Saint Brigid of Kildare
One of the greatest – if not the greatest – of the holy mothers of the præ-Schismatic Western Church, is the late fifth- and early sixth-century Saint Brigid, Abbess of Kildare. In Ireland, devotion to Saint Brigid is matched only by that to Saint Padrig, who baptised and taught both her and her mother. The Life of Brigid amply demonstrates the spirited independence of Gælic holy women.
First, a note of caution. It is currently fashionable in some quarters to suggest that Saint Brigid is not a historical person, but instead the euhemerism of a heathen goddess, Brigantia. The evidence for this appears to consist of the fact that her feast-day, the first of February, coincides with the heathen winter festival of Imbolc (or Candlemas). It’s also true that the name Brigid [Scots Gælic Brìde, Welsh Ffraid, English Bridget] does indeed share the same root as the name (really an epithet) for the goddess, deriving from the unattested proto-Celtic name Brigantī, meaning ‘the High One’. However, apart from such circumstantial suggestions, ‘there is little evidence of a direct connection between the two figures’.
Saint Brigid was born around the year 451 in Faughart, now a ruin on the Northern Irish border six kilometres south of Forkhill and three kilometres north of Dundalk in County Louth. Her father was a chieftain named Dubhthach, and her mother was a Pictish slave named Brocca who had been baptised as a Christian by Saint Padrig. Dubhthach’s jealous wife forced him to put Brocca aside when she grew pregnant, and sell her to a druid nearby. Brocca gave birth in this druid’s household, and the druid attempted to feed her. However, she spat out all the food the heathen priest gave her, and was fed instead by the milk of a white cow with red ears, which was kept in the druid’s yard.
The druid sold Brigid and her mother back to Dubhthach when she was about ten years of age, and she entered her father’s house as a slave alongside her mother. Even at this age she had an incredible degree of generosity. When she was a youth, she was brought to the Liturgy by her mother, where she listened with great attention to the homilies of Saint Padrig, which inspired her to a degree of self-giving unusual for a child of ten. On one occasion she gave away her mother’s entire store of butter to the poor. Afraid of being punished by her angry mother, she prayed fervently to God, and it was later discovered that the stores of butter had been wondrously replenished. In the household of her father, she would ‘donate’ from her father’s clothes and other belongings to any needy person who asked.
This habit of hers infuriated Dubhthach, who at last resolved on selling her off to the king of Leinster. He brought her in his chariot to Leinster, and while he was negotiating with the king on her price, she saw a beggar by the side of the road. She took her father’s jewelled dagger, which had been wrought in Faughart as a gift for the king, from the chariot and gave it to the beggar for him to feed his family. The king of Leinster and her father both observed her as she did this – Dubhthach with outrage and mortification, and Leinster with approval. The king of Leinster would not buy her for himself, but he ultimately convinced her father to set her free, as it was obvious to him that she was a holy youth and well-disposed to a life consecrated to God.
Ultimately, the young Brigid was presented to Saint Mael of Ardagh – a nephew of Saint Padrig and one of his assiduous disciples in converting Ireland. Saint Mael consecrated Brigid as a nun along with seven other young women, and in some accounts even accorded her the honours due to a bishop! She was sent first to live a holy life at Kilbride (in County Offaly on the inlandmost side of Leinster) in 468, and here she spent several years. In 480 the King of Leinster invited Saint Brigid back and granted her a holding at Kildare (from Cill Dara – the ‘Church of the Oak’), on the plains of Curragh. Saint Brigid asked for only as much land as her cloak would cover. The king of Leinster agreed, seeing that her cloak was so small. But when she went to Curragh and spread out her cloak, by a wonder of God it seemed her cloak kept unrolling until it covered several acres. Beholding this wonder of God, the king did not go back on his word but allowed her to build there.
Here she founded an oratory and a monastic cell – the first such cloister for women in Ireland. In earlier times Cill Dara had been consecrated by the druids to the goddess Brigantia (another circumstance which has been drawn on by fans of the euhemerism theory), where virgins constantly tended an ‘æternal flame’ in her honour. However, under the saint who shared her name, tended instead were the flames of charity, hope and faith in Christ.
Not just young women, but even men had been drawn to Kildare by tales of Saint Brigid’s holiness, which when they saw it for themselves led them to desire a life consecrated to Christ. The monastery at Kildare was therefore consecrated as a double monastery – Brigid governed the one for women, while she selected a hermit named Conláed to lead the one for men. Saint Brigid travelled often from Kildare, preached the Gospel and founded other nunneries all around Ireland. She was of great assistance to Saint Padrig, and the two of them held each other in the highest affection and esteem. They were said to have been of one mind and one opinion.
Brigid and Conláed presided over one of the first Irish scriptoria as well. The illuminated Book of Kildare, described in glowing terms as a rival to the Book of Kells by the Welsh deacon Gerald in the twelfth century, was, to a large degree, the work of Saint Brigid herself. Saint Brigid was a sponsor and producer of many beautiful works of holy art including metalworking, and she quickly became a saintly patroness not only of scribes and illuminators but also musicians, poets and smiths.
Crosses made from rushes are associated with Saint Brigid as well. The hagiographies have it that Saint Brigid was called to attend a heathen man, a lord, who was sick and on his deathbed. Being feverish, the man wasn’t entirely in his right mind. Brigid picked up several rushes from the floor – flooring at that time often being made from such material – broke them and wove them together to form a distinctive cross. The sick man asked what she was doing, and patiently Brigid began to explain the Cross and its significance. Her conversation had the effect of soothing the man’s mind, and he came to believe in Christ before his death, through Brigid’s demonstrations and teaching. Since that time, it’s been customary in Ireland to weave crosses from rushes on Saint Brigid’s feast day.
Saint Brigid was a wonderworker, and wrought as many as forty-six wonders of God in her lifetime, with her request to the king of Leinster and the subsequent wonder of her cloak being spread over Kildare often being counted as the first. She cast out devils with the sign of the Cross, and she healed the blind. But many of her miracles involved food – as seen from the above anecdote about her prayer to God filling her mother’s store of butter after she gave it all away. Often these wonders would echo Christ’s feeding of the multitudes. When unexpected travellers came to visit Kildare and she didn’t have enough milk to feed them, Saint Brigid’s cows could be milked three times a day to sate their wants. At one time a large group of pilgrims visited Kildare and Saint Brigid had only a small pat of butter on hand, but this butter satisfied all their hunger. Honey would miraculously appear in Brigid’s refectory for her to give to beggars.
Not only do Brigid’s wonders involving milk and honey carry an obvious echo from the Hebrew Scriptures, but to mediæval Gælic ears they were also indicative of prestige. Milk in particular was associated with nourishment, healing and purity. Thus Saint Brigid’s wonders established her in the eyes of the early Gæls as a powerful patroness – but her choices of beneficiaries were always the poor, the indebted, the rootless, the kinless, the sick and the desperate. In a præ-feudal œconomy based on kinship and patronage, Brigid’s miracles also established her radicalism: she bestowed her wealth and purity on the people who had the least of both.
Saint Brigid reposed in the Lord, in peace among her nuns, in the year 525. She received the Gifts from a certain Ninnidh ‘of the Pure Hand’, but this is probably not the same person as Saint Ninnidh ‘the One-Eyed’ of Inishmacsaint. Her cultus is centred at Kildare, with her shrine having once been located at Kildare Cathedral. Her relics are now located at Down Cathedral alongside those of Saint Padrig and Saint Colum Cille. Saint Brigid is also venerated in Portugal; a skull said to be hers is enshrined at the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Lumiar, having been brought there in the thirteenth century by Irish crusaders. Her veneration is ubiquitous in Ireland and she is revered with Padrig and Colum Cille as one of Ireland’s three national patrons. She has a large number of holy wells throughout Ireland, with the most significant being the one at Kildare. Holy mother Brigid, wonderworker and open-handed friend to the poor, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
O holy Brigid, you became sublime through your humility,
And flew on the wings of your longing for God.
When you arrived in the eternal City and appeared before your Divine Spouse,
Wearing the crown of virginity,
You kept your promise
To remember those who have recourse to you.
You shower grace upon the world, and multiply miracles.
Intercede with Christ our God that He may save our souls.
Cathedral of Saint Brigid, Kildare, Ireland
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