Who was Saint Brigid – did she really exist?

Who was Saint Brigid?
Who was Saint Brigid? (pic: AI illustration)

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St Brigid has long been one of Ireland’s most revered and iconic saints, celebrated for her charity, peacekeeping, social advocacy and pioneering role in the early Irish Church. However, in recent years, Brigid has become the subject of intense debate, with some recasting her as a pagan goddess and questioning her very existence. We take a deep dive into St Brigid!

Saint Brigid – Brighid or Brigit of Kildare

St Brigid is the female patron saint of Ireland, ranking second only to St Patrick in Ireland’s hierarchy of saints. Believed to have lived in the 5th and 6th centuries, she is one of the most well-documented early Irish saints. Brigid is credited with founding numerous church sites, but it was her foundation in Kildare that developed into one of the most important ecclesiastical centres in early medieval Ireland.

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Brigid in the early sources

There is no contemporary evidence for Brigid, but neither is there for most other 5th- and 6th-century Irish saints, with the exception of St Patrick whose own writings have survived. 

In any case, Brigid’s documentary record stands out as the first Irish saint to be written about in detail by Irish writers and as one of the few Irish female saints to have a Life dedicated to her, as highlighted, in particular, through the work of Dr Elva Johnston, Associate Professor of History at University College Dublin and Dr Niamh Wycherley, Assistant Professor in Early Irish History at Maynooth University.

Brigid’s Lives

A “Life”, or “Vita”, is a text recounting the life, virtues, miracles and deeds of a saint. These works are categorized as “hagiography” – a genre of biographical literature that blends historical details with elements designed to promote Christian values, provide moral guidance and inspire devotion.

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The two earliest Lives of St Brigid were written in Hiberno-Latin, with the best known being the work of the Kildare cleric Cogitosus in around AD 650–75. To put this in context, very few texts from this period have survived, and the earliest Life of any Irish saint is that of Columbanus, written by an Italian between 639 and 643 – just a few years before Cogitosus was writing. Cogitosus was considered the father of Irish hagiography by Muirchú, who wrote one of the earliest Lives of Patrick.

The authorship and dating of the other early Latin Life of Brigid, the Vita Prima, is a matter of debate and may be slightly earlier or later than Cogitosus.

Six more Lives were subsequently written: three in Latin and three in the vernacular. The 9th-century Old Irish Bethu Brigte is the earliest vernacular Life of any Irish saint. The early Lives of St Brigid are preserved in dozens-upon-dozens of medieval manuscripts, mostly written on the Continent.

Brigid also appears in the Lives of other saints, in early chronicles, poems and genealogical tracts that record pedigrees. In fact, Brigid is arguably better documented than any other Irish saint, with the possible exception of Patrick.

The hagiographers of Brigid’s early Lives were Irish ecclesiastical scholars and they likely drew from existing written sources. However, they were also writing according to the conventions of their time, which means that these texts reflect the theological and cultural issues they faced, rather than necessarily those of the period in which Brigid lived.

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When did Brigid live?

The references to Brigid in the various medieval Irish annals and chronicles are retrospective interpolations based on educated guesswork. For instance, her death is recorded three times in the Annals of Ulster under the years 524, 526 and 528, with two different ages attributed to her at death: 70 and 80. These would place her birth in the 440s or 450s, but her birth is recorded in the same annals in the year 439.

This inconsistency is not unusual. For example, annalistic entries concerning St Patrick are also retrospective and confusing. The early entries in the annals do, nonetheless, establish a rough relative chronology for the period and those concerning Brigid provide a general sense of her lifespan and timeline.

Statue of St Brigid in Market Square, Kildare.
Statue of St Brigid in Market Square, Kildare (© Andreas F. Borchert, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE).

The Vita Prima firmly places Brigid within the conversion era and identifies her as a younger contemporary of St Patrick. The two earliest Lives of Brigid refer to numerous individuals by name, and the work of Dr Daniel Mc Carthy, Trinity College Dublin, has demonstrated that 11 of these are independently attested in the annals. These individuals appear in the right generations, which supports plausible connections to a 5th/6th-century Brigid.

Brigid’s family

The earliest sources identify Brigid’s parents by name: Dubthach and Broicsech. Brigid’s brothers only appear in later Lives.

Dubthach was a minor king of the Fothairt, a relatively minor people that settled in Leinster in parts of Offaly and Kildare but with outposts elsewhere. Dubthach seems to be associated with the area around Croghan Hill in Co. Offaly.

Broicsech is linked with the Ardbraccan area of Co. Meath. She was the daughter of Dallbhrónach of the Déise Breagh, a group that gave its name to the Meath baronies of Deece. In Cogitosus’ account, Broicsech appears as Dubthach’s wife, but the Vita Prima and Bethu Brigte portray her as his slave, with Brigid born into servile status.

Brigid features prominently in the earliest Fothairt genealogies and is attached to a branch known as Uí Bhreasail, a hereditary ecclesiastical family within the territory of Uí Fhailghe. The primary function of the Fothairt, according to the sources, was as vassals tasked with protecting the kings of Leinster, but they were never themselves a leading power in Leinster nor anywhere else.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Brigid’s family background was fairly undistinguished and unremarkable, yet she was rooted in real places and anchored by real people in the genealogies, which provide a strong historical foundation for her existence.

Niamh Wycherley has posed an interesting question in her work on the saint: if Brigid were merely a fictional creation of early Christian writers, as some now claim, why not make up a better origin story for her? The powerful Uí Dúnlainge kings of Leinster would have been the obvious choice for a fabricated noble lineage. Indeed, later sources provide some saints with obviously phoney family trees, linking them to powerful kings and legendary figures – but not Brigid. The sources are consistently clear: she was of the Fothairt.

Where was Brigid born?

The Vita Prima states that Brigid’s slave-mother gave birth to her on the threshold of a druid’s doorway, but none of the early sources specify a precise location.

Claims for Faughart, Co. Louth, being her place of birth stem from a later tradition, first recorded in a Middle Irish Life of Brigid and in St Bernard’s 12th-century Life of St Malachy. This claim may have been opportunistic, perhaps influenced by the phonetic similarity between Fothairt and Faughart. However, Faughart, from the Irish Fochairt, is not derived from Fothairt, which refers to a specific people based mainly between Croghan Hill, Co. Offaly and the Hill of Allen, Co. Kildare and it can be assumed that Brigid’s homeland was within this region.

>>> READ MORE: Bringing the 1318 Battle of Faughart and Edward Bruce back into focus

Becoming a nun

The Lives portray Brigid as the ideal Christian virgin, defying societal norms and her family’s wishes by rejecting earthly marriage – even suffering the loss of an eye to deter suitors – before receiving the veil.

The ceremony was performed, according to different accounts, either by Bishop Mac Caille of Croghan or Bishop Mel. The location was likely in Mag Tulach within Mide (present-day Fartullagh, Co. Westmeath), not far from Brigid’s homeland.

Brigid’s purity and holiness were so revered that an early poem, possibly dating to the early 7th century, embedded in the earliest genealogical tract on the Fothairt, calls Brigid “another Mary, mother of the great Lord” and later “Mary of the Gael”.

Brigid and Kildare

Cogitosus describes Brigid’s foundation in Kildare (Cill Dara) as a great double monastery – one for monks and one for nuns ruled over by an abbess.

Kildare Cathedral
Kildare Cathedral has its origins in the early 13th century (pic: JohnArmagh via Wikimedia Commons, public domain).

The first bishop (or archbishop, depending on the source) of Kildare was Conláed (also styled Conlaíd, Conlaodh, Conleth), whom Brigid invited to govern the church alongside her. A craftsman and metalworker, Conláed belonged to the Dál Messin Corb, an important Leinster dynasty in present-day Wicklow. Cogitosus is at pains to stress the harmonious relationship between Brigid and her bishop.

Kildare grew into a major church site and a leading centre of scholarship in the early medieval period. Under early Irish law, the head of such an important foundation held a status equivalent to that of a bishop. This helps explain the implication in Cogitosus’ writings that Brigid was an equal of bishops – an idea that Dr Pádraig Ó Riain, former professor of Old and Middle Irish in University College Cork, argues was later cleverly manipulated in an episode of the 9th-century Bethu Brigte, where a bishop accidentally read the words of episcopal ordination during Brigid’s consecration as a nun, with later sources building on this by conferring this status to her successors.

In reality, Brigid was never a bishop (she had Conláed for that job), but this illustrates how elements of her story evolved over time.

Cogitosus asserts archiepiscopal status for Kildare, portraying it as the legitimate seat of an archbishop from the earliest times, with authority extending over the whole island of Ireland. The Vita Prima highlights Brigid’s efforts to bring Kildare in line with Roman liturgy, describing how she sent ecclesiastics to Rome for training and to gather information. These elements reflect the political and ecclesiastical concerns of the period in which they were written, particularly the relationship between the Irish Church and Rome and Kildare’s position within the Church.

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The earliest sources do not explain how Brigid came to acquire what became her principal church in Kildare – though, of course, we’ve all grown up with the story of her cloak.

St Brigid’s cloak

The story of St Brigid’s cloak first appears in an 11th-century Life and also features in later sources. According to this story, Brigid is seeking land to found her church, and the King of Leinster instructs her to place her cloak on the ground, promising her the parcel of land it covers. When she does so, the cloak miraculously expands, covering a vast area over the plains of Kildare, which the king then grants to her.

A different story involving her cloak is presented by Cogitosus. In this account, Brigid throws her wet cloak over a sunbeam, mistaking it for a solid tree. She is then dazzled, not by the sun, but by the light of God.

Brigid’s miracles

The Lives are filled with Brigid’s miracles, such as healing the sick, feeding the poor and needy with endless supplies of food and turning water into beer – these draw very clear Biblical parallels. Likewise, the many passages in the early sources in which a fiery ball or column appears above the saint evokes Biblical imagery.

Very many of Brigid’s miracles are tied to agricultural work and she is often depicted performing humble, yet essential, tasks like milking cows, churning milk, cooking bacon and weaving – acts that were imbued with the divine.

Perpetual fire

The first reference to the perpetual fire at Kildare appears in the Topographia Hibernica, a 12th-century fantastical text by the notorious Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis). He claims that Brigid lit the fire, which was then maintained by the nuns who succeeded her. While later medieval sources also mention this flame, Gerald’s work should be treated with caution as he sought to depict the Irish as primitive in the wake of the Anglo-Norman colonization of Ireland.

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Peacemaker, negotiator and defender of the oppressed

Brigid’s story is rooted in the everyday lives of farmers, craftsmen, ordinary people of low rank, women and the unfree, with her kindness extending even to animals. In the Vita Prima, she encounters many non-Christians, including druids and poets, reflecting a period of conversion when Christians and pagans lived side by side.

Brigid challenged social hierarchies through her interactions with kings and noblemen. Her condemnation of the aristocracy is clear in the Vita Prima when she declares, “the sons of kings are serpents and sons of blood and sons of death apart from a few who are chosen by God”. The text further reveals that Brigid’s mother, a slave, is set free only through her daughter’s actions.

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Brigid is also shown negotiating with elites, intervening in feuds between noble families to save lives and prevent bloodshed. In one such episode, she successfully mediates a quarrel between royal brothers, Conall and Cairpre.

The early Irish law tracts indicate that women had very limited rights, which makes Brigid’s ability to confront and transcend social hierarchies all the more remarkable.

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Brigid’s cult and legacy

Brigid’s monastic foundation in Kildare flourished after her death, becoming one of Ireland’s most important ecclesiastical centres.

Where was Brigid buried?

Cogitosus, writing in the 7th century, states that the bodies of St Brigid and her bishop Conláed (died c.516/520) were on either side of the altar in her church at Kildare. He describes how their glorious tombs, adorned with precious metals and gems, became a focal point for devotion.

At this time, in the 7th century, the church of Kildare and the church of Armagh, with St Patrick as its patron, were vying for the position of the head church over all other Irish churches. Cogitosus wrote his Life of St Brigid, in part, to further this ambition. Unlike Armagh, which did not possess its patron’s remains, Kildare had the relics of Brigid to bolster its claim to primacy.

Niamh Wycherley raises another thought-provoking question in her work: if Kildare did not truly possess the body of the saint, wouldn’t this have been the perfect opportunity for Armagh to start a smear campaign to expose their rivals as frauds?

No such campaign was launched and pilgrims from far and wide continued to visit Brigid’s place of burial in search of blessings and cures, further elevating her status as a saint.

However, Kildare eventually lost Brigid’s relics. You can find out what happened to the saint’s relics here.

>>> RELATED: St Brigid’s relics returning to Kildare after a millennium

Brigid’s successors

The abbesses of Kildare who succeeded Brigid were known as her heirs or coarbs. Her immediate successor, a nun named Darlugdach (or Der Lugdach), is said to have died exactly one year to the day after Brigid’s death. Like Brigid, some of the later abbesses were drawn from the Fothairt.

As we know, Kildare became a major ecclesiastical complex and its abbess wielded considerable spiritual and political authority. Their high status and exceptional influence are clear from their frequent mentions in the annals up to the 12th century.

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Brigid’s cult overseas

Brigid’s cult spread far beyond Irish shores. In Scotland, they adopted her as their own; placenames like Kilbride and Brideswell, in the Western Isles, attest to her influence. Through the missionary efforts of early Irish monks, Brigid’s story reached mainland Europe, with relics of the saint appearing on the continent by at least the 8th century.

Brigid was one of the first Irish saints to have a Life written about her outside Ireland. A Life of St Brigid was written about 850 by the bishop of Fiesole in Italy (where the church of Santa Brigida was dedicated to her) and another Life was compiled by Laurence of Durham in England in the early 12th century. Brigid continued to inspire for centuries, appearing in international literature, artwork, hymns, martyrologies and in liturgies in Germany. The sheer volume of material written about her is overwhelming.

Brigid was never formally canonized by the Roman Catholic Church – but neither was St Patrick. In fact, none of the early Irish saints were canonized until St Malachy in the 12th century. This obviously didn’t matter because St Brigid became the most famous, popular and beloved Irish person of the medieval period.

Recent devotion

The memory of St Brigid continues today, with townlands, churches, holy wells, GAA clubs and schools still bearing her name in every county in Ireland and beyond.

A F F I L I A T E  A D

But perhaps nowhere is her enduring legacy more evident than in the oral tradition. This is particularly apparent in the material gathered for the National Folklore Schools’ Collection in the late 1930s, with dozens of entries relating to the saint. The oral record reflects the profound and long-lasting connection between the Irish people and their female national saint.

>>>RELATED: St Brigid’s Day customs and traditions in Co. Kildare in the 1930s

The goddess explained

The earliest surviving texts about Brigid, dating from the 7th to 9th centuries, make no mention of a goddess.

Cormac’s Glossary

The first reference to a goddess of this name appears in the 10th-century Cormac’s Glossary (Sanas Cormaic) – that’s at least 250 years after the first written accounts of the saint!

This short, and somewhat confusing, entry – only a few lines long – refers to three divine sisters named Brigit:

“A poetess, daughter of the Dagda [the principal god of the pagan Irish]. This is Brigit the female sage, or woman of wisdom, i.e. Brigit the goddess whom poets adored… Whose sisters were Brigit the female physician [and] Brigit the female smith…”

The implication here seems to be that the name “Brigit” became synonymous with goddess. While the name, meaning “high, exalted”, may well have pagan origins (as do many Irish names), based on this brief entry in Cormac’s Glossary, we cannot conclude that St Brigid of Kildare had any connection to this echo of a potential shadowy goddess(es) beyond sharing a name and some general attributes (the saint is now considered the patron of poets, healers and blacksmiths, as well as many other groups and causes).

In any case, Cormac’s Glossary also includes a separate entry for Brigid the saint. And even more importantly, as Elva Johnston rightly points out, this text is not regarded as a reliable historical source but rather a creative etymological work.

There is a similar reference to Brigit, a poetess and daughter of the Dagda, in the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn.

In the 1860s, Whitely Stokes published a translation of Cormac’s Glossary and included a theory by Rudolf Thomas Siegfried linking the Irish triple “goddess” Brigit to Brigantia, a Celtic goddess worshipped by the British people known as the Brigantes and also elsewhere in Europe, such as Gaul. The connection is lacking evidence. Then in the 1880s, French scholar Henri Arbois de Jubainville, included Brigid in his work on Celtic gods and mythology.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Maud Gonne

The work of Dr Catherine McKenna, Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, has demonstrated that the goddess narrative only gained traction in the early 20th century, when Irish nationalist and feminist Maud Gonne invoked Brigid as the patron of her newly founded women’s organization, Inghinidhe na hÉireann.

Maud Gonne Statue campaign.
The Maud Gonne Society and Statue for Maud Gonne campaign will officially launch on 6 December at the United Arts Club in Dublin and at an online event on 17 January (pic: Maude Gonne; credit: Bain News Service; source: Library of Congress).

Gonne championed Brigid as both a saint and a goddess, using this dual identity to unite Irish women – Catholics, Protestants and non-Christians – under a common banner of Irish nationalism and feminism. This hybrid saint-goddess portrayal of Brigid resonated with the ideals of a Gaelic cultural revival that sought to transcend religious divides.

Circular reasoning

Yet, it also marked the beginning of a trend that increasingly downplayed the historically attested saint in favour of an abstract, universal spiritual entity. The goddess interpretation gained further momentum in the late 20th century, with scholars increasingly arguing that St Brigid was a Christianized version of a pre-Christian deity, created by early Irish Christian writers to reframe pagan traditions within a Christian context.

The growing tendency to interpret Brigid through a purely mythological pagan lens has been particularly evident in her association with fire. However, fire imagery features heavily in the Bible and in very early Christian literature, most notably in the appearance of the Holy Spirit as tongues of flame and the Paschal fire. And it’s important to also remember that fire was just as essential for light and heat in the early medieval period as it had been in pre-Christian times.

The emphasis on Brigid’s connection to the natural world has led some to identify her as a fertility goddess or Mother Earth figure. Yet, this interpretation overlooks the fact that animals and the land were central to life in early medieval Ireland and are themes commonly found in early Irish texts. Such narrow interpretations are a hangover of the outdated theories of Anglo Victorian scholars who saw pagan deities masquerading as Christian saints wherever they went.

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It’s almost impossible to imagine Christian scholars in a monastic setting in Kildare being entirely at ease with the idea that the saint they venerate is merely a shadow of a goddess and that they just made it all up: her existence, the founding of her church, her bishop, her tomb, her female successors, her following. It’s not historically plausible.

As McKenna has rightly pointed out, the goddess interpretation falls into the trap of circular reasoning. By starting with what we know about the saint and then working backwards to the goddess, the process creates

“the figure of a goddess upon whom that of the saint is supposed to have been based, whereas the truth is that the figure of the goddess is a construct based upon that of the saint.”

Instead, Brigid’s story should be understood in the context of a Christian ministry and the context of early medieval Ireland. Her miracles are presented as acts of God, with Brigid serving as the conduit. Her criticism of the elite, acts of charity and humility, championing of the downtrodden and efforts to foster peace all align with early Christian teachings, while hospitality played a crucial role in early medieval Irish society.

The evidence for Brigid as a goddess is thin at best. The pagan goddess interpretation relies on a couple of brief, late references that pale in comparison to the far more substantial body of earlier evidence surrounding the Christian saint. Proponents of the goddess theory often hold Brigid up as a symbol of female empowerment. Yet, somewhat ironically, they overlook the legacy of the real-life woman who navigated the complexities of a highly stratified, male-dominated society, spreading peace, justice and Christianity.

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St Brigid’s feastday and Imbolc?

Cogitosus, writing in the 7th century, mentions St Brigid’s feastday (Lá Fhéile Bríde) as being observed in Kildare on 1 February. Interestingly, Brigid was one of the first Irish saints to have her feastday included in external calendars and martyrologies, including Willibrord’s Calendar in the early 8th century.

One key point often used to argue for Brigid’s pagan goddess origins is the timing of her feastday, which roughly coincides with Imbolc (or Imbolg) – an Irish pre-Christian cross-quarter-day festival occurring halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. While we now erroneously associate Imbolc strictly with the date of 1 February, it would have been a moving feast celebrating the changing of the seasons and the start of lambing.

Although Imbolc is mentioned in a number of medieval Irish texts, no sources link the festival to Brigid (in the form of a saint or a goddess) and little is known about the specific practices or rituals associated with it.

Equating the saint’s feastday with Imbolc thus risks conflating two distinct traditions. We can acknowledge the existence of both without suggesting they share the same origins. The existence of Imbolc does not undermine the historicity of Brigid nor serve as proof that the saint was a Christianized version of a pre-Christian goddess.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Brigid obviously had to die some day, and 1 February seems as likely as any date. That St Brigid’s feastday falls on the day before Candlemas, 2 February, is probably more than a coincidence. Candlemas marks the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known in Irish as Lá Fhéile Muire na gCoinneal meaning the Feast of Mary of the Candles. The closeness in dates makes sense when we remember that Brigid has been honoured as the “Mary of the Irish” and a “second Mary” since the earliest sources.

Imbolc was not a term used by the ordinary people of Ireland for many centuries. They celebrated St Brigid’s Day, starting on the night of 31 January and continuing into 1 February, and knew nothing of Imbolc. It is only in recent years, particularly with the rise of social media, that Imbolc has gained widespread attention.

Nonetheless, St Brigid’s Day remains an important date in the Irish calendar, and the customs associated with it, such as the making of St Brigid’s crosses, are still practiced by people across Ireland. Find out more about St Brigid’s Day traditions and customs here.

St Brigid’s cross made from woven rushes.
St Brigid’s cross (© Culnacreann, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0; edited IHN).

>>> RELATED: St Brigid’s Day customs and traditions in Co. Kildare in the 1930s

Since 2023, Ireland has enjoyed a public holiday dedicated to St Brigid on the first Monday of February.

Why is St Brigid being erased?

As we have seen, Brigid is one of or the best-documented and most revered Irish saints. So why has she been relegated to the realm of myth?

Niamh Wycherley has suggested that the dismissal of Brigid as a real flesh-and-blood woman may stem from her extraordinary influence in Ireland’s early medieval patriarchal and hierarchical society. This may seem somewhat paradoxical, but as Wycherley quipped in her podcast, there seems to be a perception that Brigid was

“such a famous and impressive woman in such a difficult society for women that she must have been made up by a man!”

While this statement may prove uncomfortable reading for those who strongly identify with the goddess as a representation of the universal divine feminine, it raises important questions about how we interpret women’s roles and achievements in the past. Ireland’s male saints have not faced the same level of scrutiny or erasure, despite many having far fewer written sources about them. As Elva Johnston put it:

“Brigit has been treated differently to Irish male saints, becoming a secondary character in her own biographies, reductively overshadowed by a barely attested goddess.”

The growing scepticism surrounding Brigid’s historical reality is likely linked to the broader backlash against the Catholic Church in Ireland and a desire among some to reclaim – or reimagine and rewrite – the past. Because goddess worshipping is being promoted as empowering for women in the present, there is an inference that it empowered women in the past. Yet, as Johnston has shown, in other past societies in which goddesses were worshipped, there was rarely a corresponding rise in women’s social standing.

A F F I L I A T E  A D

For many in today’s post-Catholic Ireland, the allure of the goddess has proven far stronger than the legacy of the real woman who, in a male-dominated society, broke barriers by founding a major ecclesiastical centre in Kildare, which continued to thrive for centuries as her cult spread across Europe.

There is, however, a growing number of medieval experts trying to rescue St Brigid from oblivion. Elva Johnston, Niamh Wycherley, Catherine McKenna, Katja Ritari and Edel Bhreathnach, to name a few, have actively highlighted the saint’s plight and challenged the narratives that have come to overshadow her. This article draws heavily on their research. (Click on “Sources” below to discover their work and more.)

Much has been said recently about “a Brigid for everyone”. Included in that sentiment is both the real historical woman and the saint. But are we creating a false dichotomy between the two? After all, we only know about Brigid because she was a very holy, chaste woman, who became a nun… and was venerated as a saint.

To avoid further Humpty Dumpty fragmentation, can we start to put St Brigid back together again? That way, we might all be able to appreciate the life and legacy of a remarkable woman who helped shape the course of Irish history.

Happy St Brigid’s Day!

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A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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McKenna, C. 2002. ‘Between two worlds: Saint Brigit and Pre-Christian religion in the Vita Prima’. In Joseph F. Nagy (ed.) Defining the Celtic. CSANA Yearbook 2, pp.66- 74.

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