 Saint Brigid of Ireland Saint Brigid of Ireland (Bridget, Bridgit, Brigit; in English St. Bride) (451- 525) was born at Faughart near Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. According to her hagiography, her parents were Dubhthach, pagan king of Leinster, and Brocca, a Christian Pictish slave who had been baptized by Saint Patrick. Saint Brigid of Ireland in stained glass. ...
Dundalk (Irish: Dún Dealgan) is the county town of County Louth in the Republic of Ireland, close to the border with Northern Ireland. ...
County Louth (An Lú in Irish) is a county on the east coast of Ireland. ...
Hagiography is the study of saints. ...
Paganism (from Latin paganus) and Heathenry are catch-all terms which have come to connote a broad set of spiritual/religious beliefs and practices of a natural religion, as opposed to the Abrahamic religions. ...
Leinster (Irish: Laighin) is the eastern province of Ireland, comprising the counties of Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow. ...
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Statue of Saint Patrick Saint Patrick (died March 17?, 492/493) is the patron saint of Ireland, along with Saint Brigid and Saint Columba. ...
Brigid bore the name of one of the most powerful goddesses of the pagan religion that Dubhthach practised. Brigid was the goddess of fire, whose manifestations were song and poetry, which the Irish considered the flame of knowledge. Brigid supposedly became a virgin in service to the Goddess Brigid and eventually ascended to high priestess at the Cill Dara ("Kildare", the temple of the oak), a pagan sanctuary built from the wood of the tree sacred to the Druids. In 468, she converted to Christianity and she followed St. Mel of Armagh to Meath. In Irish mythology as it is presently constituted, Brigit or Brighit (exalted one) was the daughter of Dagda (and therefore one of the Tuatha Dé Danann) and wife of Bres of the Fomorians. ...
Kildare (Irish: Cill Dara) is a town in County Kildare, Republic of Ireland. ...
Arch-Druid in his full Judicial Costume (1845 etching) In Celtic polytheism the word Druid denotes the priestly class in ancient Celtic societies, which existed through much of Western Europe north of the Alps and in the British Isles. ...
The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...
Armagh is a city in Northern Ireland, the capital of County Armagh. ...
Meath (An Mhí in Irish) is a county in the Republic of Ireland, the county is often informally called The Royal County. ...
Life Stories
Because of the legendary quality of the earliest accounts of Saint Brigid, there is debate among many scholars and even faithful Christians as to the literal historicity of her life. Some insist that Brigid the goddess was made a saint simply to convert Celtic pagans to Christianity. Others point to the relic of her head, which Portuguese pilgrims took from her shrine at Downpatrick and brought back to their homeland some time in the 15th Century; the relic now resides in a chapel consecrated to its veneration at Lumier. Some of the Roman Catholics relics are two thousand years old A view inside the shrine of Saint Boniface of Dokkum in the hermit-church of Warfhuizen. ...
A later vita states that upon reaching maturity, she vexed her father by being overly generous to the poor and needy with his milk, butter, and flour. Finally, she gave away his jewel-encrusted sword to a leper. At this point, it was decided that her disposition was best suited for a nun and she was sent to a convent. The legend does not preserve when or how her hitherto pagan father became amenable to such acts. Other tales likewise exist, and the only agreement between the various stories is that a girl was born to an Irish king named Dubhtach and that her name was Brigid. Vita (from the Latin word for life) can refer to a brief biography, often that of a saint (i. ...
This article is about the infectious disease also known as Hansens disease. ...
Nun in cloister, 1930; photograph by Doris Ulmann In general, a nun is a female ascetic who chooses to voluntarily leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent. ...
This article is about an abbey as a religious building. ...
Around 470 she founded a Christian double monastery, of nuns and monks, at Kildare (Cill-Dara). Either she converted the pagan sanctuary of Cill Dara or built on unused ground nearby, depending upon the particular story consulted. She founded the scriptorium at the monastery where the famous illuminated manuscript the Book of Kildare was created. She died at Kildare on February 1 and is buried at Downpatrick with St. Columcille and St. Patrick, with whom she is co-patron of Ireland. The Tikse monastery in Ladakh, India A monastery is the habitation of monks, derived from the Greek word for a hermits cell. ...
A Roman Catholic monk A monk is a person who practices monasticism, adopting a strict religious and ascetic lifestyle, usually in community with others following the same path. ...
Kildare (Irish: Cill Dara) is a town in County Kildare, Republic of Ireland. ...
A Scriptorium was a room or building, usually within a Christian monastery where, during medieval times, manuscripts were written. ...
Kildare (Irish: Cill Dara) is a town in County Kildare, Republic of Ireland. ...
Downpatrick (Dún Phádraig in Irish, meaning Fort of Patrick) is a town in County Down in Northern Ireland with about 10,113 inhabitants. ...
Saint Columba sometimes known as (7 December 521 - 9 June 597), the Latinized version of the Irish name Colmcille (Old Irish Columb Cille) meaning Dove of the church, was the outstanding figure among the Irish missionary monks who reintroduced Christianity to Scotland and the north of England during the Dark...
Statue of Saint Patrick Saint Patrick (died March 17?, 492/493) is the patron saint of Ireland, along with Saint Brigid and Saint Columba. ...
Symbology and Legends Similar to the association between St. Patrick and the shamrock, a tiny cross made of rushes was linked with St. Brigid. Legend has it she made the cross from rushes she found on the ground beside a dying man in order to convert him. Some houses in Ireland have a Brigid's Cross, it is a commonly believed by some that a Brigid's Cross protects the house from fire. A new cross is made each St Brigid's Day, February 1, and the old one is then burned to keep the fire from the house. Brigids cross, Brighids cross, or Brigits cross, or Crosóg Brigde(in gaelic) is an old Irish symbol, probably derivative of the pagan sunwheel. ...
Legend has it that, when she was consecrated to the rank of Abbess, St. Mel was elderly and inadvertently read the consecration for a Bishop and that this could not be rescinded, under any circumstances. Of course, such an error could have easily been remedied had it actually occurred, as the ordination would have been considered illegitimate from the start. What is more likely is that a unique administrative status was conferred upon the Abbess of Kildare, since, while there is no record of St. Brigid acting in the liturgical capacity of a bishop, she and her successor Abbesses at Kildare had administrative authority equal to that of a Bishop until the Synod of Kells in 1152. An Abbess (Latin abbatissa, fem. ...
A bishop is an ordained member of the Christian clergy who, in certain Christian churches, holds a position of authority. ...
In "How the Irish Saved Civilization" Thomas Cahill relates how one of the miracles attibuted to St. Brigid was "curing" the pregnancy of a young nun before her mother superior found out. Irreligious wags have called her the "Patron Saint of Abortion Providers".
St. Brigid's feast day is February 1. Many Irish schools, including the High School in Armagh, are called after St. Brigid. February 1 is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
See also Born in 451 or 452 of princely ancestors at Faughart, near Dundalk, County Louth; d. 1 February, 525, at Kildare. Refusing many good offers of marriage, she became a nun and received the veil from St. Macaille. With seven other virgins she settled for a time at the foot of Croghan Hill, but removed thence to Druin Criadh, in the plains of Magh Life, where under a large oak tree she erected her subsequently famous Convent of Cill-Dara, that is, "the church of the oak" (now Kildare), in the present county of that name. It is exceedingly difficult to reconcile the statements of St. Brigid's biographers, but the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Lives of the saint are at one in assigning her a slave mother in the court of her father Dubhthach, and Irish chieftain of Leinster. Probably the most ancient life of St. Brigid is that by St. Broccan Cloen, who is said to have died 17 September, 650. It is metrical, as may be seen from the following specimen:
Ni bu Sanct Brigid suanach Ni bu huarach im sheire Dé, Sech ni chiuir ni cossens Ind nóeb dibad bethath che. (Saint Brigid was not given to sleep, Nor was she intermittent about God's love; Not merely that she did not buy, she did not seek for The wealth of this world below, the holy one.)
Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare in the eighth century, expounded the metrical life of St. Brigid, and versified it in good Latin. This is what is known as the "Second Life", and is an excellent example of Irish scholarship in the mid-eighth century. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Cogitosus's work is the description of the Cathedral of Kildare in his day: "Solo spatioso et in altum minaci proceritate porruta ac decorata pictis tabulis, tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis". The rood-screen was formed of wooden boards, lavishly decorated, and with beautifully decorated curtains. Probably the famous Round Tower of Kildare dates from the sixth century. Although St. Brigid was "veiled" or received by St. Macaille, at Croghan, yet, it is tolerably certain that she was professed by St. Mel of Ardagh, who also conferred on her abbatial powers. From Ardagh St. Macaille and St. Brigid followed St. Mel into the country of Teffia in Meath, including portions of Westmeath and Longford. This occurred about the year 468. St. Brigid's small oratory at Cill- Dara became the centre 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 St. Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to St. 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 St. 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 superioress general of the convents in Ireland. Not alone was St. Bridget a patroness of students, but she also founded a school of art, including metal work and illumination, over which St. Conleth presided. From the Kildare scriptorium came the wondrous book of the Gospels, which elicited unbounded praise from Giraldus Cambrensis, but which has disappeared since the Reformation. According to this twelfth- century ecclesiastic, nothing that he had ever seen was at all comparable to the "Book of Kildare", every page of which was gorgeously illuminated, and he concludes a most laudatory notice 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". Small wonder that Gerald Barry assumed the book to have been written night after night as St. Bridget prayed, "an angel furnishing the designs, the scribe copying". Even allowing for the exaggerated stories told of St. Brigid by her numerous biographers, it is certain that she ranks as one of the most remarkable Irishwomen of the fifth century and as the Patroness of Ireland. She is lovingly called the "Queen of the South: the Mary of the Gael" by a writer in the "Leabhar Breac". St. Brigid died leaving a cathedral city and school that became famous all over Europe. In her honour St. Ultan wrote a hymn commencing:
Christus in nostra insula Que vocatur Hivernia Ostensus est hominibus Maximis mirabilibus Que perfecit per felicem Celestis vite virginem Precellentem pro merito Magno in numdi circulo. (In our island of Hibernia Christ was made known to man 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 printed by Colgan is attributed to Coelan, an Irish monk of the eighth century, and it derives a peculiar importance from the fact that it is prefaced by a foreword from the pen of St. Donatus, also an Irish monk, who became Bishop of Fiesole in 824. St. Donatus refers to previous lives by St. Ultan and St. Aileran. When dying, St. Brigid was attended by St. Ninnidh, who was ever afterwards known as "Ninnidh of the Clean Hand" because he had his right hand encased with a metal covering to prevent its ever being defiled, after being the medium of administering the viaticum to Ireland's Patroness. She was interred at the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral, and a costly tomb was erected over her. In after years her shrine was an object of veneration for pilgrims, especially on her feast day, 1 February, as Cogitosus related. About the year 878, owing to the Scandinavian raids, the relics of St. Brigid were taken to Downpatrick, where they were interred in the tomb of St. Patrick and St. Columba. The relics of the three saints were discovered in 1185, and on 9 June of the following year were solemnly translated to a suitable resting place in Downpatrick Cathedral, in presence of Cardinal Vivian, fifteen bishops, and numerous abbots and ecclesiastics. Various Continental breviaries of the pre-Reformation period commemorate St. Brigid, and her name is included in a litany in the Stowe Missal. In Ireland to-day, after 1500 years, the memory of "the Mary of the Gael" is as dear as ever to the Irish heart, and, as is well known, Brigid preponderates as a female Christian name. Moreover, hundreds of place-names in her honour are to be found all over the country, e.g. Kilbride, Brideswell, Tubberbride, Templebride, etc. The hand of St. Brigid is preserved at Lumiar near Lisbon, Portugal, since 1587, and another relic is at St. Martin's Cologne. Viewing the biography of St. Brigid from a critical standpoint we must allow a large margin for the vivid Celtic imagination and the glosses of medieval writers, but still the personality of the founder of Kildare stands out clearly, and we can with tolerable accuracy trace the leading events in her life, by a careful study of the old "Lives" as found in Colgan. It seems certain that Faughart, associated with memories of Queen Meave (Medhbh), was the scene of her birth; and Faughart Church was founded by St. Morienna in honour of St. Brigid. The old well of St. Brigid's adjoining the ruined church is of the most venerable antiquity, and still attracts pilgrims; in the immediate vicinity is the ancient mote of Faughart. As to St. Brigid's stay in Connacht, especially in the County Roscommon, there is ample evidence in the "Trias Thaumaturga", as also in the many churches founded by her in the Diocese of Elphim. Her friendship with St. Patrick is attested by the following paragraph from the "Book of Armagh", a precious manuscript of the eighth century, the authenticity of which is beyond question: "inter sanctum Patricium Brigitanque Hibernesium columpnas amicitia caritatis inerat tanta, ut unum cor consiliumque haberent unum. Christus per illum illamque virtutes multas peregit". (Between St. Patrick and St. 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 Fitz Aldelm. It may be added that the original manuscript of Cogitosus's "Life of Brigid", or the "Second Life", dating from the closing years of the eighth century, is now in the Dominican friary at Eichstatt in Bavaria
Brigids cross, Brighids cross, or Brigits cross, or Crosóg Brigde(in gaelic) is an old Irish symbol, probably derivative of the pagan sunwheel. ...
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