St. Brigit was—after St. Patrick himself—probably the most noted figure amongst Irish Christians in the fifth century. She must have attained her extraordinary influence through sheer ability and intellectuality, for she appears to have been the daughter of a slave-woman,[1] employed in the mansion of a chief called Dubhthach [Duv-hach, or Duffach], who was himself tenth in descent from Felimidh, the lawgiver monarch of Ireland in the second century. The king's wife, jealous of her husband's liking for his slave, threatened him with these words, "Unless thou sellest yon bondmaid in distant lands I will exact my dowry from thee and I will leave thee," and so had her driven from the place and sold to a druid, in whose house her daughter, Dubhthach's offspring, soon afterwards saw the light. She was thus born into slavery, though not quite a slave; for Dubhthach, in selling the mother into slavery, expressly reserved for himself her offspring, whatever it might be. She must have been, at least, early inured to hardship, as St. Patrick had been. The druid, however, did[Pg 157] not prevent her from being baptized. She grew up to be a girl of exceeding beauty, and many suitors sought her in marriage. She returned to her father's house, but refused all offers of matrimony. She aroused the jealousy of her father's wife, as her mother had done before her, and Dubhthach, indignant at her unbounded generosity with his goods, decided upon selling her to the king of North Leinster. Her father's abortive attempt to get rid of her on this occasion is thus quaintly described in her Irish life in the Leabhar Breac.
"Thereafter," says the life, "Dubhthach and his consort were minded to sell the holy Brigit into bondage, for Dubhthach liked not his cattle and his wealth to be dealt out to the poor, and that is what Brigit used to do. So Dubhthach fared in his chariot and Brigit along with him.
"Said Dubhthach to Brigit, 'Not for honour or reverence to thee art thou carried in a chariot, but to take thee, to sell thee to grind the quern for Dunlang mac Enda, King of Leinster.'
"When they came to the King's fortress Dubhthach went in to the king, and Brigit remained in her chariot at the fortress door. Dubhthach had left his sword in the chariot near Brigit. A leper came to Brigit to ask an alms. She gave him Dubhthach's sword.
"Said Dubhthach to the King, 'Wilt thou buy a bondmaid, namely, my daughter?' says he.
"Said Dunlang, 'Why sellest thou thine own daughter?'
"Said Dubhthach, 'She stayeth not from selling my wealth and from giving it to the poor.'
"Said the King, 'Let the maiden come into the fortress.'
"Dubhthach went to Brigit, and was enraged against her because she had given his sword to the poor man.
"When Brigit came into the King's presence the King said to her, 'Since it is thy father's wealth that thou takest, much more wilt thou take my wealth and my cattle and give them to the poor.'
"Said Brigit, 'The Son of the Virgin knoweth if I had thy might, with all Leinster, and with all thy wealth, I would give them to the Lord of the Elements.'
"Said the King to Dubhthach, 'Thou art not fit on either hand to bargain about this maiden, for her merit is higher before God than before men,' and the King gave Dubhthach an ivory-hilted sword (Claideb dét), et sic liberata est sancta Virgo Brigita a captivititate.[2]"
[Pg 158]
She at length succeeded in assuming the veil of a nun at the hands of a bishop called Mucaille, along with seven virgin companions. With these she eventually retired into her father's territory and founded a church at Kildare, beside an ancient oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and which gives its name to the spot.[3] Even at this early period Kildare seems to have been a racecourse, and St. Brigit is described in the ancient lives as driving across it in her chariot.
It is remarkable that there is scarcely any mention of St. Brigit in the lives of St. Patrick, although, according to the usual chronology they were partly contemporaries, St. Brigit having become a nun about the year 467, and St. Patrick having lived until 492. About the only mention of her in the saint's life is that which tells how she once listened to Patrick preaching for three nights and days, and fell asleep, and as she dreamt she saw first white oxen in white corn-fields, and then darker ones took their place, and lastly black oxen. And thereafter, she beheld sheep and swine, and dogs and wolves quarrelling with each other, and upon her waking up, St. Patrick explained her dream as being symbolical of the history of the Irish Church present and future. The life of Brigit herself in the Book of Lismore tells the vision somewhat differently:
"'I beheld,' said she, to Patrick, when he asked her why she had fallen asleep, 'four ploughs in the north-east which ploughed the whole island, and before the sowing was finished the harvest was ripened, and clear well-springs and shiny streams came out of the furrows. White garments were on the sowers and ploughmen. I beheld four other ploughs in the north which ploughed the island athwart and turned the harvest again, and the oats which they had sown grew up at once and were ripe, and black streams came out of the furrows, and there were black garments on the sowers and on the ploughmen.'"
[Pg 159]
This vision Patrick explained to her, saying—
"'The first four ploughs which thou beheldest, those are I and thou, who sow the four books of the gospel with a sowing of faith and belief and piety. The harvest which thou beheldest are they who come unto that faith and belief through our teaching. The four ploughs which thou beheldest in the north are the false teachers and the liars which will overturn the teaching which we have sown.'"
St. Brigit's small oratory at Kildare, under the shadow of her branching oak, soon grew into a great institution, and within her own lifetime two considerable religious establishments sprang up there, one for women and the other for men. She herself selected a bishop to assist her in governing them, and another to instruct herself and her nuns. Long before her death, which occurred about the year 525, a regular city and a great school rivalling the fame of Armagh itself, had risen round her oak-tree. Cogitosus, himself one of the Kildare monks, who wrote a Latin life of St. Brigit at the desire of the community, gives us a fine description of the great church of Kildare in his own day, which was evidently some time prior to the Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century,[4] but how long before is doubtful. He tells us that the church was both large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings, and with ornamental doorways, and that a partition ran across the breadth of the church near the chancel or sanctuary:
"At one of its extremities there was a door which admitted the bishop and his clergy to the sanctuary and to the altar; and at the[Pg 160] other extremity on the opposite side there was a similar door by which Brigit and her virgins and widows used to enter to enjoy the banquet of the Body and Blood of Christ. Then a central partition ran down the nave, dividing the men from the women, the men being on the right and the women on the left, and each division having its own lateral entrance. These partitions did not rise to the roof of the church, but only so high as to serve their purpose. The partition at the sanctuary or chancel was formed with boards of wood decorated with pictures and covered with linen hangings which might, it seems, be drawn aside at the consecration, to give the people in the nave a better view of the holy mysteries."[5]
The two institutions—nuns and monks—planted by St. Brigit continued long to flourish side by side, and Kildare is the only religious establishment in Ireland, says Dr. Healy, which down to a comparatively recent period preserved the double line of succession, of abbot-bishops and of abbesses. The annalists always took care to record the names of the abbesses with the same accuracy as those of the abbots, and to the last the abbesses as successors of St. Brigit, were credited with, in public opinion, and probably enjoyed in fact, a certain supremacy over the bishops of Kildare themselves.
Amongst other occupations the monks and scholars of Kildare seem to have given themselves up to decorative art, and a school of metal work under the supervision of Brigit's first bishop soon sprang into existence, producing all kinds of artistically decorated chalices, bells, patens, and shrines; and the impulse given thus early to artistic work and to beautiful creations seems to have long propagated itself in Kildare, as the description of the church by Cogitosus shows, and as we may still conjecture from the exquisite round tower with its unusually ornamented doorway and its great height of over 130 feet, the loftiest tower of the kind in Ireland.
[Pg 161]
No doubt several attributes of the pagan Brigit,[6] who, as we have seen, was accounted by the ancient Irish to have been the goddess of poets, passed over to her Christian namesake, who was also credited with being the patroness of men of learning. On this, her life in the Book of Lismore contains the following significant and rather obscure passage:
"Brigit was once with her sheep on the Curragh, and she saw running past her a son of reading,[7] to wit Nindid the scholar was he.
"'What makes thee unsedate, O son of reading?' saith Brigit, 'and what seekest thou in that wise?'
"'O nun,' saith the scholar, 'I am going to heaven.'
"'The Virgin's son knoweth,' said Brigit, 'happy is he that goeth that journey, and for God's sake make prayer with me that it may be easy for me to go.'
"'O nun,' said the scholar, 'I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now and I fear they may be shut against me. Or, if thou art hindering me pray the Lord that it may be easy for me to go to heaven, and I will pray the Lord for thee, that it may be easy for thee, and that thou mayest bring many thousands with thee, into heaven.'
[Pg 162]
"Brigit recited a paternoster with him. And he was pious thenceforward, and it is he that gave her communion and sacrifice when she was dying. Wherefore thence it came to pass that the comradeship of the world's softs of reading is with Brigit, and the Lord gives them through Brigit every perfect good they ask."[8]
As St. Patrick is pre-eminently the patron saint of Ireland, so is Brigit its patroness, and with the Irish people no Christian name is more common for their boys than Patrick, or for their girls than Brigit.[9] ............