Before burning bras and The Second Sex, there was a woman in fifth-century Ireland who shattered the status quo. Lore and legend remember Brigid as a saint, with healing hands and unwavering devotion to her faith. But beneath fiery locks and a sprawling cloak lies something more radical: a rebel who staked a claim to power in a world built to deny it. Her story wasn’t just one of piety, but one of defiance – a challenge to fervent patriarchal norms veiled in a guise of sanctity. More than Ireland’s beloved patron, Saint Brigid was its earliest feminist force – her legacy quietly etched into the heart of its history.
Much of what we know about Brigid comes from hagiographies; early medieval bodies of literature that detail the life and reverence of saints. Written in the seventh century, one of the earliest and most significant hagiographies of Saint Brigid is Cogitosus’ Life of Saint Brigid. This text not only confirms her miracles through written record but underlines Kildare as a place of cultural and spiritual importance. These literary accounts ensure that Brigid’s story extends far beyond her time and meets many more than initially thought possible.
Born in Faughart, Co. Louth to a pagan chieftain and Christian slave, our Mary of the Gael’s origins are a melding of Celtic mythology and Christian sainthood. Saint Brigid shares a long association with the triple-goddess of poetry, healing, and smithing of the same name, with common opinion supposing that they’re two faces of the same figure. Scholars agree that whilst heavily intertwined, they are individuals who were syncretised by early missionaries in Ireland to ease the transition from paganism to Christianity. Apart from Saint Brigid’s shared connections, she is perhaps best known for the altruism that defined her life.
Brigid’s profound compassion as a young girl proved to be a bother to her father Dubhtacht, who complained when she gave away provisions to the poor. Brigid once gave her father’s lavishly embellished sword to a leper who she took pity on, much to his dismay. While she was forgiven, he would repeatedly be reminded of his frustrations as her good deeds were constant. Tales of her generosity were later immortalised in poetry and prose, such as in Seamus Heaney’s ‘Crossings’, a testament to such an enduring impact.
Ultimately, Brigid remained resolute. She knew her purpose, and listening to those who considered her senseless was not a part of it. It’s said that she took her own eye out in response to her father demanding that she marry, refusing to take her aspirations to build a convent seriously.
Like all women of the time, she was born into expectancy. Expected to be good, be quiet, and marry. Considered ‘legally incompetent’, it was a fierce feat to deign to question that; but that she did, and she did it well.
Disdainful men proved to be an obstacle to the force that was Brigid, but never a hindrance. The condescending chortles and supercilious scoffs she was met with only spurred her onwards and garnered more support from God. When the King of Leinster laughed in her face at her request for land to build her monastery, she never faltered. Her firm trust in herself and her faith rewarded her, to the surprise of a shocked king who had yet to take her seriously. In her essence, Brigid was a wilful and magnanimous woman who was loath to accept the bottom-of-the-barrel position women were given in society.
As is common occurrence for women, Brigid unfailingly gave to those around her. Having left no writings of her own, we remember her as a truly selfless emblem, for we can reckon the tree still made the sound with no one around. Tales of her healing lepers and the sick, enabling the blind to see, and feeding those that starved have trickled down resoundingly for centuries through oral tradition, poetry, and hagiographies.
Despite outright denial of her proven status as bishop and claims that she was ordained accidentally, Brigid’s achievements are a reminder of her tremendous courage. Nothing short of unique for her time, her thriving convent in Kildare, where she managed thousands of nuns, was a beacon of autonomy from the bonds in which Irish women lived. Her legacy proliferated the lives of thousands then and to this day.
Brigid’s presence persists in all our lives. Crosses of woven rushes sit atop countless Irish thresholds. A multitude of hearts join on Imbolc annually to welcome Spring and remember generosity. Though Patrick prevailed for the top spot for patron saint, Brigid has more than earned her place alongside him through her remarkable feats.
She was part of the beginning of an endless mill that would churn out exceptionally bold women who were unafraid to be a bother, to take what was theirs and champion.
