Lent with Saint Patrick

But Patrick, having now become a monk, forgetting all things that were past, applied to the future, and, as if little accounting his former conversation, hastened to the height of perfection. For by incredible abstinence, by his lengthened fasts, and by the exercise of his other virtues, he afflicted himself, and continually bore in his heart and on his body the mortification of that cross which his habit displayed. But the most high Pastor, who intended to raise him to the head of the holy Church, that he might learn to think humbly of himself, to walk with the lowly, and to bear with the weak, permitting him to feel his own inferiority; so that the more deeply he was fixed on the foundation of true humility, the more firmly he might stand in the height of perfection. For a desire of eating meat came upon him, until, being ensnared and carried away by his desire, he obtained swine's flesh, and concealed it in a certain vessel, thinking rightly that he might thus satisfy his appetite privily, which should he openly do he would become to his brethren a stone of offence and a stumbling-block of reproach. And he had not long quitted the place when, lo! one stood before him having eyes before and eyes behind, whom when Patrick beheld, having his eyes so wonderfully, even so monstrously, placed, he marvelled who he was, and what meant his eyes fixed before and fixed behind, did earnestly ask; and he answered, I am the servant of God. With the eyes fixed in my forehead I behold the things that are open to view, and with the eyes that are fixed in the hinder part of my head I behold a monk hiding flesh-meat in a vessel, that he may satisfy his appetite privily. This he said, and immediately disappeared. But Patrick, striking his breast with many strokes, cast himself to the earth, and watered it with such a shower of tears as if he had been guilty of all crimes; and while he thus lay on the ground, mourning and weeping, the angel Victor, so often before mentioned, appeared to him in his wonted form, saying, Arise, let thine heart be comforted; for the Lord hath put away thine offence, and henceforward avoid backsliding.

Then Saint Patrick, rising from the earth, utterly renounced and abjured the eating of flesh-meat, even through the rest of his life; and he humbly besought the Lord that He would manifest unto him His pardon by some evident sign. Then the angel bade Patrick to bring forth the hidden meats, and put them into water; and he did as the angel bade; and the fleshmeats, being plunged into the water and taken thereout, immediately became fishes. This miracle did Saint Patrick often relate to his disciples, that they might restrain the desire of their appetites. But many of the Irish, wrongfully understanding this miracle, are wont, on Saint Patrick's Day, which always falls in the time of Lent, to plunge flesh-meats into water, when plunged in to take out, when taken out to dress, when dressed to eat, and call them fishes of Saint Patrick. But hereby every religious man will learn to restrain his appetite, and not to eat meat at forbidden seasons, little regarding what ignorant and foolish men are wont to do.

The Life and Acts of Saint Patrick by Jocelin, Chapter XXIII, Of the Flesh-meat changed into Fishes.

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Lent with Saint Brigid

Below is an episode from the hagiography of Saint Brigid referring to the Lenten fast, which I first published as part of a 'Lent with the Irish Saints' series at my former blog Under the Oak. There is another version of this story, taken from the work of John, Canon O'Hanlon, along with similar episodes from the lives of other Irish saints at my new blog Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae.

One day in Lent, because of the previous harvest having failed, [Brigid's] community found themselves on the brink of starvation. Being forced to make some provision, Brigid set out with two of the sisters to visit a neighbouring monastery, then in charge of Ibar, and beg from him the loan of a supply of corn. The distance between the two churches was great and the nuns arrived exhausted and famished at the monastery. Famine was prevalent in the district. A meal - all that was available, bread and bacon - was set before the guests, and Brigid thankfully began on it. Presently she noticed that her two nun-companions were pointedly refraining from the bacon. There was a sniff in their attitude, implying, "Well, we're going to keep Lent anyhow, whatever you do".

Not to avail of dispensation accorded under such circumstances of such stress was really more than Brigid could stand. Rebuking the nuns sharply and with vehemence, she even turned them out of the room! In all the mass of legendary stories and traditions concerning Brigid, this is the sole instance recorded where she displayed anger. What provoked it is worth remembering: pharisaical formalism masquerading as piety.

Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid of Ireland (rev.ed., Dublin, 1955), 99-100.

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Saint Brigid: Her Work and her Memory

To mark the octave day of the Feast of Saint Brigid, below is a tribute to her work and her memory taken from a 1913 publication by the Edinburgh firm T.N. Foulis as part of their 'Iona books' series. The volume has a simple paperback cover decorated with a interlacing cross in silver and hand cut paper pages. It is very much a product of the Celtic revival and reflects the romanticism of the movement and the conviction that a barely-disguised paganism lay just beneath the surface of early Irish Christianity. In this extract, however, the author, James Wilkie, who was a solicitor and antiquary from Leven in Fife, looks at what Saint Brigid's feminine touch brought to the Church:

More enduring than any shrine, however splendid, is the work accomplished by holy Bridget of Kildare and the fragrant memory she left behind. Beyond the glamour of legend that has gathered round her, as round all earth's greatest in the course of ages, the most critical eye can discern a life spent after the image of Him she served, according to the light that was given to her: healing the sick, caring for the afflicted in mind, body or estate, shrinking from no peril or loathsome disease, succouring lepers even as in our time Father Damien gave all for them, loving too and caring, like the Blessed St Francis of Assisi, for the humble creatures of field and forest and for the birds of the air, setting the example of holy living and serene dying, worthily carrying into other spheres the work St Patrick began, adding a white radiance to the lustre of the Isle of Saints and sending Christ's Evangel into rude Pictavia many years before the coracle of Good Colum Cille was beached on the green pebbles of the Port-na-Curaich. Kings and Saints sought her counsel, and her influence was potent in the political as well as the spiritual destinies of these islands. She stands out, as Olden has said, "the first woman engaged permanently in the work of the Church", a remark certainly true of the Church of her native land. Into it she must have carried some touch of a gentler and more pitying hand, some finer intuition, some tenderer sympathy. She deepened in a rude age that reverence of man for woman which the adoration of the Blessed Mother of Our Lord brought to the ideals of Chivalry. Within her Religious Houses learning flourished, though what part she had in it and in the encouragement of art we cannot now say with certitude. Yet she had been other than she was had she not realised that He who made the earth so fair must be worshipped in beauty, as well as in spirit and in truth: that no glory of colour, no wealth of adornment, no rhapsody of music, no fragrance of incense were too rare to be offered to Him before whose majesty the angels veil their faces and who yet on His Mother's knee received gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. The very fact that in the Celtic mind she is confused or identified with the goddess of the Danaans, the patroness of learning and poetry, of music and all the arts, bears witness to her encouragement of these.

J. Wilkie, Saint Bride: The Greatest Woman of the Celtic Church (Edinburgh, 1913), 24-26.

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'Brigide was base Daughter of Dubtachus' - a 16th century English View

There is an interesting 16th-century view of Saint Brigid recorded in the work of an English writer, which I reproduce below. The writer is himself accounted among the saints for he is none other than the English martyr Edmund Campion (1540-1581). Campion spent a few months in Ireland under the protection of the Stanihurst family and produced a short history of Ireland in which he devotes a chapter to its saints. Unfortunately, the History relied heavily on the work of the 12th-century Anglo-Norman chronicler, Gerald of Wales, and tended to echo the colonialist tone of his view of the natives. This incensed Irish priest and historian, Geoffrey Keating (c.1569-1644), who placed Campion's name on a list of those who had defamed the Irish people and their achievements.  In the extract below, taken from an early 19th-century reprint of A Historie of Ireland, written in the year 1571, I have not modernized the spelling as the text is quite readable. I note that there is no use of the apostrophe to denote possession as in modern English, but this archaic language has a charm of its own. I particularly enjoyed the description of Saint Brigid as having 'allured' others to her fellowship and the depiction of her father's wife as a 'shrewe'.  Interestingly, despite expressing this rather negative view of female nature, Saint Edmund does not hesitate to pay tribute to the wisdom of Saint Brigid saying that 'not onely the multitude, but a whole synode of Bishoppes assembled by Dublin, used her advice in weighty causes, and highly esteemed her'.  He has also selected the account of her giving away the royal sword to aid the poor, a fitting illustration indeed of the charity and humanity of Ireland's patroness. This episode also demonstrates Saint Brigid's courage, something the English martyr himself would need in the trials that lay ahead. The piece ends with what may be a reference to the 'Book of Kildare':

Brigide was base Daughter of Dubtachus a Captaine in Leinster, who perceiving the Mother with child, sold her secretly, fearing the jealousy of his wife, to a Irish Poet, reserving to himselfe, the fruite of her wombe, she was there delivered of this Brigide, whom the Poet trained up in letters, and so conveyed her home to her father. The Damosell was schooled in the faith by S. Patricke, preaching then in those parts, she became so religious, and so ripe in judgement, that not onely the multitude, but a whole synode of Bishoppes assembled by Dublin, used her advice in weighty causes, and highly esteemed her. One fact of hers being yet a childe, made her famous. The King of Leinster had given to Dubtachus in token of singular affection, for his good service, a rich sword. Now it befell, that the maiden visiting her sicke neighbours, diversly distressed for hunger, (her father being a sterne man, his Lady a shrewe) she saw none other helpe to releive these wretched people, but to part the Iewels of that idle sword among them. This matter was haynously taken, and came to the Kings eares, who (comming shortly after to a Banquet in her fathers house) demaunded the Girle, not yet nine yeares old, how she durst presume to deface the gift of a King, shee answered, that it was bestowed upon a better King, then hee was, whom (quoth she) finding in such extremity, I would have given all my father hath, and all that thou hast, yea your selves and all, were yee in my power to give, rather then Christ should starve.

At convenient age she professed virginity, and allured other noble Virgins to her fellowship, with whom she lived in her owne Monastery, untill the yeare of our Lord 500. and was buried at Downe, in the Tombe of S. Patricke, what Cambrensis reporteth of his own knowledge and sight, I will be bold to add  hereunto.

Among her reliques, was found a concordance of the 4. Evangelists, seeming to bee written with no mortall hand, beautified with mysticall pictures in the margent, whose colours and workemanship, at the first blush were darke and unpleasant, but in the view wonderful liuely and artificiall.

A Historie of Ireland, written in the yeare 1571 (Dublin, 1809), 61-63.

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Hymn to Saint Brigid

The series of hymns from the work of Sister Mary Francis Cusack concludes with a nineteenth-century composition. This one received the endorsement of the then Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning, one of the famous Anglican converts to Catholicism in Victorian England.  Unlike modern hymns which depict concern for the protection of the environment as Saint Brigid's main priority, this one views her as a helper in the Christian struggle against sin and the devil and extols the idea of perseverance in the face of suffering. I note too that our male patron Saint Patrick is at her side:

HYMN TO ST. BRIGID.

Saint Brigid, Saint most holy,

Dear Patron of our Isle,

Oh, keep us meek and lowly

Whatever foes beguile!

Watch o'er our sea-girt island,

Thy mantle spread around,

As once thou didst extend it

On Curragh's holy ground.  

Ask that God's saints may bless us

With blessings not a few;

What can we fear of evil

With Patrick and with you?

Make the holy still more holy,

Make the pure ones still more pure-

With thy protection, Brigid,

Of blessings we are sure.

Pray for us, saintly maiden.

Pray for thy own dear isle.

And keep us from the tempter.

From sin and every guile.

Oh, make our faith still stronger.

Our patience yet more sure.

And teach us that the victor

Must to the end endure.

Pray for us, then, St. Brigid,

Thy children we would be.

And guide us up to heaven.

To Patrick and to thee.

We fight for crowns eternal,

We suffer but to win,

And he must fight who conquers

The tempter and the sin.*

Hail, Mary.

* “We hereby grant an Indulgence of Forty Days to all who shall devoutly recite the Hymn of St. Brigid, with one Hail Mary.

HENRY EDWARD,

"Archbishop of Westminster

February 20th, 1868."

Sister Mary Francis Clare, Cloister Songs and Hymns for Children (London and Dublin, 1881), 156-157.

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From the Metrical Life of Saint Brigit

The fourth hymn pays tribute to Saint Brigid's single-minded Christian devotion: 

FROM THE METRICAL LIFE OF ST. BRIGIT-

"Brigit, Saint of highest fame,

For Christ the world despised;

Like bird on high she sat and sang,

And only virtue prized.

“Her only thought was heaven and God,

Her only thought was pure;

She sought bright mansions in the skies,

And life for aye secure.

“And in her waking and her sleep,

She pined for Christ, her love;

And for His Passion grieved alone,

With cry like captive dove.

"O Brigit! near to Christ my Lord,

Of earthly souls the best,

Pray still for me that I may come

To His eternal rest." *

*Metrical Lives of the Irish Saints, which run to very great length, may be found in Colgan's Trias Thaumaturgus where the originals of these Hymns may be seen. For full particulars of the Lives of St. Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Columba, we must refer the reader to our large illustrated Lives of these Saints, published by Mr. Murdock, 41 Castle Street, Holborn, London; also, to our new and enlarged illustrated History of the Irish Nation, by the same publisher, which contains a full account, with facsimiles of all the early Celtic Manuscripts, both historical and religious.

Sister Mary Francis Clare, Cloister Songs and Hymns for Children (London and Dublin, 1881), 42.

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Brigida Nomen Habet

The third hymn in the series alludes to the traditional interpretation of the root of Saint Brigid's name as 'bright':

HYMN IN HONOUR OF ST. BRIGIT.

BRIGIDA NOMEN HABET.

Resplendent is great Brigit's name

Like flash of diamond bright!

Resplendent is great Brigit's name,

Shining in heavenly light!

A virgin of the Lord is she —

A virgin crucified;

A virgin of the Lord is she,

To His Cross closely tied.

Sister Mary Francis Clare, Cloister Songs and Hymns for Children (London and Dublin, 1881), 41.

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