Monday, January 31, 2022

St Brigid (450-525 AD) – Feast Day: 1st February 2022

 

St Brigid's Rush Cross

On 1st February, we celebrate the feast day of St Brigid of Ireland. Originally, this was a pagan festival called Imbolc which marked the beginning of spring.

Who was St Brigid?

St Brigid is one of the Patron Saints of Ireland, together with St Patrick and St Colmcille. She was born in Faughart, north of Dundalk, Co Louth in Ireland, approximately 450 AD and was the founder of the first monastery in County Kildare. Her father was a pagan chieftain of Leinster named Dubthach and her mother was a Christian slave named Brocca.

Dubthach’s wife insisted that he get rid of the slave girl. He sold Brigid’s mother to a poet but not the child in her womb for whom he was responsible. Later, the poet sold Brigid’s mother to a druid. As Brigid was filled with the Holy Spirit, she could not digest the druid’s ‘unclean’ food and

‘thereupon he chose a white cow and set it aside for the girl, and a certain Christian woman, a very God-fearing virgin, used to milk the cow and the girl used to drink the cow’s milk and not vomit it up as her stomach had been healed. Moreover, this Christian woman fostered the girl’.

When she was young, St Brigid wanted to join a convent. However, her father insisted that she marry a rich man to whom he had promised her hand. According to legend, Brigid prayed that her beauty be taken so no one would want to marry her and her prayer was granted. It was not until after she made her final vows that her beauty was restored. 

Brigid enlisted God’s help again to convince her father to give her land on which to build a convent. Her father agreed to give her as much land as her cloak could cover. It is said that the cloak grew to cover 2,000 acres of land! One of five ancient roads in Ireland that lead to Tara passed through Kildare.

St Brigid's Cathedral
Kildare, Ireland

According to tradition, around 480 AD Brigid founded a monastery at Kildare (Cill Dara: “church of the oak”), on the site of a pagan shrine to the Celtic goddess Brigit. Her monastery developed a reputation for hospitality, compassion and generosity. It was known as the ‘City of the Poor’. St Brigid worked with the sick, poor, and outcast.

As monastic communities grew, they attracted a resident local community. The monasteries provided for the spiritual needs of local families and taught the children. The monastery and the village grew together. The monks undertook tasks such as the creating and copying of literature and highly specialised metalware.

St Brigid’s Rush Cross

On one occasion, St Brigid was sitting by the sick bed of a dying pagan chieftain comforting him with stories of her faith in God. She told him the story of Christ on the cross while at the same time picking up rushes from the ground to make a cross. Before he died, the chieftain asked to be baptised. People made similar crosses to hang over the door of their homes to scare off evil, fire and hunger. Word spread of St Brigid’s kindness and faith and the making of the cross from rushes that we know today became associated with her name.

Saint Brigid as depicted
in Saint Non's Chapel, St Davids, Wales

It was said that St Brigid could miraculously milk her cows three times a day to provide a meal for visitors. According to the Celtic tradition, the guest was seen as Christ and hospitality was extended in that spirit.

Brigid later founded a school of art that included metalwork and illumination. It was at this school that the Book of Kildare, which Gerald of Wales praised as "the work of angelic, and not human skill," was beautifully illuminated. Sadly, this book was lost three centuries ago.

We can also see the merging of pagan and Christian art as Christianity gradually replaced paganism. For example, two of the grave slabs at Carrowntemple, Co. Sligo, bear art of the Early Christian period that is derived from the Celtic art of the preceding Pagan Iron Age. One of these is remarkably close to a design in the Book of Durrow and is datable to c. 650 AD.

The Celts worshipped hundreds of gods and goddesses. In some respects, the nature of the Celtic religion helped in the development of Christianity. Their belief in the indestructibility of the souls of the dead helped in understanding the resurrection of Christ. The Celts also had their own sacrifices and ritual meals which, in a sense, mirrored aspects of Christian message.

Brigid’s enduring legacy

St Brigid still lives on 1,500 years later in the minds and hearts of the people of Ireland. Her monastery grew and grew and people from all over Ireland came here, many of whom joined the monastery. St Patrick and St Brigid paved the way for Christianity in Ireland and later to Europe.

Hundreds of holy wells are dedicated to St Brigid in Ireland. Early Irish texts suggest that holy wells may have remained associated with non-Christian rituals and were even protected by the old religion. For example, it is believed that wells were used instead of baptisteries in Ireland, which may explain the large number of holy wells throughout the country.

More places names in Ireland are named after St Brigid than St Patrick himself. St Brigid is associated with fertility on the land. Straw doll-like effigies of St Brigid known as Breedeag were used to bless homes.

St Brigid’s relevance today.

St Brigid appreciated the importance of the land, nature and the seasons. At a time when our planet is threatened by global warming and climate change, Brigid reminds us of the need to confront these challenges now. Today, we can learn from her example of compassion, kindness, generosity, and hospitality, as the World deals with the consequences of poverty, war, population displacement and the current Covid-19 pandemic.

On February 1st, 525, St Brigid died of natural causes. Her body was initially kept to the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral. In 1185, John de Courcy had her remains relocated in Down Cathedral. Today, Saint Brigid's skull can be found in the Church of St. John the Baptist in Lumiar, Portugal. The tomb in which it is kept bears the inscription,

"Here in these three tombs lie the three Irish knights who brought the head of St. Brigid, Virgin, a native of Ireland, whose relic is preserved in this chapel. In memory of which, the officials of the Altar of the same Saint caused this to be done in January AD 1283."

In 1905 Sister Mary Agnes of the Dundalk Convent of Mercy took a purported fragment of the skull to St Bridget's Church in Kilcurry. In 1928, Fathers Timothy Traynor and James McCarroll requested another fragment for St Brigid's Church in Killester, a request granted by the Bishop of Lisbon, António Mendes Belo.

For further information please see: 

References:

(1) Sacred Heart Messenger, February 2019 – article by John Scally

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UwJD00w9UM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndQKbE0M7l8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqpJkSfIrAc