The founder and patron saint of the monastery of Kil-dare, St. Brigit (also Brigid, Brid, Bride, Bridget) is renowned as one of the three pillars of the early Christian Church in Ireland, along with Patrick and Colum Cille. According to later medieval tradition, her remains were buried with theirs at Downpatrick. She was also the patron saint of the Leinstermen and was said to protect them in battle. Her feast day is February 1.
No historical facts regarding Brigit and her works can be determined with any certainty; her very existence has been a matter of debate. All that is known about her is based on tradition, legend, and folklore, but a considerable number of documents relating to her have survived. These documents are among the earliest known hagiographical material in Ireland and include two extant Lives in Latin which date from the seventh century; a hymn to Brigit, attributed to Ultan of Ard-mBreccain, may also date from the seventh century. Among the other documents are two subsequent Latin Lives of uncertain dates; a fragment of a Life in Old Irish, from around the late eighth or early ninth centuries; a Latin Life composed by Lawrence of Durham in the twelfth century; and a homiletic Life in Middle Irish contained in the Book of Lismore. Later hymns to Brigit also survive, and she appears prominently in the martyrologies.
Brigit’s traditional genealogy makes her a member of a prominent family of the Fothairt; she was supposedly born at Faughart, near Dundalk, in County Louth. The author of one of her seventh-century Lives, Cogi-tosus, a monk of Kildare, relates that she was born to noble Christian parents; her father was Dubthach and her mother, Broicsech. Cogitosus describes the preeminence of the monastery in Ireland, as a community for both men and women and as an episcopal see ruled jointly by the abbess, Brigit, and her chosen bishop, Conlaed (Conleth). Their tombs, according to Cogito-sus, are placed on either side of the main altar in the church. Despite these details, Cogitosus’s Life consists mostly of a series of miracle stories based on the traditions of the community at Kildare: Brigit tames wild animals, controls the weather, miraculously provides food, and even hangs her wet cloak on a sunbeam. The other seventh-century Life, an anonymous work known as the Vita Prima (because it is the first of Brigit’s Lives in the Acta Sanctorum compiled by the Bollandists), uses the same sources as Cogitosus but contains a higher incidence of folkloristic material. In this Life, Brigit is the daughter of a nobleman, Dubthach, and a slavewoman whom Dubthach sells to a druid at his wife’s urging. The slavewoman is set to work in the dairy, where she gives birth to Brigit on the threshold at dawn. This birth legend persisted in Brigit’s tradition, as did her association with dairying and cattle. As an infant, Brigit refused to eat the druid’s food; she would eat only the milk of a white, red-eared cow milked by a holy virgin. As a young girl, she too worked in the dairy and produced vast quantities of butter and cheese. Later, as abbess of Kildare, she entertained a group of bishops for whom she milked her cows three times in one day. In modern iconography, Brigit is often depicted with a cow.
Brigit was renowned for her charity and her hospitality. As a child, she gave away so much of her father’s goods that he tried to sell her but was prevented by the local king, who was impressed by the girl’s piety and virtue. As an abbess, she continually gave to the poor, even giving away the bishop’s vestments; owing to her sanctity, she received perfect substitutes just in time for the celebration of the mass. At Easter, she miraculously provided ale for all of her churches from a small amount of malt. A poem attributed to Brigit ("St. Brigit’s Alefeast"), from no later than the ninth century, expresses her desire to provide a lake of ale for Christ.
Brigit’s hagiographers present her as a powerful and influential leader in both the ecclesiastical and secular communities. She receives bishops, including her contemporary, St. Patrick, and negotiates with local rulers. In the Old Irish Life, the anonymous author relates how, at Brigit’s consecration as a nun, the presiding bishop mistakenly read over her the orders of a bishop instead. This incident has led to speculation that Brigit was a female bishop, but this idea cannot be supported; in the same text, Brigit must call upon her priest to perform some necessary sacerdotal functions. The abbess of Kildare, however, did hold a high status within the early Irish church, which may have included the honors and privileges held by a bishop, but historically the bishop of Kildare performed all the requisite episcopal functions.
St. Brigit is often associated with a pagan Irish goddess, also named Brigit, whose own traditions have influenced the saint’s. The goddess Brigit appears to be the same as the pan-Celtic deity Brigantia, the tutelary goddess of the Brigantes. In Irish mythology, she was the daughter of the great god, the Dagda, and was the patron of smithying, healing, and poetry; she was also identified with a fire cult. A tenth-century text, Cormac’s Glossary (Sanas Cormaic) calls the goddess whom the poets (the filid) worshipped; she had two sisters, also named Brigit, and from these all goddesses in Ireland were named Brigit. Other sources make her the wife of Bres, a mythological king; when their son, Ruadan, is killed, Brigit reportedly keened the first lament heard in Ireland. Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), in his Topographia Hiberniae (The Topography of Ireland, c. 1185), recounts that nineteen nuns at Kildare, each in turn, watched over a perpetual fire in St. Brigit’s honor; on the twentieth night, the nuns left the fire to St. Brigit to tend. This fire never produced any ash and was kept within an enclosure that no man was permitted to enter. St. Brigit’s feast day coincides with the pagan Celtic festival of Imbolc, a fertility celebration and one of the four great festivals of the Celtic year. St. Brigit, too, in her tradition is revered as the patron of smiths, healers, and poets. Based on these associations, some have considered the saint to be a euhemerized and Christianized version of the goddess, but the strict relationship is inconclusive. A revival of the cult of the goddess in the twentieth century generated further speculation regarding the saint; however, although Brigit the saint has many of the same attributes as the goddess Brigit, her overall tradition is within a Christian milieu.
St. Brigit became closely associated with the Virgin Mary. The renowned bishop Ibor, as related in the Old Irish Life, saw Brigit appear in a dream as Mary and prophesied her arrival. Her Middle Irish Life celebrates her as the "Queen of the South, the Mary of the Gael." In a later Scottish tradition, Brigit appears as the midwife of Christ.
Brigit’s cult spread into Scotland and England, where she is often referred to as St. Bride, and into Wales, where she is known as St. Ffraid. Several dedications to her exist in place-names such as St. Bride’s and Bridewell. Her cult also spread to continental Europe. Although her historicity remains a matter of debate, the veneration of St. Brigit continues to the present day.
