The Real Saint Patrick: 'an intensely loveable character'

 

We close the octave of posts on Saint Patrick's Confession by leaving the last word to Father Francis Shaw SJ. In the stirring quote below, taken from his 1931 work The Real Saint Patrick, Father Shaw brings together many of the themes we have looked at in this series:

By becoming familiar with the Confession, we shall secure certainly that Patrick will "come again and walk once more amongst us". For here in his own writings, shall we find the real Patrick an intensely loveable character, a man human like ourselves, grieved by the treachery of a friend, longing for the companionship of home and brethren, hurt by the sneers of critics, yet a man truly Christlike in spirit, meek and humble, simple and straightforward, practicing Evangelical poverty, a man filled with ardent personal love for Christ and burning with zeal for the salvation of souls, trusting in God for all things, desiring with great desire to die for Christ, in natural character a man energetic, resolute, indomitable, and possessed of an exceptional talent for organization and for government. Such a one was Patrick, the missioner whom God elected in those days out of all the world to bring "tidings of great joy" to those "men of good will" "who dwelt by the western sea".

Rev Francis Shaw, SJ, The Real St Patrick,  (Irish Messenger, Dublin, 1931). 

 

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Saint Patrick in His "Confession"

 

 Today we examine the views of Irish writer Alice Curtayne (1901–81) on the Confession of Saint Patrick. In 1931 the Anthonian Press published her Saint Patrick: Apostle of Ireland, a short illustrated biography in the style of her Saint Brigid:The Mary of Ireland which the same company issued two years later. But in 1951, a year after its founding at Maynooth, she contributed an article entitled Saint Patrick in His "Confession" to the Irish religious periodical The Furrow. She begins by acknowledging the authenticity of the work, adding that 'its chief interest is the striking portrait it presents of its author'. Yet it isn't long before she too expresses a sense of frustration with the way the Confession was framed: 

 He had indeed written a golden page in the history of the Christian Church. We know now that his was permanent achievement if ever a man's life-work could be so described, But does he give an account of himself in the terms of a success story?  By no means. His brief record, which can be read attentively in less than half an hour, is a humble, laborious and at time incoherent, effort to tell with absolute honesty the work of God in himself. It is of particularly curious interest to read the "Confession" during March, when the churches of Ireland and in the far-flung empire of Ireland overseas are resounding with hymns to his praise, and see what he wrote about himself fifteen hundred years ago. His opening is like a douche of cold water:

I Patrick, the sinner, am the most illiterate and the least of all the faithful and contemptible in the eyes of very many. 

He then tells the facts of his life with the extremist brevity.....  

Alice Curtayne, is not, of course alone in her frustration with the lack of biographical detail in Saint Patrick's writing. As she goes through the main details of his career acknowledging that 'Patrick's "Confession " incidentally reveals a man of great physical courage', her irritation re-surfaces:

 But the whole message of the "Confession" is the wonderful work of God through such a despicable instrument as himself, "a fool" (he says), "the abhorred of this world". He returns again and again, with a repetition that is almost wearisome, to the subject of his ignorance:

I had long since thought of writing; but I hesitated until now... today I blush and am exceedingly afraid to lay bare my lack of education; because I am unable to make my meaning plain in a few words to the learned...Perchance it seems to not a few that I am thrusting myself forward in this matter with my want of knowledge and my slow tongue...

 Alice Curtayne suggests that the slowness of tongue could only have applied to his Latin as Saint Patrick acquired Irish during his captivity which gave him a considerable advantage in his missionary work:

He could peach to the people in their own language. His phenomenal success with them does not argue any lack of either intelligibility or fluency.  

 But despite her frustration with Saint Patrick as a writer, the article ends on a positive note:

 In another part of the "Confession", he summarizes his work in Ireland as "to define doctrine and make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation". It is particularly fitting that his feast-day should occur in the fullness of spring-time, the season of hope. Even the brief extracts given above show how radiant with hope is the testimony that Saint Patrick has left us. 

 Curtayne, A. (1951). Saint Patrick in His “Confession.” The Furrow, 2(3), 150–160. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27655737

 

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THE CONFESSION OF ST. PATRICK

 

 

 'The Confession of Saint Patrick' is an article from an Australian Catholic news magazine published in 1937. The anonymous author declares that 'There is no more affecting document in any literature than the “Confession of St. Patrick' and feels that its unpolished nature reveals the human Patrick in all his frailty. Just how rustic and unlearned Saint Patrick actually was is still the subject of scholarly debate. Some feel that despite his protestations, the writer and his work were rather more sophisticated than he would have us believe. But the writer of this article sees the literary shortcomings of the Confession as adding immeasurably to its appeal and to the humanity of its writer. He closes with a moving tribute to the faith of Saint Patrick, discovered on the 'desolate slopes of Slemish'. 

THE CONFESSION OF ST. PATRICK.

 “And this is my confession before I die!” It is not the great Thaumaturgus, looking back on a road made straight and smooth by miracles, but just a tired old man, worn out with age, and great labours, and great sorrows, and disappointments; this Patrick, who sits him down in the quiet hour before the darkness to defend his Mission, and, incidentally, to tell the story of his life. We feel we can come very close to the aged missioner, who has known so much of life’s troubles, whose successes have been achieved at the cost of so much toil, and sacrifice, and suffering, and who has had to endure the keenest pain of all — to be betrayed by his trusted friend, and to be misunderstood and unjustly charged by his superiors. Beautiful and majestic is the St. Patrick beloved by poets and artists, overcoming the Druids on Tara by the might of his miracle-working crozier. But this human Patrick of the “Confession” so simple, so direct, so conscious of his own failings and limitations—and at the same time so conscious of the “great things” wrought by the Spirit through his instrumentality — this is the Patrick who is dear to us, even as our own fathers! 

There is no more affecting document in any literature than the “Confession of St. Patrick,” and the halting language in which it is written, the absence of all art, or literary craftsmanship, in its composition, the uncouth “rusticity” of its phrasing, add immeasurably to its appeal. We seem to see the old man “screwing himself up,” so to speak, to write it. He knows to what criticism his want of scholarship is going to expose him—especially from those learned brethren who have so often objected to an “unlettered man like him being left in charge of a Mission to such a cultured race as the Irish; “Behind my back they were speaking one with another and saying, ‘Why does this man put himself into danger amongst hostile people who know not God?’ This they did not put forward through malice, but it did not seem right to them on account of my being untutored, as, according to my own testimony, I have understood.” This want of education, which is the most serious of his opponents’ charges against his fitness for the post, is he not going to deliver the very proof of it in the document that presents his defence? He knows it: “For this reason I have long since thought of writing, but even until now I hesitate, for I feared I should incur the censure of the tongues of men; for I have not been educated as others have, who, accordingly, in an excellent manner, have imbibed both Law and Sacred Scripture alike, and have never changed their speech from childhood, but rather have ever been bringing it to perfection. For my speech and word has been translated into a foreign tongue, as may be easily proved from the flavour of my writing.” Not unskilful pleading this, for all its lack of the advocate’s gift of “form.” There emerges from it the first point of his defence—viz., that if he had not as much Latin as his critics, he had something more immediately useful to him for the purposes of his Mission: a good knowledge of Irish. 

He, himself, seems conscious that better than long years of college has been the training he has got fop his Mission through the hard things that befell him in his youth. Scene after scene rises up before him out of the past, and he sees how God was following a plan with him all the time, moulding and shaping him for the work He had designed for him. He sees himself again—a merry, thoughtless boy in his father’s comfortable home.Idle and careless he may have been, not very fond of school —he remembers now ruefully the opportunities he missed fonder of passing his days on his father’s farm, near Bannavem Taberniae, than in the township school, where doubtless Calpurnius would have liked to see this high-spirited lad of his preparing himself, by serious study, to follow his own decorous footsteps in a prosperous official career. Perhaps, if he had been at school instead of out at the “villula” that terrible day of the Slave Raid he might have lived and died, like his father and grandfather before him, a smug “decurion” of a small provincial Roman township But he would never have grown into the St. Patrick whose God-given Mission it was to lead Eire “virgin to Christ.”

 For that Mission’s accomplishment he had first to find Christ himself. Exquisite the passage of the “Confession” in which he tells us how he found Him—amid the solitude of the wintry hills, where, a poor slave boy, he tended his master’s flocks for six long years. Forgotten were cold, and hunger, and loneliness, and grief for the loss of home and kindred, in the warm glow of the Presence of which he had suddenly become conscious, on the desolate slopes of Slemish. 

'SAINT PATRICK'.THE NEWCASTLE AND MAITLAND CATHOLIC SENTINEL,  March 1, 1937, p.200.

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Discovering the Real Saint Patrick through his Confession

 

Last month the blog featured the work of Irish writer Alice Curtayne on Saint Brigid. Today we can look at the work of one of her contemporaries, Father Francis Shaw (1907–70), described by the Dictionary of Irish Biography online as a 'Jesuit priest, Celtic scholar and historical polemicist'. But three decades before he famously became embroiled in the reassessment of Patrick Pearse and the Easter Rising, Father Shaw wrote about the mission of Saint Patrick. It is interesting to see how his critique of the relationship between our national patron and his people in some ways mirrors that of Alice Curtayne on Saint Brigid. She questioned, for example, whether artistic depictions of our patroness only served to further obscure an already shadowy figure. In his 1930 article St. Patrick: A Study in Missionary Achievement, Father Shaw echoed these concerns: 

Certain aspects of St. Patrick's character and career have been worn threadbare in modern literature. In some respects, it may be said that the work of this Saint is well known. Of the strength of the popular devotion to St Patrick, there can be no doubt. Professor MacNeill has said "No one man has ever left so strong and permanent impression on a people, with the single and eminent exception of Moses." While this is undoubtedly true, is it not also true to say that our conception of St. Patrick is, to say the least of it, often hazy and vague? Little attempt is ever made to understand the man himself as he truly was. Are we not too ready to accept the conventional portrait of the tall, bearded man, dressed in green vestments, mitred and with crozier in hand, who stands stiffly on the green sward of Eire and ushers into the sea a whole herd of singularly inoffensive-looking snakes?

For Father Shaw iconography was just a part of the problem. Hagiography, which was still not fully understood at the time he was writing, in his eyes made of Saint Patrick 'an impossible and even a ludicrous figure'. But Father Shaw has the key to uncovering the man both the portrait makers and the medieval writers served to make less real. For, unlike Saint Brigid, our chief patron has left us an account of his mission written in his own words and it is here that the 'real Patrick' will be found:

We have quoted frequently from the Confession and it is in this document that we must find the real Patrick..."Because I wish my brethren and kinsfolk to know what manner of man I am, and that they may be able to understand the desire of my soul." The Confession is not then an autobiography of the saint. It is rather a revelation of the workings of God's grace in the heart of Patrick the missionary, and as such, it has an interest for us far greater than a mere record of events would have. 

And Father Shaw concludes that the real Patrick revealed by the Confession is a powerful figure:

 In studying the work and achievement of the Saint, we have seen evidence of "a strong personality, energetic in action, steadfast, resolute, indomitably persevering," of a practical capacity for organisation and of a natural talent for government. The secret of these qualities is revealed in the Confession. Here we find the motive force for all this energy. On every line of this passionate revelation of soul, the Saint's strong personal love for Christ is shown forth. He has left his home and people to be an exile for the love of Christ. He has endured suffering and tribulation for the love of Christ.

Rev. Francis Shaw, S.J., “St. Patrick: A Study in Missionary Achievement.” The Irish Monthly Volume 58, (1930) 132–49. 

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What is a Confessio?

Yesterday Sister Máire B. de Paor reminded us of the unique privilege we have as Irish people in having Saint Patrick's Confessio in which we can read his own account of his mission. But what is a Confessio? Sister de Paor provides this useful historical sketch:

The Confessio is a literary genre, of which two major extant examples in ancient literature are the Confessions of St Augustine, written about AD 400 when he was a comparatively young man, and the Confessio of St Patrick, written during the fifth century, possibly some short time before his death (C 62:12). In ecclesiastical Latin the term confessio has a threefold significance: confessio peccati, confessio laudis and confessio fidei, i.e. the penitential discipline, the praise of God, and the confession of faith of the martyrs before a tribunal. Confessio in this third context was also termed depositio, or deposition, and the confessors were those who made a deposition or, in other words, subscribed to the faith during the persecution of Christians in the early centuries of the Church. It has been argued cogently by Botte that the word, in the sense of 'subscribing to the faith' was extended in the fourth and fifth centuries to denote those who defended it against heresy, and that Augustine used it in this sense. 

But while a refutation of both the Arianism of the fourth century and the Pelagianism of the fifth are implicit in Patrick's Confessio, it does not appear to be its overt purpose, nor would Patrick have considered himself qualified for such an undertaking....

His Confessio, therefore, defines itself by its own title. It is not an autobiography in the strict sense, because the saint does not tell the story of his life in chronological order and plain narrative, nor is this his sole or main purpose. Neither, as some scholars suggest, is it merely a defence of himself against false accusation, an apologia pro vita sua. While his initial inspiration may well have been the refutation of certain allegations made by his enemies against him and his mission, it evolved into something greater, something more timeless and universal, in the process.

 Máire B. de Paor, PBVM, Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland- An Analysis of St Patrick's Confessio and Epistola (Dublin, 1998), 9-10.

 I found this three-fold definition of a Confessio useful. Much of the frustration with Saint Patrick's Confessio seems to lie in the fact that it is not an autobiography in the modern sense. In which year exactly did he commence his ministry? What motivated his enemies criticism of it? to name but two of the many questions which modern readers might wish had been addressed explicitly. But Sister de Paor concludes by reminding us that Saint Patrick's work

 'is, like St Augustine's, a magnificent, threefold Confessio of repentance, praise and faith as a lived reality. This threefold Confessio evolves out of a retrospective contemplative reflection on the events of Patrick's life.'

 even if historians might continue to regret that it leaves so many aspects of Saint Patrick's life and career open to speculation.  

 

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Treasuring the Writings of our Father in the Faith

In yesterday's post we were reminded of Saint Patrick's unique status as a documented saint of fifth-century Britain and Ireland. This is a point reiterated by one of Saint Patrick's more recent translators, Sister Máire B. de Paor, PBVM. In the introduction to her 1998 analysis of Saint Patrick's writings she states:

Saint Patrick is known to many as Apostle of Ireland; as first Romano-British missionary bishop, beyond the pale of Roman civilisation, he is known to a few; but as a littérateur of stature and genius and a spiritual thinker of great depth and originality, he is relatively little appreciated...Yet, in Patrick's writings we have two unique, personal, spiritual documents from the darkest of the Dark Ages, fifth-century Northern Europe. Indeed, they are the only personal documents that can be claimed by either the Church in Britain or the Church in Ireland from that troubled century.

..We Irish are, moreover, the only nation who have the great privilege of treasuring the writings of our Father in the faith about his founding of the Christian Church in our country. Conscious of the unique Christian heritage bequeathed to us by our national apostle who has left such an indelible impression on his people, I have attempted a modest literary and spiritual exposé of his writings to mark the fifteenth centenary of his death.

Máire B. de Paor, PBVM, Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland- An Analysis of St Patrick's Confessio and Epistola (Dublin, 1998), 6-7.

Having witnessed the attempts to de-Christianize the celebration of Saint Patrick's Day 2026 here in Ireland, it would seem that our need to appreciate the privilege of treasuring our national apostle's writings has become more pressing.

 

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Saint Patrick: The Documented Saint

Today we begin a series of posts exploring some opinions, old and new, about Saint Patrick's Confession. I have often thought that we do not sufficiently appreciate what a blessing it is to be able to read our national apostle's own words. Yes, the Confession raises tantalizing glimpses of Saint Patrick's life and mission, only to leave us with many unanswered questions. Yet we are privileged to be able to hear the voice of a man of the fifth century in these islands at all, as  this is a century noted for a dearth of historical sources. It was only in the nineteenth century when the first English translations appeared that Saint Patrick's writings were made available to the wider Irish public. Now in the twenty-first century we can readily access translations online as well as an entire site dedicated to Saint Patrick's writings courtesy of the Royal Irish Academy's Confessio site which reminds us that 'Patrick is the first identifiable person in Irish history to have his life story recorded'. It is the idea of Saint Patrick being a documented saint which also impressed the anonymous writer of the 1936 Australian newspaper article below. Curiously,  he does not draw on the actual writings in the piece but the point that alone of all the patrons of Britain and Ireland, it is only Saint Patrick whose 'writings are his great and enduring monument' is well made:

 

ST. PATRICK

The Documented Saint

Little is known of the patron saints of  England, Scotland and W ales. But  the patron Saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, is quite another matter. His name is imperishably associated with Slemish and Slane, with Fochlut or Trelawley and Downpatrick. But his writings are his great and enduring monument — his confession, his letter to Caroticus, and his immortal breastplate. 

WHO St. George was remains a mystery, and his connection with England is mythical. St. Andrew was the brother of Peter, and his one great good deed was the bringing of that brother to Jesus. We know little else of him and that he ever reached the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond by either the high road or the low road is highly improbable. St David of Wales has left no relic in building, grave, or writing, only a fragrant memory of devotion and zeal. 

BIRTHPLACE UNCERTAIN. 

YET with all the information contained in the priceless St. Patrick documents there is considerable uncertainty about his birthplace— and some features, of his work are puzzling. Scotland, Wales,  and France claim him as a son of their soil. He had associations with all three, but which gave. him birth remains in doubt There is a controversy as to whether he introduced Christianity to Ireland or whether there were not a number of churches in the land when he began his mission. Some usages of the Irish Church differ widely from those in vogue on the Continent. The rapidity with which he accomplished the conversion of Ireland seems miraculous. In one short lifetime he founded churches in every province and consecrated many bishops. 

CELEBRATION OF EASTER. 

THE great difference between the Celtic Church and the Roman was the date of the celebration of Easter, The Irish followed the Eastern custom, which synchronised Easter with the date of the Jewish Passover, the 14th day of the first month (Nisan or Abib). This provided that Easter Day might not fall on a Sunday. But the Western Church insisted that it should fall on the first Sunday after the full moon — so that if the 14th were a Sunday — Easter would be celebrated on the 21st to keep it apart from the Jewish rite. This was decided by the Roman Church in 198 A.D. The remarkable fact is that Ireland did not concur with this decision until the seventh century. Tradition places the education of St Patrick in the south of Gaul. At that time (the second century) St. Irenaeus of Lyons was the leading Christian' there. He was a native of Asia Minor and favoured the Eastern usage of observing Easter for a- time, hut later conformed to the usage of the West. The supposition is that St Patrick came under the tutelage of St Irenaeus and knew only his earlier custom, and so brought that custom to Ireland. There seems some plausibility in this contention. 

ST. PATRICK'S CREED. 

ONE of the most interesting relics of St. Patrick is his Creed, which is given in full: — 

"There is no other God, nor was there ever any in time past, nor shall there be hereafter, except God the Father, un-begotten, without beginning, almighty,' as we say. And His Son, Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always existed with the Father, from the beginning of the world, after the manner of a spiritual existence begotten .Ineffably before all beginning. And by Hjm were made things visible and invisible. He. was made man, and having overcome death He was received up into Heaven by the Father. And he gave to Him all power above every name of things in Heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. And let every tongue confess to Hjm that Jesus Christ is Lord and God in whom we believe. And we look for His coming soon to judge the quick and the dead, who will render to every man according to his deeds. And He shed on us abundantly the Holy Ghost, the gift and earnest of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey to become children of God, and joint heirs with Christ, whom we confess and adore as One God in the Trinity of the Holy Name." 

The power of one consecrated life is immensely great. In whatever century he lived and worked he made a marvellous transformation in Ireland. He may not have accomplished all that is ascribed to him. but he initiated a movement that still pulsates with life. He was ill-treated in his youth by Irish people, made a slave, hardly used by unkind masters, yet he returned good for evil, brought news of the noblest freedom to those who deprived him of liberty, prayed, toiled and died for those who despised him.

 

ST. PATRICK, The Telegraph  (Brisbane 1936, March 17), p. 12. 

 

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'This word of God in his mouth was like a fire': Meditation on Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland

 

A meditation for Saint Patrick's Day from Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781). I have a 1934 edition of his Meditations for Every Day of the Year and was delighted to find an entry for Saint Patrick's Day among them. I have long been interested in this heroic Englishman, best known for his commentary on the Douay-Rheims Bible and for his prayer book The Garden of the Soul, which was widely known and loved in Ireland too.  I also appreciate Bishop Challoner's work on the martyrs of the Reformation period, Memoirs of missionary priests, and other Catholics of both sexes, that have suffered death in England on religious accounts from the year 1577 to 1684, for he included Irishmen, such as Blessed John Roche and the tragic Mr Ailworth, who were martyred in England. In his meditation on Saint Patrick, Bishop Challoner follows his usual pattern of giving the reader three points to consider before drawing a conclusion. And I certainly won't dissent from his conclusion:

Conclude to offer up to God, on this day, a heart full of love and gratitude for the innumerable graces and blessings bestowed upon this island through the ministry of St. Patrick, and of that long train of Saints who have descended from him. Let us never degenerate from these our parents in Christ, or forget the glorious examples of their heroic virtues. O! who shall give us to see Ireland once more an island of Saints!

 I will conclude myself with a prayer for the beatification of Bishop Challoner, whose cause was opened in 1947, a cause this Irish woman would rejoice to see succeed. Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

PRAYER FOR THE BEATIFICATION OF BISHOP CHALLONER
O God, who didst make thy servant Richard a true and faithful pastor of thy little flock in England, deign to place him among the Blessed in thy Church, so that we who profit by his word and example may beg his help in heaven for the return of this land to the ancient faith and to the fold of the one true Shepherd Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

 

MARCH 17

ON ST. PATRICK, APOSTLE OF IRELAND

Consider first, how much we owe to God for having called this nation, by the ministry of St. Patrick, from darkness and the shadow of death that is, from infidelity, idolatry, and vice, into his admirable light; and from being the seat of the reign of Satan, where he for so many ages had exercised his tyranny without control, to become an island of Saints! O! what ought to be then the devotion of this day! how ought we to glorify God for this inestimable benefit of our vocation, and for all those other unspeakable gifts and graces which have been derived from this source! What veneration do we not owe to this our blessed Apostle, whom our Lord has chosen to be his instrument in this great work; who by his labours, by his preaching, and by his prayers, first brought Christ amongst us, and who first opened to us, through Christ, the fountains of mercy, grace, and salvation, which flow to this day! O! let us praise the Lord in his Saints.

Consider 2ndly, in what manner God prepared St. Patrick for this admirable work, and by what steps he brought him on from virtue to virtue, till he was perfectly qualified for the Apostleship. His Providence ordained that in his tender years he should be carried captive into that very land which he was afterwards to deliver from the slavery of Satan. Here he not only became acquainted with the language and manners of the people, but what was of infinitely more advantage to him, learned to spend his whole time, night and day, whilst he tended his master’s cattle, in the exercises of prayer and penance; by which he laid a solid foundation for an apostolic life. After he was released from his slavery, and received amongst the clergy, he employed many years abroad, under the discipline of the most eminent servants of God, in order to dispose and qualify himself to answer that divine call, by which he had been invited to the conversion of the Irish, which he then took in hand, when after this long preparation, he received both his episcopal consecration and mission from the Vicar of Jesus Christ, St. Celestine, Bishop of Rome. Thus the Spirit of God, by a long course of spiritual exercises, fitted our Saint for the great work for which he designed him; thus he gradually took full possession of that soul, by which he was to bring so many thousand souls to be his eternal temples. See, Christians, by what kind of exercises, of retirement, penance, and long-continued prayer, you ought also to be prepared, if you hope the Spirit of God should do great things by you or for you.

Consider 3rdly, the admirable ways and means by which St. Patrick was enabled to bring over a whole nation from their errors and vices to the faith and light of the Gospel, in spite of all the opposition of the world, the flesh, and the devil. These were, principally, his ardent zeal for the glory of God, and the salvation of souls; his profound humility; his prayer which was most fervent and continual; and the Spirit with which he delivered the word of God. This word of God in his mouth was like a fire, which breaking forth from the great furnace of divine love which possessed his own breast, communicated its bright flames to the hearts of all that heard him, and won them over to Christ; his word was mighty to break in pieces even the hardest rocks, and to bring into captivity every understanding, and every will, to the obedience of Christ. See, ye ministers of God, by this example, by what kind of arms you are to bring souls to God; see by what kind of arms you are to overcome all opposition of the enemy, and effectually to establish the reign of Christ in those souls he has committed to our charge. True zeal, profound humility, a spirit of prayer, and a heart burning with ardent charity, will more effectually enable you to convert sinners, than if you were even to raise the dead to life. See, all ye Christians in general, in this great example of our Saint, what are the principal ingredients of true sanctity, and what are the virtues and exercises that will bring you also to be Saints. The zeal, or desire of pleasing God in all things, a sincere humility, fervent prayer, and true charity in both its branches, are necessary for all: these will surely make us Saints, and nothing less than these can secure the salvation of any one.

Conclude to offer up to God, on this day, a heart full of love and gratitude for the innumerable graces and blessings bestowed upon this island through the ministry of St. Patrick, and of that long train of Saints who have descended from him. Let us never degenerate from these our parents in Christ, or forget the glorious examples of their heroic virtues. O! who shall give us to see Ireland once more an island of Saints!

Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner, Meditations for Every Day in the Year (London, 1934),  118-121.

 

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A Prayer to Saint Patrick

 The 1874 edition of The Key of Heaven which contains the Litany of Saint Patrick also has an alternative to the more commonly found novena prayer which begins 'O Blessed St. Patrick, glorious Apostle of Ireland, who didst become a friend and father to me for ages before my birth', the full text of which is available at the blog here. The alternative below is taken from a Novena approved at Rome and so I wonder if it might have come from the 1859 Novena in Honour of St Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland composed by Archbishop Tobias Kirby (1803-1895), Rector of the Irish College at Rome.  I am attempting to trace this text but below is the prayer as it appeared in the 1874 edition of The Key of Heaven, attributed to the English penal era Bishop John Milner (1752-1826), but published in New York. There are numerous editions of this prayer book but this is the only one I have come across which contains this particular Prayer to Saint Patrick. Bishop Milner was well-acquainted with Ireland and defended its patron saint in his 1808 work An inquiry into certain vulgar opinions: concerning the Catholic inhabitants and the antiquities of Ireland: in a series of letters from thence, addressed to a Protestant gentleman in England. There is a list of his extensive writings available online here.

 

PRAYER TO ST. PATRICK. 

 [From the Novena, approved at Rome.] 

 GLORIOUS apostle of Ireland, St. Patrick, I beg of you to accept the poor offering which I desire to present to you, during these days, dedicated to your honor. I now offer all the good resolutions I shall make. I propose to devote myself wholly and entirely to the attainment of the end of my creation. Yes, O great Saint, I am resolved, with the divine aid, to save my soul at all hazards. Cost what it may, I am determined to effect that great object. Do you aid me, by your powerful intercession. Obtain for me your spirit of prayer; your detachment from the things of the world; your ardent love for God, and zeal for the salvation of my neighbor. Obtain for me a tender, filial, and constant devotion to the glorious Mother of God, who is our life, our sweetness, and our hope. I commend to you the Holy Catholic Church. Bring back by your prayers, to the embraces of this tender mother, all those poor souls whom error and the fraud of their infernal enemy have torn from her bosom. Convert all poor sinners to the paths of justice, by your powerful intercession. Obtain peace for all Christian people, that we all united together by the unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, may imitate your virtues in this life, and participate in your glory hereafter. Amen. 

 

Rt. Rev. J. Milner, The Key of Heaven; or, A Manual of Prayer (New York, 1874), 551-552.

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LITANY OF SAINT PATRICK. APOSTLE AND PATRON OF THE IRISH RACE.

A fine old nineteenth-century litany which I intend to pray every day during the month of March:

 

LITANY OF SAINT PATRICK. APOSTLE AND PATRON OF THE IRISH RACE. 

 LORD, have mercy on us. 

Christ, have mercy on us. 

Lord, have mercy on us. 

Christ, hear us. 

Christ, graciously hear us. 

God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us. 

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us. 

God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us. 

Holy Trinity one God, Have mercy on us. 

Holy Mary, Pray for us

Holy Mother of God, Pray for us

All ye holy Angels,  Pray for us

All ye Apostles and Evangelists, Pray for us

All ye holy Saints and Doctors, Pray for us

All ye holy Bishops and Confessors, Pray for us

St. Patrick, Apostle and Patron of Ireland, Pray for us

St. Patrick, vessel of election, Pray for us

St. Patrick, model of penitents, Pray for us

St. Patrick, example of mortification, Pray for us

St. Patrick, meek and humble, Pray for us

St. Patrick, mild and patient, Pray for us

St. Patrick, pure and temperate, Pray for us

St. Patrick, zealous pastor of souls, Pray for us

St. Patrick, ardent lover of Jesus, Pray for us

St. Patrick, singularly devoted to our Blessed Lady, Pray for us

St. Patrick, most constant in holy prayer,  Pray for us

St. Patrick, example of perfect charity, Pray for us

St. Patrick, glory of Ireland, Pray for us

St. Patrick, our powerful protector, Pray for us

St. Patrick, pillar of Catholicity, Pray for us

St. Patrick, confessor of the faith, Pray for us

 St. Patrick, herald of salvation, Pray for us

St. Patrick, our father in Christ, Pray for us

Lord Jesus, we beseech thee to hear us, 

That it would please thee through the intercession of thy servant Patrick, to make thy name glorious to all who know it not, we beseech thee to hear us,

That thou vouchsafe to preserve the Pope, and all ecclesiastical orders in religion, we beseech thee to hear us, 

That thou wilt protect our bishops and clergy, and all who labor in thy holy Church, we beseech thee to hear us, 

That thou wilt preserve and increase the faith among us, we beseech thee to hear us, 

That thou wilt enlighten all those who are in error, and bring them to the knowledge of thy truth, we beseech thee to hear us,

That thou wilt deliver us from all sin, we beseech thee to hear us,

From all pride and impurity, Deliver us, O Lord. 

From all hatred and ill-will, Deliver us, O Lord. 

From all violence and intemperance, Deliver us, O Lord.

From a sudden and unprovided death, Deliver us, O Lord. 

In the day of judgment, Deliver us, O Lord.   

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Lord. 

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Hear us, O Lord. 

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us. 

Lord, have mercy on us. 

Christ, have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us. 

Pray for us, St. Patrick,

That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. 

Let us pray. 

GOD, who hast vouchsafed to send thy confessor and bishop, the blessed St. Patrick, to preach thy glory to nations, grant, by his merits and intercession, that we may accomplish in thy mercy what thou commandest to be done. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

Rt. Rev. J. Milner, The Key of Heaven; or, A Manual of Prayer (New York, 1874), 551-556.

 

 

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Saint Brigid: 'Steadfastly Worshipped in the Heart'

 

We close the series of posts in honour of Saint Brigid based on the work of Alice Curtayne with the author's own conclusions about the relationship of our patroness with her people. It is one which she sees as having been carried in the heart and best expressed in the humble historic settings of the mud cabin, the Mass-rock or by those on the run from persecution, rather than in grand cathedrals. It is interesting to see that despite associating Saint Brigid with feminism and modernity, Alice Curtayne returns to traditional tropes in the final chapter of her book St. Brigid of Ireland :

It will be conceded that we cannot in Ireland worship the earthly remains of Brigid in any worthy fashion. One may state, without fear of giving offence, that no monument to her in this country expresses in any fitting manner her vast and enduring significance to the Irish race. But in direct contrast to the paucity of her relics, to the silence concerning her in stone, is the profusion of her traditions and the ardent, vehement devotion to her that is being forever proclaimed by the Irish people. The blank absence of the one is as chilling, as the emphatic presence of the other is warm. If her people have not painted and carved and wrought and built in her honour, yet neither most assuredly have they forgotten. And in this respect the cult of Saint Brigid of Ireland is the most sublime offering ever laid at the feet of mortal woman, because with so little material aid or external symbol of any kind, it has burned with such ardour through fifteen hundred years, fed by the spirit only.  

Saint Brigid has never been worshipped in her own land under the loftv dome of splendid cathedrals. Her people’s conception of her has not yet been expressed in marble for the niches of palace walls: nor traced in delicate mosaics; nor painted in glowing frescoes; nor even enshrined in a literature through which genius might exalt her. It is in mud cabins of the rudest description, or beside the Mass-rock in some wind-swept glen, by fugitives in concealment and in flight, in underground caves, or emigrant ships, in the slave-gangs of the Barbadoes, in the basement kitchens of Pagan cities, that she has been steadfastly worshipped in the heart.

 Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid of Ireland, (Dublin 1933). 

 We conclude with a prayer appended to Alice Curtayne's pamphlet St Brigid- The Mary of Ireland:

PRAYER TO ST. BRIGID

Dear Saint Brigid, brilliant star of sanctity in the early days of our Irish faith and love for the omnipotent God who has never forsaken us, we look up to you now in earnest, hopeful prayer. By your glorious sacrifice of earthly riches, joys, and affections, obtain for us grace to "seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice" with constant trust in His fatherly care. By your life of laborious charity to the poor, the sick, the many seekers for light and comfort, obtain for us grace to be God's helpers to the utmost of our power during our stay on earth, looking forward, as you did, to our life with Him during eternity.

By the sanctified peace of your death-bed, obtain for us that we may receive the fullness of pardon and peace when the hour comes that will summon us to the judgement seat of our just and most merciful Lord. Amen.

 

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Saint Brigid: 'Supremely the Saint of Pastoral Life'

 

Over the last week we have seen how Alice Curtayne's book on Saint Brigid has examined our national patroness as a uniquely important figure in early Irish history. But we are going to turn now to the last of the author's three works, a pamphlet called Saint Brigid - The Mary of  Ireland.  The Australian Catholic Truth Society's edition was published in 1936, and reissued in 1960. The text is available to read online here. I have a copy of my own published in Dublin in 1933. The main text is the same but there are some charmingly naive illustrations in the Anthonian Press edition and some extra prayers appended. I will share some of those tomorrow, but today I want to turn to Alice Curtayne's treatment of Saint Brigid as the supreme saint of agricultural life. The author has presented Saint Brigid as a unique personality in early Irish history with unbounded energy, organizational genius and leadership qualities. But her hagiography is also filled with episodes relating to the provision of food. Popular culture, where her feast day was a significant date on the agricultural calendar, has always included a strong acknowledgment of the saint's patronage of agriculture, reflected in traditional iconography which depicts a cow at her feet. Alice Curtayne has little difficulty in reconciling all of the various aspects of Saint Brigid's life from the nun to the farmer. The provision of hospitality was a duty laid upon those in the monastic life and a common trope in hagiography:

 Everyone who came to her doors was entertained. In this lavish dispensing she was frequently disturbed by misgivings of an insufficient supply. Would the butter last out? Or would the beer go round? were the anxieties known to Brigid the hostess. But all earthy feasts come to an end. This great-souled woman always thought the backs of departing guests a sad sight. Did they have enough? And would they be fed tomorrow? were her recurrent troubles. There is an Irish poem ascribed to her in which she is supposed to envisage heaven as a stupendous feast, shared by countless guests and going on forever, replenished from inexhaustible supplies; even a 'lake of ale is mentioned. Though the authenticity of the poem is dubious, the idea is just. It is strictly true of Brigid that her heaven would be a state in which she could have all the pleasures of hospitality without its solicitudes.

Although modern scholars have confirmed that this poem was written some centuries after the time of Saint Brigid, Curtayne goes on to say:

Her visions were as characteristic of her as that notion of heaven. Professor Gardner, extending a thought of Shelley, has remarked somewhere that "the mystic's representation, the language that he uses, must all be coloured by his previous education and mental equipment". It is, indeed, highly interesting to observe that when the saints attempt to describe their visions they invariably end by describing some daily scene, but to which they attach an allegorical meaning...How characteristic in this respect were the visions of Brigid. In that one described in the Lebar Brecc, she "saw" ploughmen and sowers, clear shining streams, oats springing up, a furrowed field, all farm animals: sheep, swine, dogs. These are the things on which Brigid's eyes rested every day.

For Saint Brigid is supremely the saint of pastoral life. She is the genius of our Irish homesteads, and every farm is in a sense her shrine. She is the tutelar spirit of our meadows and gardens. But within the iron gates of industrial cities, she is a stranger. All her legends are about farm life, milking cows, making firkins of butter, calling home the sheep in the rain. She was at home in a dairy. The legends evoke discomfitures that are very familiar: the dairymaid's confusion when a superior worker sneers at her butter, as insufficient in quantity or indifferent in quality. Brigid was a notable butter and cheese maker, and her home-brewed ale was famous throughout the land. After her profession, even when she was Mother Abbess of thirteen thousand nuns, she still spent part of each day at those rural occupations. We read of her coming in from shepherding, her garments saturated with rain; or supervising the reapers from dawn to sunset in the harvest fields about her convent settlement; or contentedly busy over her stores of honey and wholesome brews...

Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid - The Mary of Ireland, (Dublin 1933), 18-19.  

 

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Brigid and the Bishops II

St Brigid Feeding the Poor by Imogen Stuart

 

We are continuing today with the relationship between Saint Brigid and the Irish bishops. Yesterday we saw that Alice Curtayne believed the relationship was one of equals, and noted the lack of tension between the saint and those in episcopal authority. She then goes on to recount some instances of miracles worked by Saint Brigid which involved bishops. The opening episode is particularly interesting as its shows her unafraid to speak her mind in the presence of senior male clerics:

Brigid is credited with an epigrammatic mode of speech and a certain imperiousness of manner, even with bishops. Once a bishop, with some companions, came to  her convent to deliver a sermon. They had come a long journey and greeted her with the news that they were hungry.“So are we hungry—for instruction,” she answered. “Go into church and speak first, and then you shall eat.”

Other miracles offer more standard hagiographical fare. The miraculous provision of plenty is one of the most common tropes found in the lives of medieval saints. These miracles testify to the faith of the saints, to their trust in God's providence and to their status as God's favoured servants. Saint Brigid's reputation in hagiography is one of generosity, as the following episode recounted by Alice Curtayne testifies:

Once seven bishops together went to visit her, and they have gone down into fame as the Seven Bishops of Cabinteely. Do you suppose that Brigid was disturbed by this invasion of the episcopacy? It would not appear so. She sent one sister to the cows that had already been milked twice that day; and another sister to a larder that was as deplenished as Mother Hubbard’s; and another sister to an ale-vat that was drained dry. Yet the bishops feasted adequately, for food was a commodity Brigid never failed to find for her guests.

 The monastic virtue of hospitality is also on display in this miracle involving Bishop Bron of Killaspugbrone, County Sligo. 

There is a charming story told of one Bishop Bron, who, journeying to Brigid with some companions, lost his way. Finding themselves stranded in a wilderness at nightfall, they were forced to sleep in the open. Then all were comforted by the same dream. They thought (as they drowsed in exhausted and chill discomfort) that through the darkness and wild weather they beheld the lights of Brigid's settlement and that, stumbling to it, they saw her come smiling to the cashel gates to lavish upon them the hospitality for which she was famous. First the feet of the footsore guests were washed and then, installed in repose, warmth, security, they were given good food in that delightful atmosphere of solicitude that was peculiarly Brigid’s. So restful was this dream, the pilgrims suffered not in the least from their night’s exposure. They were even refreshed, and with daylight they hopefully resumed their trudge. And lo! at a turn of the road, their hearts soared to see the familiar figure in white driving towards them. Brigid, having been supernaturally warned, had come out to rescue them from their plight.

 Bishop Bron featured in another miracle involving Saint Brigid, which Alice Curtayne does not recount in her book, but which you can find on the blog here.  

Alice Curtayne ends her chapter on Brigid and the Bishops with this tribute: 

Brigid’s achievements and power, when contrasted with her total lack of training, stand out most singularly. In this display of creative genius, she had plainly divine gifts.The bishops did not wait for a decree of canonisation to acclaim what was so manifest to all men. But when it was discovered that she possessed, too, a genuine discernment of souls, people began to flock to her from all sides. Not the bishops only, but all the great in the land, pagans and Christians, and the humble, too, sought her out.

Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid of Ireland (Dublin, 1933). 

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Brigid and the Bishops

 

First Edition of St Brigid of Ireland by Alice Curtayne

'Brigid and the Bishops' is the title of Chapter IV of Alice Curtayne's biography St Brigid of Ireland.  In recent years much has been made by the supporters of women's ordination of the episode in her hagiography where, receiving her profession as a nun, the bishop accidentally read the office of episcopal consecration over her. In 1934 an Australian reviewer of St Brigid of Ireland wrote 

This study of Saint Brigid is written in the new method of hagiography of which the author is one of the pioneers among the English-reading public. 

and so, I was interested to see how Alice Curtayne approached the idea of 'Brigid the Bishop'. She begins her chapter by noting:

 It was the practice of Celtic Christianity that a bishop only could receive the vows of nuns. When Brigid became a nun, then, there began her first friendship with bishops, which was to develop later into a kind of fellowship with the episcopacy—one of the most curious features of her life. Ten or twelve years before her birth, Saint Patrick had already established the Irish Hierarchy under the primacy of Armagh. That hierarchy appears to have immediately discerned Brigid and received her, without hesitation, on terms of equality. Of struggles with ecclesiastical authority— sorrowful commonplace in the lives of later saints —there is no trace in Brigid’s career...

 ... Although Patrick himself is not to be counted among the bishop preceptors, counsellors and friends who thronged about Brigid, let it be remembered that these included the Apostle’s closest friends. Brigid was intimate with Patrick's intimates, so that even though she was not personally acquainted with him, the statements in the old “Lives” representing them as of one mind and heart, still remain strictly true.

After recounting Saint Brigid's close friendship with Bishop Erc of Slane, depicted in hagiography as one of Saint Patrick's earliest and most important converts, and noting that 'a great many of Brigid's chariot journeys were undertaken under Erc's direction', Curtayne then grasps the nettle of Brigid's own status:

 The importance assumed by Brigid in the eyes of the episcopacy has given rise to at least one absurd legend, which must be dismissed. It is sometimes said that Brigid “appointed” Conlaeth to Kildare, almost as though she had conferred episcopal jurisdiction upon him. Worse, it is even stated in one Irish “Life” that Brigid herself was a bishop, the anomaly being explained by the fact that at her profession the rite of episcopal consecration was read over her in mistake; it is added with circumstantial detail that Maccaille protested to Mel, saying a bishop’s order should not be conferred on a woman, and that Mel answered it was clearly the work of God in this case and should stand! 

It is true that Brigid’s chief foundation, Kildare, preserved for many centuries a double line of succession of abbesses and bishops; and it is equally true that for long the nomination of the Bishop of Kildare appeared to be subject to some extent to the Abbess’s approval. But of course Brigid was not a bishop, nor was it in her power to confer episcopal jurisdiction. What emerges from this legend is what gave rise to it: her strong-mindedness, and the deference ungrudgingly accorded her by the episcopacy. She was the admired friend and the counsellor of bishops. What more natural than that the old Irish writer should assume that she was even a bishop herself, although it happened by accident!  

Now, of course modern scholars would offer a fuller analysis of the governance of Kildare and set the story of Brigid's own episcopal claims in the context of later historical developments, such as the struggle between Kildare and Armagh for primacy in the Irish church. But Alice Curtayne was right to point out that hagiography depicts Saint Brigid as having enjoyed a friendship of equals with the bishops, even though there is no evidence that she or any other woman actually exercised the office of bishop.

 

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"What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"

 

St Brigid by Leo Whelan

Yesterday, Alice Curtayne left us with the question "What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"  It was one she posed in the 1930s but one which remains current in the 2020s and below is her answer:

But there is a whole series of surprises - so great as to be akin to shocks - awaiting those who set out on a determined rediscovery of Brigid. The first shock is suffered in finding out her triumphant, her everlasting, her placid modernity. She presents an eternal example of feminine achievement, such as to astonish the most extreme of our modern feminists. We have never approached it. For she asserted herself against a set of circumstances so formidably adverse to self-expression that the present times can provide no parallel to them. The clearer grows Brigid's story, the more splendid becomes her effort. We find that, after all, we have nothing to add to her accomplishment in the domain of human endeavour and that - in the best sense - she can still lead womankind, as she led it fifteen hundred years ago. 

 Isn't it interesting to see Saint Brigid associated with feminism and modernity in 1935? Alice Curtayne affirms here her view of the uniqueness of Saint Brigid, the woman and of her achievement. And she is not done yet:

When Brigid had overcome the adverse circumstances which would have confined her, she used her freedom in a way that will greatly surprise every student of the present day who seeks to piece together her story. Already, in that remote fifth century, we find her doing all those things which the world shouts in our ears as the discovery and boast of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With independence of mind and energy, Brigid undertook the organisation and the defence of women, and thus became the saviour of the feminine ascetic movement in Ireland. But she was much more than a mere organiser. She was a literary and a cultural inspiration. Foundress of the famous school of Kildare, she was a promotor of craftsmanship. There were artists turning out croziers, chalices and shrines, and illuminating manuscripts because of Brigid's self-emancipation. She had a circle of friends who represented that which Christian history calls a school of mystics, and which the modern world might describe as a salon. But with all this activity, she remains the patron of agricultural life, for throughout her whole career she was never disassociated from cows and sheep and the labour of the fields. In all those spheres of action where we are gropingly trying to reconstruct at the the present day, Brigid was a pioneer. 

Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775  

Whilst one could certainly argue that there is a hyperbolic element in Alice Curtayne's record of Saint Brigid's achievements, nevertheless it remains quite a tribute to a woman, written by a woman in the 1930s. As a male contemporary reviewer, Aodh de Blacam, noted "Miss Curtayne's Brigid is a great nun - great in soul, great in labour, great in her achievement and influence." For me she is a much more compelling figure than the feminist goddess of our own times. 

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Rediscovering Saint Brigid

St Brigid by P.J. Tuohy 1924-25

 

I am staying today with Alice Curtayne's 1935 article on 'Rediscovering Saint Brigid'. I find this paper particularly intriguing as I struggled to appreciate her perception that the memory of Saint Brigid had faded. Saint Brigid was very much a part of the nineteenth/early twentieth century Celtic Revival's rediscovery of the Irish saints as a whole. Canon O'Hanlon, for example, had published a substantial biography of her in 1877 under the title Life of St. Brigid, Virgin: First abbess of Kildare, Special Patroness of Kildare Diocese, and General Patroness of Ireland. Thirty years later Augustinian Father J.A. Knowles published his Saint Brigid, a work running to almost 300 pages. In addition, Cardinal Moran, who had obtained a relic of Saint Brigid's tooth from Cologne for the Brigidine sisters in the 1880s, included her in a series of pamphlets on all three of the Irish patrons published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society in 1905. There are many other examples of poems, articles and stories from the popular religious and secular press which might also be cited. So, I think it is fair to say that in the fifty years before Alice Curtayne's article appeared Saint Brigid had not been overlooked or forgotten. Now in fairness, as we saw in yesterday's extract, she begins by saying 'I do not say that Ireland had forgotten her, but we were very ignorant of her, and very unconcerned about our ignorance'. She goes on to say:

Saint Brigid! To the majority of our people she is still only a name: a beautiful name, because it is musical and has antiquity.There is a vague notion current that it connotes strength of some kind, so it is cheerfully passed on to children and the donors are content. To others, that name resounding like a knell from our remotest past, is backed by some vague abstraction suggested by the artist: Saint Brigid is a shadowy personage (garbed in red Tuohy supposed!), grasping a crozier, or holding a miniature model of a church, and gazing serenely into vacancy....

 As Curtayne sees it, the deficiencies in iconography are only a part of the problem:

The person of Saint Brigid is still obscured from view in the mists of ancient history, and it is really only by an extreme effort of mind that people can believe there is reality behind that name: that Brigid really "lived, moved and had her being," that she had a distinctive personality with which it is highly important we should restore communion. It is important to us a nation. Sometimes it seems that our only way of survival lies through this restoration of the Celtic Christian mind.

They err who imagine that this personage of our early history cannot bring us any enlightenment in our modern complexities. It is supposed that, whatever her reality may have been, she is now too remote from us, too severed by the gulf of centuries and the vicissitudes of history, to hold any practical guidance for us in our present welter. The general attitude, never expressed - naturally- but quite clearly implied, is: "What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"  

 Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775 

So, it seems that for Alice Curtayne it was not that the name of Saint Brigid had been forgotten, rather it was the reality behind that name. In tomorrow's posting we will look at some of the answers the writer offered to the questions she has posed here.

  

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Saint Brigid's Day Holiday

 

Today in Ireland is the official Saint Brigid's Day holiday as former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was only too pleased to remind us in a tweet made here on January 30, 2026:

I signed the order establishing this new public holiday. It clearly states that it is both St Brigid's Day and Imbolc venerating both an Irish christian saint and our own ancient new year when we had our own gods and godesses (sic). National identity doesn't have to be monotone or singular. It can be multi-layered and pluralistic. In fact, that's more authentic to who we are and who she was as a saint godess (sic). Éire ildaite.

 This extraordinary statement perfectly illustrates the culture war around Saint Brigid which seems to have taken on a sharper edge this year. I first started blogging back in 2009 and am conscious of a real sea-change of late. Back then the notion that Saint Brigid was really a Celtic goddess whom the Church had hijacked was confidently asserted as established and unquestioned fact. It wasn't until I started to investigate the evidence on which these claims rested for myself that I realised just how dubious the foundations actually were. I have been aware over the last few years that female academics have begun to challenge the goddess, I even heard one say in a radio interview that we had been 'sold a pup' about Saint Brigid's supposed identification with a goddess. Yet Mr Varadkar seems to be totally unaware of the recent advances made in the understanding of early medieval Christianity and of the re-examination of the historical saint Brigid, instead claiming that the 'saint goddess' is the more authentic. I find it interesting that 'progressive' people, supposedly wanting female voices to be heard and taken seriously, prefer to ignore the scholarship of modern Irish women academics and instead cling to discredited Victorian thinking about goddesses.  

The idea though that Saint Brigid deserved a public holiday in her honour predates our modern culture wars. Indeed, it was something writer Alice Curtayne was aware of in the early 1930s. In her article 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', published in the Irish Monthly she wrote of the various ways in which interest in our national patroness had been reawakened:

..in recent years there has been a curiously spontaneous revival of the cult of Saint Brigid. I do not say that Ireland had forgotten her, but we were very ignorant of her and very unconcerned about out ignorance. Then it was as though our national consciousness became suddenly uneasy. Articles, poems, plays and even books about Brigid began to blossom out here and there.She was painted by two of our artists  and their different conceptions provoked a welcome discussion. Her relic was solemnly brought back from Portugal and enshrined in a church dedicated to her near the capital city. The demand arose on all sides to have her feast-day declared a national holiday, like that of Saint Patrick. 

Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775

How sad to see that now that this demand has finally been met, it is to honour a quite different 'Brigid'  than the historical saint, loved and venerated by the Irish people over many centuries. 

 

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Saint Brigid of Ireland: "She stood in splendid isolation, without prototype, without peer."

 I am marking Lá Fhéile Bríde, the feast day of Saint Brigid, in 2026 with a wonderful tribute by writer Alice Curtayne from her 1934 study Saint Brigid of Ireland. In the extract below, taken from the opening chapter, the writer emphasizes both Saint Brigid's presence in the Irish landscape and the uniqueness of her presence in early Irish Christianity as a whole. The majority of our early medieval Irish female saints are shadowy, elusive figures, but not Brigid. Wishing everyone the blessings of the feast! 

Saint Brigid, one of the Great Three, standing between Patrick and Columcille, arose in that period where certainty first begins in Irish record. She is at that boundary on which abut all our history, literature, art, architecture and topography. The strength of Irish devotion to her is known if only because our Kilbrides, Tubberbrides and Kilbreedys so insistently speak of it. Not even the unbeliever who has the smallest acquaintance with Ireland can miss it, so enormously is that name written across the landscape. The ancients affixed it to permanent things like running water, townlands, capes, that should witness to her forever. It was as though her contemporaries re-named every landmark,re-cast the whole description of the island in order to commemorate her. That devotion is distinguished too by a certain freshness of enthusiasm. There is still preserved in its texture an element of surprise, a delight, such as men might experience on beholding dawn for the first time. Her name has never become an ordinary name, but still vibrates in the ear like the blast of a trumpet. All this is universally known but it is not in the least understood. It is not understood because with the passage of time we have lost sight of the shining singularity of Brigid. It would not be exaggeration to say that her appearance was like a new revelation of Christianity..... 

The great fact to bear in mind about Brigid and the women of 450 is her difference from them. She stood in splendid isolation, without prototype, without peer. When she arose it was as though with a decisive movement she pulled back a heavy curtain shrouding the sordid scene. And at that gesture all the other actors on the stage spring to their feet to gaze, transfigured, at a dazzling landscape where they beheld for the first time Freedom and, beyond it, Vision.

 

Alice Curtayne,  Saint Brigid of Ireland, (Dublin, 1934). 

 

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Alice Curtayne and Saint Brigid

As we approach the feast of Saint Brigid, 2026, I have been re-reading the work of Irish Catholic writer Alice Curtayne, born in County Kerry on November 6, the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, 1901. She died on August 9, 1981, in Saint Brigid's own county of Kildare. Over the course of her eighty years Alice Curtayne produced a number of books on the Irish saints, including individual titles on all three of our Irish patrons plus two volumes on Irish saints for children. I intend over the coming days to share extracts from three of her writings on Saint Brigid, all published in the 1930s:

 (1) Saint Brigid of Ireland - a 1934 book on Saint Brigid's life and cultus 

(2) The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid - a 1935 article published in The Irish Monthly 

 (3) Saint Brigid- The Mary of Ireland - a 1936 pamphlet published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society. 

 Ninety years on I find her work charming, still fresh and often thought-provoking. As Ireland in 2026 appears to find the unattested claims of a fictional flame-haired feminist goddess more compelling than the documented cultus of our national patroness, I am cheering on Alice Curtayne as she writes: 

It is easy to point to the affinity between certain of the heathen legends and episodes in the life of Brigid, but that affinity does not alone suffice to destroy Brigid’s historical truth. As a matter of fact the vitality of the Christian saint annihilates the dim concept of the pagan divinity. The abstraction fades before the brightness of the concrete. The warm humanity of Brigid that shines through the gossiping legends, that flaming humanity, alternately vehement, angry, tolerant, benign, completes before the eye of the mind a living personality that is the direct antithesis of the druids’ cold and unconsoling myth.

Alice Curtayne, St Brigid of Ireland (revised edition, Dublin, 1955), 104. 

I am sure she would have been heartened to know that the current generation of scholars have comprehensively undermined the foundations on which the claims of Brigid the goddess rest, even if popular enthusiasm for the pagan divinity remains unaffected. I look forward to sharing some more of Alice Curtayne's reflections on Brigid the saint each day until the octave of her feast. 

 

Content Copyright © Trias Thaumaturga 2012-2026. All rights reserved.