Part 3 – The Life of St Brigid
The first Life of St Brigid was written not much later than 650, and perhaps even within a hundred years of her death. The author was a monk of the foundation in Kildare named Cogitosus. The “Life” was not really a biography as we would understand it, but rather a compilation of stories of St Brigid. It gives us a fascinating glimpse of life in Kildare some 1400 years ago. He describes the great church of Kildare where the bodies of Saints Brigid and Conleth were:
“laid on the right and left of the ornate altar and rest in tombs adorned with a refined profusion of gold, silver, gems and precious stones, with gold and silver chandeliers hanging from above and different images presenting a variety of carvings and colours”
The Annals record that in the year 836 a Danish fleet of 30 ships arrived in the Liffey and another in the Boyne. They plundered every church and abbey within the territories of Magh Liffe and Magh Breagh. They destroyed the town of Kildare with fire and sword, and carried off the shrines of St Brigid and St Conleth.
It is said that in fact in the previous year, 835, the remains of St. Brigid were removed for safe keeping to Down. However Down suffered too from the “Danes”. Accordingly her body was removed from Down and buried in a place known only to a few priests so that eventually all knowledge of her burial place was lost. In 1185 St. Malachy was bishop of Down, and wanting to discover the burial place of St. Brigid who was supposed to have been buried with St Patrick and St Columba, prayed hard to the Lord to reveal the burial place. A beam of light settled over a spot on the floor of the church and sure enough when St. Malachy dug at this spot he found the graves of Saints Patrick, Brigid and Columcille. Malachy petitioned Pope Urban 111 for permission to move the bodies to Down Cathedral. The move took place on 9 Jun 1186, the Feast of St. Columcille. At the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII, the sacred shrine was despoiled and the relics of the Saints were scattered. Luckily some were saved from destruction. The head of St. Brigid now rests in Portugal, in a chapel devoted to her in the Church of St. John the Baptist in Lumiar, near Lisbon, where her feast is celebrated yearly. The farmers in the locality are said to regard St Brigid as their special patroness.
Let’s take a look at the similarities between the pagan Celtic Goddess Brid and the Christian Saint Brigid:
- St Brigid’s Day.Celebrated on 1st February, the pagan feast of Imbolg, the festival of Spring, the coming of fertility to the land. Even today it is still the occasion of popular and patently un-Christian rituals such as the Bridoge and the Biddy doll.
- St Brigid’s Fire.Described by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century, as having been tended by twenty “servants of the Lord”, at the time of St Brigid; Brigid herself being the twentieth. When Brigid died the number stayed at nineteen. Each of the nineteen nuns took their turns at night and on the twentieth night the nineteenth nun puts the logs on the fire and St Brigid miraculously tends the fire, which never goes out. Although the fire had been burning for some 600 years, by the time of Giraldus, the ashes had never had to be cleaned out and had never increased. He goes on to describe the fire being surrounded by a hedge which no man may cross. One archer who was with Strongbow is said by Giraldus to have crossed the hedge, and he went mad. Another had put his leg over the hedge when he was restrained by his companions. However the leg he put across was maimed and he was crippled for the rest of his life. There is another legend associating Brigid with fire. When she was a child, her mother had gone out one day leaving the child asleep. The neighbours saw the house on fire but when they went to rescue the child there was no fire. The cult of fire is very ancient indeed, going back into pre-history. The fire continued to be tended for at least 1,000 years, with one interruption in the 1200s when Henry of London, Norman arch-bishop of Dublin, ordered it to be extinguished as he considered the tending of the fire to be a pagan practice. It was soon re-lit, by the locals, but was finally extinguished at the Reformation.
- The Oak TreeAs with many other peoples, certain trees and groves of trees were sacred to the Celts and treated with veneration. The Druids appear to have been specially concerned with the oak tree, and they are described by a Roman writer as being dressed in white while climbing the oak with golden sickles to cut mistletoe. They then sacrificed a white bull and held a feast. We may assume that a special tree was associated with many of the cult sites. The place-names and literature of the Celtic world contain much evidence about the use of single sacred trees and sacred groves as the focal points for ritual and tribal assembly. One such tree would appear to have been sacred on the hill of Kildare, and it was under this tree that Brigid built her cell. The stump of this tree is said to have still been there in the 10th century and it was held in great veneration as many miracles were wrought through it. No one dare cut it, but might break off a bit with the fingers.
- St Brigid’s CrossesThese might actually be symbols of sun worship representing the sun in the centre with rays of light coming from it in the shape of the arms of the cross. A story of St Brigid miraculously hanging her wet clothes on a sunbeam to dry may also be associated with an older tradition of sun worship.
- St Brigid’s WellsWe have numerous wells associated with the Saint, not alone in Ireland but in Britain also. Wells were also often the sites of veneration in the Druidic religion. Sometimes the wells had an associated sacred tree, and this is still to be seen in the association of particular trees with holy wells around the country. Votive offerings (still seen nowadays as the custom of hanging rags on trees at holy wells) have been recovered from some of these sacred Celtic wells which seemed to have a healing function, as they still have. St Brigid is associated with healing, her girdle being capable of curing all disease and illness. Many of the miracles attributed to her are to do with healing – the blind man seeing, the dumb girl speaking etc.
- Widespread VenerationFinally it is worth noting that while St Brigid was not a missionary saint, nor widely travelled, yet in Ireland she is second only to St Patrick in popular favour, and dedications to her are found throughout Britain as well as Ireland. As far away as the Hebrides, she was popular in Catholic areas until recent times and was invoked as patron of childbirth by the women, and revered as the midwife of the Virgin Mary. It would appear that the cult of Brid was established in Celtic Britain before the coming of Christianity and to have made the transition from pagan goddess to Christian saint in the areas associated with her.
So, was the Christian Saint Brigid a real historical person, or the mythical Celtic pagan goddess in another form? The truth is that we don’t know. Somebody established a Christian foundation on the hill of Kildare. That foundation prospered and became the great and unique Celtic Christian monastery of monks and nuns. There is, on the other hand, no doubt that the legends of the Christian saint contain elements of a far older tradition. Does it really matter? Perhaps what does matter is that the site of Kildare Cathedral has been the site of unbroken worship for over 1,500 years in the Christian faith and may very well have been a sacred site for many hundreds of years more. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, sites of continuous worship in Ireland.