Saint Brendan
Among the fish came into being as the spiritual legacy of Saint Patrick: namely, voluntary exile, an aimless form of pilgrimage that, like the elaborately intertwined letters of ancient Celtic art, led people on wanderings that took them wherever God wished. This kind of Peregrinatio religiosa made the Irish the great carriers of the faith in the early Middle Ages. So it was that the abbot Saint Brendan embarked with a number of companions and after several stop-offs on fertile shores with abundant sheep, finally arrived at a small island that suddenly began to move and turned out to be a whale; it is at this point that God finally instructed him to turn back. This popular legend quickly spread far and wide, and saw Saint Brendan become the patron saint of seafarers, including the great navigators and explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. (Fried, 2015)