On the life, miracles, and charity of the “Mary of the Gael”

Today is “Lá Fhéile Bríde, Brigid’s Day,” the liturgical feast and Irish national holiday in honor of the monastic foundress of Kildare, who along with Patrick and Columba, is the patron saint of Ireland. The popular piety of the Irish extols St. Brigid with the epithet “Mary of the Gael,” likening her character to the All-Holy Mother of God.

Throughout many generations, few Irish families were without a girl named after her. So renowned was her reputation for goodness and virtue that an old tale suggests the word “bride” is derived from her name, as gentlemen took to calling their soon-to-be wives after the saint.¹

Though there are no surviving contemporary accounts of Brigid’s life, a corpus of writings about her emerged a century after her death, in both Latin and Old Irish, which testifies to the extraordinary growth of her cult.

The earliest surviving references to Brigid are two hymns composed in her honor by St. Ultan (d. 657) the bishop of Ardbraccan, and his student, St. Broccán Clóen (d.650). Records indicate that Ultan had collected a list of Brigid’s miracles, which was used as a source for Broccán’s hymn and the later early medieval “Vitae, Lives” that would be written about her. Unfortunately, this work is lost.

The most well-known of these hagiographical works was written around 650 by a monk of the monastery Brigid founded at Kildare named Cogitosus. Another early work from later in the seventh century is thought to be an adaptation of Ultan’s lost text with an abridgement by St. Ailerán the Wise (d. 665), a scholar of St. Finnian’s School at Clonard. Later “Lives” of Brigid were written in first millennium, but all were mostly based on these earlier works of Ultan, Broccán, Cogitosus, and Ailerán from the 7^th century.

This dossier of “Lives” is one of the earliest and most extensive of any Irish saint, which testifies to how revered Brigid was in Kildare, and even beyond the Province of Leinster not long after her death.² Despite this, Brigid remains an elusive figure. These early sources provide little biographical information, lack chronological coherence, and mostly consist of legendary accounts of miracles and acts of charity.³

A note of caution on this point is needed. It is an increasingly popular belief, especially among the budding neo-pagan movement in Ireland, that Brigid the saint, may not have existed at all.⁴ Beginning in the Victorian era, scholars have proposed that the pre-Christian Irish cult of the pagan goddess named Brigid (also known as Bríg, or Brigit), was transformed into the cult of the saint depicting the same goddess in Christian guise.

This theory is primarily based upon similarities between the names and associations of the goddess and the saint with livestock and dairy workers. As an agrarian society, however, this was to be expected of most women in Ireland. The supposed similarities between the goddess and the saint are extremely vague.

The reality is, if few historic details are known for certain about Brigid the saint, far less is known about Brigid the goddess. Almost all that is known about ancient Celtic mythology comes from Christian monks writing centuries after Irish paganism had already disappeared. It was the Christian Church that introduced the manuscript tradition of preserving writing to Ireland.

The writings that emerged about St. Brigid only a century after her death were about a real woman. Cogitosus, for instance, was a monk from Brigid’ monastery who describes Brigid’s tomb and the devotion rendered to it by many pilgrims. If Cogitosus wrote his “Life” as an older man, he could have used as sources witnesses who knew Brigid personally.⁵

The life of Saint Brigid of Kildare

Parsing the sources that are present only a century after Brigid’s death, a general consensus of her life is as follows.

Brigid was born in the mid-400s in Faughart, now a ruin on the Northern Irish border about two miles from Dundalk in County Louth, the Province of Leinster.

Her parents were a chieftain named Dubthach and a slave woman named Broicsech. When Broicsech became pregnant by her master, she was reluctantly sold to the household of a druid to assuage the resentment of Dubthach’s wife. In the sale of Broicsech, however, Dubthach retained rights over the unborn child, expecting its return when it came of age.

The “Lives” imply Brigid was a Christian from youth. Her most prominent early biographer, Cogitosus, says both her parents were Christians. St. Patrick, who brought the gospel to Ireland, is generally believed to have died in 461 when Brigid was a young girl. He could have baptized Brigid and her parents. How are we to reconcile this, however, with Dubthach’s polygamy, abuse of slaves, and willingness to have his daughter reared in the house of a druid?

We can surmise that it would take time for the pagan mores of 5^th to 6^th century Ireland to yield to the ethics of Christianity. The social values of the time were likely still in a state of flux.”⁶

To avoid this conundrum altogether, most retellings of Brigid’s life state her mother was a Christian but her father was a pagan.

An oft-repeated legend says that Brigid was born in the threshold of a door⁷ at dawn on February 1^st, the same day as her death and current liturgical feast. February 1^st was also Imbolc, one of the four pagan Celtic seasonal festivals that marks the beginning of spring, falling as it does about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Brigid’s birth was symbolic of a major transition in Ireland. This newborn was destined by God to lead Ireland into a new era. The good work begun by Patrick would be brought to completion by Brigid. She would lead Ireland from paganism to Christianity as through the portal of a door, as if moving from night into day and from one season of the year to another. Patrick planted, the newborn Brigid will water, and God gives the increase (cf. 1 Cor 3:6).

As a young girl in the druid’s house, Brigid began to manifest her closeness to God through the working of miracles and an extraordinary charity towards the poor

When she came of age, she was returned to her father Dubthach, but her relations with him were quickly strained. Without permission, she frequently gave away his food and possessions to those in need. When she was denied permission to visit her mother who was still enslaved, she went anyways. While there, she miraculously multiplied butter; a feat so impressive that the druid was converted and her mother set free.

When Brigid returned to Dubthach with her birth mother, he was so enraged he sought to sell Brigid to the King of Leinster. As he spoke to the king, Brigid was made to wait outside in the carriage. When she was approached by a beggar, she gave away her father’s jeweled sword so the beggar could barter it for food to feed his family. Dubthach was furious but the king was impressed. He shrewdly reasoned that she would be a nuisance to both their households and convinced Dubthach to grant Brigid her full freedom.

Brigid’s father pressured his free daughter to marry. She insisted instead on becoming a nun, answering that her only Bridegroom would be Christ the Lord.

Consecrated religious life was a part of the Irish Church before Brigid’s time. Patrick recounts in his Confession that many daughters of chieftains were becoming “virgins for Christ,” even in the face of opposition from their parents. So many, in fact, that he was not able to keep count of them all.

Brigid received the veil along with seven others at the hand of St. Mél, the bishop of Ardagh and nephew of Patrick. This bishop served as a patron to the group until his death in 488. Sometime after this, Brigid led her companions in establishing a monastery at Kildare—“Celldara, Church of the Oaks.” This monastery would develop so rapidly, along with a community around it, that it assumed the proportions of a city. It was in need of a bishop, so Brigid recruited St. Conleth, a hermit and renowned metalworker, to establish an episcopal see at Kildare. A cathedral church was erected which served what became a unique “double monastery” of a separately-housed community of monks led by the abbot and bishop, Conleth, and the nuns led by the abbess Brigid.

After founding this “mother house” at Kildare, Brigid took up the mantle of Patrick in traveling throughout the island nation establishing monasteries for women that contributed enormously to the piety, learning, and further Christianization of Ireland.

The miracles and charity of the “Mary of the Gael”

Brigid was renowned for her miracles, such as restoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, hanging her cloak on a sunbeam and with an Irish spirit, turning water into beer. She was loved for her charity to the poor who held the first place in her affection. And she was revered for her wisdom as many contemporaries, who would also be raised to the altar as saints, came to her for counsel.

Brigid reposed in the Lord around 525 after receiving the last rites from St. Ninnidh. Her body was entombed in a lavishly decorated shrine at her monastery in Kildare that attracted many pilgrims from long distances. Irish missionaries, and later, immigrants, would spread devotion to her throughout the world.

Though she would come to be venerated by later generations as one of the “Trias Thaumaturga, Three Wonder-Working” saints of Ireland along with Patrick and Columba, “No burning enthusiasm for Brigid in later centuries could rival that of her own time,” says Alice Curtayne, who continues: “The sixth century loved her supremely. She is one of those rare cases of the prophet being accorded all honour in his own country; she was the seer who was not stoned; the patriot who was not sold. In a universal shout of acclamation, her own day ungrudgingly gave her her due.”⁸

Her most popular symbol in art is a primitive cross made of rushes which comes from a touching story.

There was a pagan chieftain who was dying, and Christians of his household sent for the saint seeking his conversion. The man was delirious and would listen to nobody. Sitting calmly at his bedside, Brigid stooped down and collected some rushes from the dirt floor and quietly began weaving them into the shape of the cross. The dying man gave in to his curiosity and asked her what she was up to. Brigid then patiently spoke to him of the salvation Jesus Christ had brought to the world through the Cross. As she talked, the man became calm and listened intently. Brigid finished her lesson at the same time she finished weaving the cross out of the rushes. Her words both soothed and converted the dying man, who venerated the cross she had made with a kiss before being baptized.

A popular custom in Ireland is to weave a new “St. Brigid’s Cross” each year on her feast day in the common swastika or diamond shape, and to hang it over the door of the family home.

At some point on the 9^th century, Brigid’s relics had to be transferred from Kildare to Downpatrick in light of an impending Viking invasion. St. Columba’s relics were scurried there too from Iona, which also came under threat from the Scandinavian sea-kings. They were brought to the cemetery of the town’s cathedral to be laid to rest beside Patrick.⁹ As the famous verse reads: “In Down, three saints one grave do fill, Patrick, Brigid and Columcille.” There in the same grave, the mortal remains of Ireland’s three patron saints await the resurrection at the end of the age.

The vicissitudes of history make the exact location of their relics unknown to us today. In the cemetery of Downpatrick’s Protestant Cathedral there is a large granite boulder marking the symbolic spot with an inscription carved upon it of a Celtic cross but with only the name “PATRIC” cut in Irish characters.

Lacking one in stone, the true memorial to Brigid is her honored memory among the Irish people, who throughout the generations continue to hail her as the “Mary of the Gael.”

Endnotes:

1 Malachy McCourt, Malachy McCourt’s History of Ireland (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004), 37.

2 Information on the early historiography of St. Brigid: Noel Kissane, Saint Brigid of Kildare: Life, Legend and Cult (Portland, OR: Open Air, 2017), 40-42; 72-75. cf. Phillip Campbell, The Life of St. Brigid of Kildare by Cogitosus and other selected writings (Grass Lake, MI: Cruachan Hill Press, 2022), 5-10.

3 Kissane, 18.

4 Ibid., 20; 81-97. cf. Cruachan Hill Press has published an edition of Cogitosus’ “Life” along with other selected writings on St. Brigid that include superb essays by Philip Campbell debunking many misguided but common assertions about the saint. On the theory that St. Brigid is a transmogrified goddess, see: Campbell, 101-114.

5 Campbell, 114.

6 Ibid., 12.

7 Kissane, 81.

8 Ibid., 102-103.

9 Curtayne, 105-106. cf. Campbell, 30-32.