Saint Brigid of Kildare

Saint Brigid of Kildare was an Irish abbess who lived at the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries, the foundress of the monastery of Kildare, one of the first on the island. Together with Saint Patrick and Saint Columba of Iona she is venerated as a patron of Ireland. She should not be confused with Saint Bridget of Sweden, who lived in the fourteenth century. The Church commemorates her on February 1.

Little is known for certain about her life. The oldest Lives were written only in the seventh century, more than a hundred years after her death; one of them is the work of Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare. They are filled mostly with accounts of miracles. Tradition places her birth around the middle of the fifth century and her death around 525, but these dates cannot be confirmed. The Lives say that her father was Dubthach, a nobleman of the province of Leinster, and her mother Broicsech, who according to some accounts was a slave. A late tradition names Faughart, near Dundalk, as her birthplace.

According to the Lives, from her youth she worked with cattle and at making butter, and she generously gave to the poor whatever she had at hand. When her father and brothers wanted to give her in marriage, she refused, because she had resolved to live in virginity for God. She received the veil of a virgin consecrated to God from the hands of a bishop; some accounts name Saint Mel here, others Bishop Mac Caille.

Her chief work was the monastery of Kildare. The Irish name of the place, Cill Dara, means “church of the oak.” The Lives do not say when or in what circumstances it was founded. According to Cogitosus, Brigid invited Saint Conleth to govern the community together with her as bishop. Kildare was a double monastery, of women and of men, and Brigid was abbess of both branches. The Roman Martyrology says that she is held to have continued the work of evangelization begun by Saint Patrick.

Stories of her hospitality, her courage, and her care for the poor and the sick have lived on in Ireland through the centuries. The Irish call her the Mary of the Gael. On her feast day crosses are woven from rushes or straw; according to folk tradition, Brigid used such a cross when she explained the Christian faith. Irish monks and missionaries carried devotion to her to many countries of Europe, where numerous churches were dedicated to her.

She died at Kildare; Cogitosus says that it was on February 1. She was buried in the church there. Cogitosus describes how in his day the tombs of Brigid and of Bishop Conleth stood on either side of the altar. A medieval tradition holds that her relics were later moved to Downpatrick, where they were said to rest beside the remains of Saint Patrick and Saint Columba.

Brigid has been venerated as a saint since the early Middle Ages, from a time when no formal process of canonization yet existed; her cult is attested as early as the seventh century. Pope Francis, speaking in Dublin in 2018, named her among the Irish saints whose names are still revered throughout Europe and beyond.