo Cartusiensis, the Carthusian Order (In Great Silence), which, though sparse, refuses to completely die out, nine hundred years later.