| Brigid of Kildare | |
|---|---|
| Virgin, abbess, inspirer | |
| Born | 453 |
| Died | 524 |
| Honored in | Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism |
| Feast | February 1 |
| Patronage | babies; blacksmiths; boatmen; cattle; chicken farmers; children whose parents are not married; children with abusive fathers; children born into abusive unions; Clan Douglas; dairymaids; dairy workers; fugitives; infants; Ireland; Leinster, mariners; midwives; milk maids; nuns; poets; poor; poultry farmers; poultry raisers; printing presses; sailors; scholars; travellers; watermen[1] |
Saint Brigit of Kildare, or Brigit of Ireland (variants include Brigid, Bridget, Bridgit, Bríd and Bride), nicknamed Mary of the Gael (Irish: Naomh Bríd) (c. 451–525) is one of Ireland's patron saints along with Saints Patrick and Columba. Irish hagiography makes her an early Irish Christian nun, abbess, and founder of several monasteries of Christian nuns, including that monastery of ‘Kildare’ Ireland ((.[2]),), which was considered legendary and was highly revered. Her feast day is 1 February, celebrated as St Brigid’s Day or Imbolc in Gaelic Ireland, one of the four quarter days of the pagan year, which marked the beginning of spring, lambing, and lactation in cattle. Saint Brigid is one of the few saints who stands on the boundary between pagan mythology, Druidism and Christian spirituality. Saint Brigid is the most famous female leader of the early Celtic Christian Church.[3]
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In liturgical iconography and statuary Saint Brigid is often depicted holding a bishop's staff because she was a consecrated Bishop, and holding a lamp said to be a 'lamp of learning and wisdom', as lamps and fire were regarded sacred to the Celts and Druids. Nuns at her monastery are said to have kept a sacred eternal flame burning there, which was a custom that originated with female Druids residing at the monastery's location long before Saint Brigid built the monastery. Early hagiographers also portray Saint Brigid's life and ministry as touched with fire. Light motifs, some of them borrowed from the apocrypha such as the story where she hangs her cloak on a sunbeam, are associated with the wonder tales of her hagiography and in folklore. In her Lives, Saint Brigid is portrayed as having the power to multiply such things as butter, bacon and milk, to bestow sheep and cattle and to control the weather. Plant motifs associated with St Brigid include Madonna Lily (since medieval times, also associated with the Virgin Mary) and the Brigid anenome (the Windflower or Poppy Flowered Anemone, since the early 19th century), while Cill Dara, the church of the oak, is associated with a tree sacred to the Druids. Her colour, white, was worn by the Kildare United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion and is worn by Kildare sports teams.
The first life of Brigid seems to have been written within a generation of her death. The source of the various later medieval Lives appears to have been a lost Life written by Ultán (d. 657), bishop of Ard Breccáin. The three principal Lives that survive date from the seventh to the ninth centuries and are preserved in over 100 medieval manuscripts, mostly written on the Continent. The oldest is Vita Sanctae Brigidae, a Latin Life by Cogitosus dating from c.650. An anonymous Latin Life confusingly known as ‘Vita Prima’ (as classified in the 1658 Acta SS, February 1 edition) has been dated to the seventh or eighth-century and an anonymous Life, ‘Bethu Brigte’, in Old Irish and Latin was compiled early in the ninth-century.[4]
In the controversy about the existence of Brigid that erupted in the last third of the 20th century, it was noted that eleven people with whom Brigit is associated in her Lives are independently attested in annalistic sources, sources which place her death at 524 (in the Annals of Tigernach and Chronicon Scotorum) and her birth at 439 (calculated from the alleged age of 86 at death).[5]
The Lives are traditional in form and draw references from the Old and New Testaments, the apocrypha and the early Church Fathers. They are sparse in specific biographical detail, and have been described as “primarily concerned with Brigit's way of life rather than her life as such, and focused on her saintliness and the miracles that testified to it.” [6]Their appearance coincided with the rise to power of the new Ui Dunlainge sept as Kings of Leinster in the early seventh century. Cogitosus in particular was asserting Brigit's reputation and the status of Kildare at a time when it was in competition with Armagh for precedence in the Irish church.
Brigit was born at Faughart near Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. Because of the legendary quality of the earliest accounts of her life, there is much debate among many scholars and even faithful Christians as to the authenticity of her biographies. According to her biographers her parents were Dubhthach, a pagan chieftain of Leinster, and Brocca, a Christian Pict and slave who had been baptised by Saint Patrick. Some accounts of her life suggest that Brigit's father was in fact from Lusitania, kidnapped by Irish pirates and brought to Ireland to work as a slave, in much the same way as Saint Patrick. Many stories also detail Brigit's and her mother's statuses as pieces of property belonging to Dubhthach, and the resulting impact on important parts of Brigit's life story.
Saint Brigit is celebrated for her generosity to the poor. According to one tale, as a child, she once gave away her mother's entire store of butter. The butter was then replenished in answer to Brigit's prayers.[7].
The ceremony is performed, according to different accounts, by one or other of the bishops Mel (d. 487) or Mac-Caille (d. c.489), the location probably being in Mág Tulach (the present barony of Fartullagh, Co. Westmeath). Mel also granted her abbatial powers. She followed Saint Mel into the Kingdom of Teathbha, which is made up of sections of modern Meath, Westmeath and Longford. This occurred about 468.
Brigit's small oratory at Cill-Dara (Kildare) became a center of religion and learning, and developed into a cathedral city. She founded two monastic institutions, one for men, and the other for women, and appointed Saint Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to Saint Conleth, Bishop of Kildare, but, as Archbishop Healy points out, she simply "selected the person to whom the Church gave this jurisdiction", and her biographer tells us distinctly that she chose Saint Conleth "to govern the church along with herself". Thus, for centuries, Kildare was ruled by a double line of abbot-bishops and of abbesses, the Abbess of Kildare being regarded as superior general of the monasteries in Ireland. So great and powerful was the wisdom and management of Saint Brigid, that she is one of the few abbesses to be ordained and consecrated a Bishop by Bishop Saint Mel in Telcha Mide[5], an honour not usually conferred upon women.
Brigit also founded a school of art, including metal work and illumination, over which Conleth presided. The Kildare scriptorium produced the Book of Kildare, which elicited high praise from Giraldus Cambrensis, but which has disappeared since the Reformation. According to Giraldus, nothing that he had ever seen was at all comparable to the book, every page of which was gorgeously illuminated, and he concludes by saying that the interlaced work and the harmony of the colours left the impression that "all this is the work of angelic, and not human skill".
The differing biographies written by different authors, giving conflicting accounts of her life, are regarded of considerable literary merit in themselves. Three of those biographies agreed that she had a slave mother in the court of her father, Dubhthach, a king of Leinster. An ancient account of her life is by Saint Broccan Cloen:
Ni bu Sanct Brigid suanach
Ni bu huarach im sheirc Dé,
Sech ni chiuir ni cossena
Ind nóeb dibad bethath che.
Saint Brigid was not given to sleep,
Nor was she intermittent about God's love of her;
Not merely that she did not buy, she did not seek for
The wealth of this world below, the holy one.
One, the Life of Brigit dates from the closing years of the eighth century, and is held in the Dominican friary at Eichstatt in Bavaria. It expounds the metrical life of Saint Brigit, and versified it in Latin. The earliest Latin "life" of Brigit was a short vignette composed by Colman nepos Cracavist around 800. Brigit is at times known as "the Patroness of Ireland" and "Queen of the South: the Mary of the Gael" by a writer in the "Leabhar Breac". Brigit died leaving a cathedral city and school that became famous all over Europe. In her honour Saint Ultan of Ardbraccan wrote a hymn commencing:
Christus in nostra insula
Que vocatur Hibernia
Ostensus est hominibus
Maximis mirabilibus
Que perfecit per felicem
Celestis vite virginem
Precellentem pro merito
Magno in mundi circulo.
Christ was made known to men
On our island of Hibernia
by the very great miracles
which he performed
through the happy virgin of celestial life,
famous for her merits
through the whole world.
The sixth life of the saint is attributed to Coelan, an Irish monk of the 8th century, and it derives a peculiar importance from the fact that it is prefaced by Saint Donatus, also an Irish monk, who became Bishop of Fiesole in 824. Donatus refers to previous lives by Ultan and Ailerán. When dying, Brigit was attended by Saint Ninnidh, who was afterwards known as "Ninnidh of the Clean Hand" because he had his right hand encased with a metal covering to prevent it ever being defiled, after being the medium of administering the last rites to "Ireland's Patroness".
Various Continental breviaries of the pre-Reformation period commemorate Brigit, and her name is included in a litany in the Stowe Missal.
In addition, Brigit is highly venerated by many Eastern Orthodox Christians as one of the great Western saints before the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. Her feast day, as in the West, is February 1, although churches following the Julian calendar (as in many Orthodox countries) celebrate her feast on February 14, the corresponding date on the Julian calendar. The troparion to her is in Tone 1:
O holy Brigid, thou didst become sublime through thy humility, and didst fly on the wings of thy longing for God. When thou didst arrive in the Eternal City and appear before thy Divine Spouse, wearing the crown of virginity, thou didst keep thy promise to remember those who have recourse to thee. Thou dost shower grace upon the world, and dost multiply miracles. Intercede with Christ our God that He may save our souls.
The corresponding kontakion is in Tone 4:
The holy virgin Brigid full of divine wisdom, shy of men, went with joy along the way of evangelical childhood, and with the grace of God attained in this way the summit of virtue and charity. Wherefore she now bestows blessings upon those who come to her with faith. O holy Virgin, intercede with Christ our God that He may have mercy on our souls.
According to the tradition of the Orthodox church, Saint Brigit lost one of her eyes which saved her from being married against her will. In another version of the legendary story of Saint Brigid losing her eye, is that she suffered an eye disease making her lose one eye. In the book 'Saint Brigid' by Iain MacDonald[8], Saint Brigid had an eye disease, she put her finger under her eye and plucked it out of her head so that it lay on her cheek, and when Dubthach and her bretheren beheld that, they promised that she should never be told to go to a husband except for the husband whom she should like; then Saint Brigid prayed to God put her palm to her eye, and it was healed at once, Saint Brigid was able to miraculously put her eye back in its socket in her head, restoring and healing her own eye. The following are the first and second troparia of the fourth ode of the canon of the saint from the Orthodox Matins service:
Considering the beauty of the body as of no account, when one of thine eyes was destroyed thou didst rejoice, O venerable one, for thou didst desire to behold the splendour of heaven and to glorify God with the choirs of the righteous.
Spurning an earthly betrothed, and praying beyond hope that the refusal of thy parents be changed, thou didst find aid from on high, so that the beauty of thy body was ruined.[9]
It seems that Faughart was the scene of her birth. Faughart Church was founded by Saint Moninne in honour of Brigit. The old well of Brigit's adjoining the ruined church still attracts pilgrims. There is evidence in the Trias Thaumaturga for Brigit's stay in Connacht, especially in County Roscommon and also in the many churches founded by her in the Diocese of Elphim. Her friendship with Saint Patrick is attested by the following paragraph from the Book of Armagh: "inter sanctum Patricium Brigitanque Hibernesium columpnas amicitia caritatis inerat tanta, ut unum cor consiliumque haberent unum. Christus per illum illamque virtutes multas peregit". (Between Patrick and Brigid, the columns of the Irish, there was so great a friendship of charity that they had but one heart and one mind. Through him and through her Christ performed many miracles.) At Armagh there was a "Templum Brigidis"; namely the little abbey church known as "Regles Brigid", which contained some relics of the saint, destroyed in 1179, by William FitzAldelm.
Brigit was interred at the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral, and a costly tomb was erected over her "Adorned with gems and precious stones and crowns of gold and silver." Over the years her shrine became an object of veneration for pilgrims, especially on her feast day, February 1. About the year 878, owing to the Scandinavian raids, Brigit's relics were taken to Downpatrick, where they were interred in the tomb of Patrick and Columba. The relics of the three saints were discovered in 1185, and on June 9 of the following year were reinterred in Down Cathedral.
In modern Ireland, "Mary of the Gael" remains a popular saint, and Brigit remains a common female Christian name.
Hundreds of placenames in her honour are to be found all over both Scotland and Ireland.
Kilbride is one of Ireland’s most widely spread placenames, there are 43 Kilbrides located in 19 of Ireland’s 32 counties: Antrim (2), Carlow, Cavan, Down, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Kilkenny (3), Laois, Longford, Louth, Mayo (5), Meath (4), Offaly (4), Roscommon (2), Waterford, Westmeath (2), Wexford (4), and Wicklow (8) as well as two Kilbreedy’s in Tipperary, Kilbreedia and Toberbreeda in Clare, Toberbreedia in Kilkenny, Brideswell Commons in Dublin, Bridestown and Templebreedy in Cork and Rathbride and Brideschurch in Kildare.[10]. Similarly, there are a number of placenames derived from Cnoic Bhríde ("Brigit's Hill"), such as Knockbridge in Louth and Knockbride in Cavan.
Brigit-related names in Scotland and England include several Bridewells or Brideswells, (commemorating in their names the presence of a sacred well dedicated to Brigit or her pre-Christian antecedent), East Kilbride, West Kilbride, Kilbride, Brideswell, Templebride and Tubberbride, derived for the word for well, "Tobar" in Irish or Gaelic). These Brigidine sites include the original Bridewell Palace in London which became synonomous with jail houses through the English speaking world.
Brigit's skull has been preserved in Igreja São João Baptista Lumiar (.[2]), the church of St Joao Baptista at Lumiar near Lisbon airport in Portugal since 1587 and is venerated on February 2 (not February 1, as in Ireland).[11] St Brigid’s head was reputedly carried to King Diniz of Portugal in 1283 by Irish Knights traveling to the Aragonese Crusade. A fragment of her skull was brought to St Bridget’s Church, Kilcurry in 1905 by Sister Mary Agnes of the Dundalk Convent of Mercy and in 1928 another fragment was sent by the Bishop of Lisbon to St Brigid’s church in Killester in response to a request from Fathers Timothy Traynor and James McCarroll. The inscription on the tomb in Lumiar reads:
“Here in these three tombs lie the three Irish knights who brought the head of St. Brigid, Virgin, a native of Ireland, whose relic is preserved in this chapel. In memory of which, the officials of the Table of the same Saint caused this to be done in January AD 1283.”
Church dedications, artwork, folklore and medieval manuscripts indicate the extent of the cult of Brigid in England, Scotland and Wales, Brittany, northern and eastern France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy.
Saint Brigit, in the alternative spelling of her name, Bride, was patron saint of the powerful medieval Scottish House of Douglas. The principal religious house, and Mausoleum of the Earls of Douglas and latterly Earls of Angus being St. Bride's Kirk, Douglas. Another saint Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373) was given a Swedish variant of the old Irish name named in honour of Brigit.
Even as the lore of the pious saint was being spread to America, Australia and other English speaking countries by Irish missionaries including the Brigidine Sisters founded in her honour in 1807, Brigit was adopted as an icon by 20th century feminists who admire her achievement in a patriarchal society. Her political proponents included Maud Gonne and Inghinidhe na hÉireann who promoted her as a model for women. Within the institutional church, there were many who hailed her achievement (and her successor abbesses) of holding a position superior to their male counterparts and the claim, consistent in her Lives, that she had the status of a bishop, a status afterwards accorded to successive abbesses of Kildare until the twelfth century, was a source of inspiration despite being downplayed in times of high misogynism by more Anglo-centric writers and translators. [14]
Finally, growing interest in Celtic mysticism, folk spirituality and alternative forms of religion has attracted new age activists to the supposed goddess aspects of Brigit. As a result Brigid’s popularity has proven remarkably robust through all the tumultuous changes in belief systems in the 1600 years since her death. [15]
As with all saints, Brigit was not able to be declared so without proof of her miracles. These were commonly recorded by those who had witnessed the miracles or had some relation to a person who had. In Saint Brigit’s case, most of her miracles were related to healing and domestic tasks usually attributed to women. If Brigit wished or predicted something to occur then it came to pass. A few examples of her miracles are described below.
Several of Brigit’s miracles occurred on Easter Sunday. On this day, a leper had come to Brigit to ask for a cow. She asked for a time to rest and would help him later; however, he did not wish to wait and instead stated he would go somewhere else for a cow. Brigit then offered to heal him, but the man stubbornly replied that his condition allowed him to acquire more than he would healthy. After convincing the leper that this was not so, she told one of her maidens to have the man washed in a blessed mug of water. After this was done, the man was completely cured and vowed to serve Brigit.
On another occasion, Brigit was traveling to see a physician for her headache. They were welcomed to stay at the house of Leinsterman. His wife was not able to have children that survived except for two daughters that had been dumb since their birth. Brigit was traveling to Áth with the daughters when her horse suddenly startled, causing her to wound her head on a stone. Her blood mixed with the water here. Brigit then instructed one of the girls to pour the bloodied water onto her neck in God’s name causing the girl to be healed. The healed sister was told to call her sister over to be healed as well, but the later responded that she had been made well when she bowed down in the tracks. Brigit told the cured sisters to return home and that they also would birth as many male children that their mother had lost. The stone that Brigit had injured herself cured any disease of the head when they laid the head on it.
Brigit also performed miracles that included curse elements as well. When on the bank of Inny, Brigit was given a gift of apples and sweet sloes. She later entered a house where many lepers begged her for these apples, which she offered willingly. The nun who had given the gift to Brigit was irritated by this saying that she had not given the gift to the lepers. Brigit was angered at the nun for withholding from the lepers and therefore cursed her trees so they would no longer bear fruit, rendering them barren. Yet another virgin also gave Brigit the same gift as the nun, and again Brigit gave them to begging lepers. This time the virgin asked that she and her garden be blessed. Brigit then said that a large tree in the virgin’s garden would have twofold fruit from its offshoots, and this was done.[16]
Not all Kilbride or St Bride’s churches are directly associated with Brigit the daughter of Dubhthach. Seathrún Céitinn’s History of Ireland 1841 edition edited by Dermod O’Connor lists 14 Saints gleaned from the martyrologies and heroic literature each called Brigid, and not including Brigit of Kildare.[17]. [18]
This dizzying abundance of Brigits had the effect of confusing those scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries who compiled the calendars from older manuscript sources, many of them now lost. For example John Colgan states Brighit of Moin-miolain was the daughter of Neman in one reference and the daughter of Aidus in another. [19][20]
The Martyrology of Donegal, for example, lists Brighit daughter of Diomman (feast day May 21), Brighit of Moin-miolain (feast day on March 9), and what may be five more: Brigid the daughter of Leinin (associated with Killiney, feast day March 6), Brighit of Cillmuine (November 12), Brighe of Cairbre (feast day January 7). and two other Brighits (feast days March 9, the second Brigit of that date, and Sept 30).[21]
Saint Brigit of Kildare, the Christian saint, is often confused as being the same person as the Celtic pagan goddess Brigid who was a goddess of fertility blessing many births and harvests to Celtic pagans, and long preceded the saint from Kildare, the goddess Brigid was originally revered by the Brigantes of northern England; and a parallel conversion and adoption there may partly account for the cult of Saint Brigid spreading so rapidly in, around and outside Ireland, Scotland and England in the United Kingdom. Saint Brigid had an uncanny gifted and saintly ability to see into the souls of others, and confronted the Devil. Saint Brigid remains one of the United Kingdom's most popular saints after Saint Patrick. Saint Brigid born of a pagan father Dubthach, who was a powerful magical Druidic wizard and warlock [5], was given the name of the highly honored Celtic pagan goddess Brigid. Henceforth, with God, Saint Brigid is a patron saint and guardian of the poor pastoral folk who work the land, she protects the harvest; she increases the yield of cow, dairy and sheep. She lights the fire which is never extinguished, the ever-burning fire in the hearth of the humble croft. Saint Brigid is also the patron saint of studies and learning, just as the older Celtic goddess Brigid succoured the creative arts and poetry [5]. Saint Brigid is recognised as one of the most potent symbols of Christian womanhood and fertility for all times. Her saintly glory is suffused in legend with her role as 'the Bride of Christ', and at times confused almost with the identity of the Virgin Mother herself. Some neo-pagans and historians question the historicity of Saint Brigid, or how much of her life as traditionally recounted is historically accurate. The Irish 'Book of Lismore', a traditional book on the lives of the ancient Celtic Irish saints written in Irish, Saint Brigid is described: 'She is the prophetess of Christ; she is the Queen of the South; she is the Mary of the Gael.'
Saint Brigit of Kildare, the Christian saint, is often confused as being the same person as the Celtic pagan goddess Brigid, who was a goddess of fertility, that 'blessed' many births to pagans.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). "St. Brigid of Ireland". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
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