Saint Brigid

Brigid with a crozier and lamp, two of her traditional attributes, from the centre of Celtic Christianity that is Macon, Georgia.

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Saint Brigid of Kildare, or of Ireland, or St Bridget, or St Bride, is one of the most important saints of Ireland. She is traditionally dated to around 451-525 CE, while the main source of her life was an account by Broccán Clóen probably written in the first half of the 7th century. She shares her name with an Irish goddess, which suggests at minimum that some people would have been confused, or her stories may be a retelling of Celtic myth. And in fact there's no clear evidence that she existed at all. She is a patron saint of Ireland, dairymaids, cattle, midwives, Irish nuns, and newborn babies, and unofficially the patron saint of Irish abortionists.

She shouldn't be confused with St Brigid/Bridget of Sweden, a 14th century mystic and nun, who is more likely to have been real.

Her story

The earliest version of her Brigid's story was written by Broccán Clóen (who? yes, exactly). Even if we accept the best case for Brigid's historical existence, his Life was almost certainly written well after her death, and he probably never met her, being born after her death (assuming she existed, he existed, etc). Most sources don't get more precise than dating him to the 6th or probably the 7th century. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives his date of death as 17 September 650 but that's suspiciously precise. There's minimal historical information about Broccán; there appear to have been several people of the same name.

Her life story was retold by many people, who differed considerably in the facts, but most people seem to agree they were well-written; to summarise, her biographers include:

• St Broccán Clóen, repudedly a monk from Kildare who traditionally died in 650 CE
• Cogitosus, a monk from Kildare, whose account was in Latin verse
• St. Ultan
• St. Aileran
• Coelan, an 8th century monk, who wrote a life with a foreword by St. Donatus (later Bishop of Fiesole in Tuscany, Italy)

The legend

A lot of sources seem pretty certain about this. Obviously, they're regurgitating Broccán's account and assuming he wouldn't tell a lie. So she was born in Dundalk, Co. Louth, in 451 or 452 to a princely family. Some sources say her mother was a slave and her father was Dubhthach, a chieftain. Although she was apparently inundated with marriage proposals, she preferred to become a nun, setting up the Convent of Cill-Dara (or as it's now spelt Kildare, in Co. Kildare); the cathedral of Kildare traces its origins from there. She was reportedly friends with Saint Patrick and various other notables of the Celtic Church. She founded a school of arts, from manuscript illumination to metalwork, which produced a really really beautiful edition of the Bible, unfortunately now lost.

Tradition says she died at Kildare on 1 February 525. Her relics were taken to Downpatrick around 878, lost, and rediscovered in 1185. Most of her was reburied the following year, but her right hand which was encased in metal after her death is in Lumiar, Portugal, and there's a bit in Cologne, Germany. Her head is also reputed to have been widely travelled.

Sillier stuff

A Brigid's cross, one of the symbols of Ireland, said to have been invented by her.

There are various entertaining stories about Brigid and the miracles she worked. In the days before television, Catholicism was the principal entertainment of the masses.

In contradiction with Roman Catholic dogma is the account of an apparent abortion: according to Cogitosus, when a nun became pregnant in mysterious circumstances, Brigid made the baby disappear without pain or childbirth. This has led to her being celebrated by pro-choice Irishpeople as "Ireland's first abortionist".

As mentioned she was always being pursued by eager suitors, but one Dubthach maccu Lugair was luckier than most: Brigid told him to go for a walk in the woods where he'd find a more suitable sweetheart, which he did, and lo he was married!

Also related to her attractiveness, she prayed to God that he'd make her ugly, and she was rendered unattractive until she took her final vows and became a proper nun.

Another well-known tale is that of how she got the land at Kildare: she was arguing with the local landowner, trying to get some space to put a convent up, and eventually she made him agree that she could have as much land as her cloak covered. And wouldn't you know it? Her cloak magically grew to cover several acres. She is also sometimes depicted as having hung her cloak on a sunbeam.

Really interfering with the established chronology, one tradition has her actually attending Jesus Christ's Nativity, which cannot be conclusively dated but is generally assumed to have happened well before 451 CE. However, this is probably a poetic retelling of St Brigid of Sweden's vision of the Nativity, and not Brigid of Ireland at all.

And she did all the usual food multiplication.

The goddess

A modern-day statuette of the goddess Brigid preparing a stew while also casting a fireball spell.

Brigid or Bride shares her name with an Irish goddess. There are various theories about the link: either St. Brigid was merely a Christianization of a pagan figure into an acceptable object of veneration or she was a real person to whom pagan myths were re-attributed, including legends suggesting she was a priestess (druidess) of such goddess, who converted to Christianity and her temple became a Christian monastery with her people also converting in the process and getting after she died the attributes and associations of her former patroness.

As for the goddess herself, and as per many other Celtic deities given the lack of written records, not much is known about her and "Brigid" ("exalted one") could have been just a title applied to different deities rather than the name of one, as later texts from the Middle Ages written down by Christian monks claim she as a goddess of poetry, wisdom, and protecting care had two sisters: Brigid the healer (physician) and Brigid the smith, which would much later be considered as three aspects of the same goddess (ie, a triple deity in the style of Greek Hecate instead of three separate ones), even if some also claim her three aspects show the division of the proto-Indo-European society into castes: priests (inspiration and poetry), protector of warriors and kings, and goddess of techniques (artisans, shepherds, and farmers). Likewise a link to the goddess Brigantia, even if the latter could be just the result of syncretism between Brigid and Roman Minerva and Brigid having been in origin a dawn goddess have been proposed too by modern scholarship.

St Brigid's feast day is Feb 1, which coincides with the pagan feast of Imbolc, celebrating the coming of spring, where the goddess Brigid was celebrated. Goddess Brigid was associated with fertility, inspiration and wisdom, medicine and healing, smithcraft, fire, home and the hearth (thus being similar to Greco-Roman deities as Hestia or Vesta, which could have been the result of Greco-Roman authors identifying them with Brigid instead of something present there from the start), sacred wells, serpents, agriculture, cattle (milk as well as guarding domestic animals) and poetry, and she's still held today in high regard in Neopaganism including to consider Brigid as a triple goddess (see above) like others from the Celtic mythos and being often worshipped alongside either Lugh or Cernunnos. Many attributes ascribed to the goddess also relate to the saint: from her association with healing to her connection with the arts and metalwork and the presence of an eternal flame maintained by nuns (presumably priestesses in the former), with the goddess also having legends, some of them quite likely modern, that include her having been born with a flame strike spell flame over her head, acquiring wisdom after having imbibed from Danu's (often considered to be the same goddess) waters, or having invented keening after the death of her son in battle.

In art

There's a nice painting by the Scottish pre-Raphaelite artist John Duncan of her being carried over the sea to Jerusalem by angels. Which probably did not happen, but there's a very cute seal.

See also

• Saint Columba, the other big Irish saint
• Danu