Baring-Gould’s sources: Chur Breviary. Venerated in the Grisoni. Authority: — Mostly legendary notices in the Bollandists, and an account from the Disentis Annals in "Die Wallfartsorte d. Schweiz," by Burgener, 1867.] S. Sigisbert is said to have been, if not a disciple of S. Columbanus himself, at all events a monk of Luxeuil, who had been trained under his rule. He is said to have been an Irishman, but his Teutonic name refutes this supposition. When S. Columbanus and S. Gall went on their apostolic mission to the heathen in Switzerland, Sigisbert is thought to have accompanied them, and on the return of Columbanus to Bobio, to have remained in the Alps, lit * joiyiu Sigisbert and Placidus. 281 and having found a site that pleased him, near the sources of the Vorder Rhine, in the long valley between the snowy ridges that culminate in the Todi and the Scopi, he settled there, and called the place the Desert In 613, he built a little chapel and a cell for himself, and being joined by other monks, among whom was one called Placidus, the foundations of the abbey of Disentis were laid, in 621. A local magnate, Victor I., resented their intrusion, and having been offended with Placidus about some matter, in a fit of rage, smote off his head. Tello, bishop of Chur (759 — 774), said to have been a son, but more probably a grandson of Victor, made what reparation lay in his power, by propagating devotion to S. Placidus.

According to the popular legend, believed at Disentis, where Placidus had his head struck off, he rose, took up his head and walked, holding it, after a woman, and asked the use of her whimple for wrapping round it. The scared woman threw her whimple towards him, and ran away screaming. Placidus picked up the veil, and went in search of Sigisbert, who buried his comrade. Sigisbert is thought to have died in 636, and is regarded as the Apostle of that portion of the Grisons. Charles the Great and his empress, Hildegarde, visited the graves of the Saints in 781. The relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] were for the most part lost when Disentis was occupied by the French, in 1799; but the marble sarcophagus made by orders of Pepin, and the veil which wrapped the head of S. Placidus, and some bones remain.