Where Brigid is Honoured

We stay with the theme of devotion to Saint Brigid in Europe with a 1929 piece from Irish Benedictine writer Dom Patrick Nolan. He is perhaps best known for his 1908 book The Irish Dames of Ypres which looked at the history of the Irish Royal Abbey of Ypres founded by seventeenth-century Catholic exiles. Here, however, he provides us with a gazetteer of places outside Ireland which cherished Saint Brigid and describes some of the history and traditions associated with them. As the immediate inspiration for Dom Patrick's reflections seems to have been the return of a portion of the relics of Saint Brigid to Killester in 1929, he concludes with a brief sketch of the history of her relics:

WHERE BRIGID IS  HONOURED.

Europe's Devotion to Irish Saint.

BY DOM PATRICK NOLAN, O.S.B.

A recent interesting article in the 'Irish Independent' on St. Brigid and the celebrations in her honour at Killester, prompts me to remind Irish people that devotion to this great saint is not confined to Ireland, and that her 'cultus' is as far flung as are the numerous lands evangelised by Irish missionaries.

Devotion to St. Brigid has been a constant European tradition, and her fame has extended far beyond our Continent. It may, indeed, be said to be greater in some Continental countries than in her own native land.

St. Brigid and Britain.

On Sunday January 27, I announced to the congregation, mostly English Catholics, of a small Oxford village that Friday, February 1, would be kept as the feast of St. Brigid of Ireland throughout the diocese of Birmingham, and rightly so.

The ancient Saxon kingdom of Mercia, which comprised the territory of the present Archdiocese of Birmingham, was evangelised by the children of St. Brigid many long centuries go, and the erection of the present nourishing diocese was a direct result of the extensive immigration of St. Brigid's children in the 'forties and 'fifties of last century.

In Scotland.

Our Scottish kinsfolk do not yield to their Irish forebears in their veneration for our great Irish saint. To the Scottish Gael, as Fiona Macleod reminds us, she is the 'Fair Lady of February,' 'St. Bride of the Kindly Fire,' and 'St. Bride of the Shores.' February is her own month, the month of 'Bride Min,' gentle Brigid; or 'Brighid boidheach Muime Chriosd,' Bride the Beautiful, Christ's Foster Mother.

In the Gaelic Highlands and storm-swept Isles of the West her emblems are the dandelion, the lamb and the sea-bird known to the common folk as the 'oyster-opener.'

The humble dandelion, the harbinger of Spring and of St. Brigid, the dealan Dhe, 'the little flame of God,' or bhearnan Brighde, 'St. Bride's forerunner,' has from remotest times been associated with St. Brigid by the Scottish Gael.

St. Bride's Flocks.

'To this day shepherds on Ah Fhiell Brighde,' St. 'Brigid's feast, 'are wont to hear among the mists the crying of in numerable young lambs, and this without the bleating of ewes, and so by that token know that Holy St. Bride has passed by, coming earthward with her flocks of countless lambs. . . .'

'In these desolate far isles where life is so hard ... a rejoicing sound is that in truth when the Gille-Bhride is heard calling along the shores.' And well may this welcome visitor to the bleak Scottish coasts be called the 'Servant of Bride,' for does not its incessant, cheery cry 'gilly-breed, gilly-breed, ' come to Gaelic ears like an invocation to the Mary of the Gael?

Alsace.

It is a far cry from Scotland to Alsace, but there too the traditional devotion to our Irish saint still flourishes.

The Canons of Old St. Peter's at Strassburg used to distribute 'St. Brigid 's Bread,' their best wine was known as 'St. Brigid's Wine.' Alsatian farmers had such devotion to her that they placed their fields and field work under her special protection, and 'Buren-bridel' was a generic title for Alsatian farmers' daughters, many of whom bore the name of Brigid, a name still not uncommon in Southern Germany.

The festival of St. Brigid was solemnly kept almost universally throughout the mediaeval German Empire, and by all the religious Orders. Churches and chapels were dedicated to her at Cologne, Mainz,
and elsewhere, from an early date.

At Fosses, in Belgium, an ancient chapel of St. Brigid still tops the hill so conspicuous from the railway station. At Piacenza, in North Italy, there is a church of St. Brigid, said to have been founded in 868 by the Irish saint, Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole. Annexed to it was a hospice for Irish pilgrims on their way to Bobbio or Rome.

Story of St. Brigid's Relics.

Much more could be said about the 'cultus' of St. Brigid on the Continent, but I must conclude with a few remarks as to her relics.

Cogitosus tells us that St. Brigid's relics were kept in a richly-decorated shrine in Kildare. It is not known when they were 'translated' and placed with St. Columba's and St. Patrick's at Downpatrick, but Columba's relics were still at Iona in the beginning of the ninth century.

During native political broils, devotion to the saint nagged and all knowledge of the whereabouts of her relics was lost. But they were miraculously re-discovered through the prayers of a holy Bishop, Malachy, in the year that Earl, later King John, came to Ireland (1185), as related in a special office for the day, printed in Paris in 1620. 

The Shrine Desecrated.

They were solemnly authenticated, or translated, on June 9 (St. Colum's day) in the presence of a Cardinal Legate, specially sent from Rome, and 15 Bishops; but the shrine was desecrated by Lord Leonard Gray, Viceroy of Henry VIII.

The head of St. Brigid is said to have been previously transferred to Newstadt in Austria, where it was venerated in the chapel of the imperial citadel. Later on the Emperor Rudolph II. gave it to John Borgia, son of St. Francis Borgia, and Ambassador of Philip II., who took it to Spain in 1587, and gave it to the Lisbon Jesuits, who kept it in the chapel of their house of studies at St. Roch, the solemn translation, one of the most magnificent ever seen, taking place in 1588.

St. Roch or Lumiar.

But Cardosus says that the head of St. Brigid is preserved with very great veneration in the church at Lumiar, formerly known as. St. John the Baptist's, but now as St. Brigid's. Three Irish knights are said to have taken it into Portugal to King Dionysius, or Denis (d. 1225).

Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare supports the Lumiar tradition, so that we may suppose the relic at St. Roch's, Lisbon, to be that of another St. Brigid, for there have been more than one saintly imitator of the great Irish original. We presume the great St. Brigid of Sweden had the Irish saint for her patron and model, and we know that Scandinavian pilgrims frequented the hospice of St. Brigid at Piacenza.

"WHERE BRIGID IS HONOURED." The Catholic Press, 28 March 1929

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