Background
She was born a.d. 452 or 456 at Faughart, near county Louth, Ireland. Brigid ranks with St. Patrick and St. Columcille, the trio upon whom the whole Christian story of her country is based; she was the fifth-century feminine leader in accepting the monastic idea. Brigid belonged to the noble family of the Fotharta in Offaly, and her girlhood story is one of filial rebellion. Her father did not understand her vocation and would have preferred her to take the more normal course of marriage. But Brigid found a powerful sympathizer in Bishop Macaille, who enabled her to found her first community of nuns.
Brigid's most significant settlement was made about the year a.d. 487 at Kildare in the center of the great plain now known as the Curragh. It was a double monastery of monks and nuns. The modern authority, Dom Gougaud, O.S.B., remarks: "Such an organization had no chance of surviving save in an extremely pure spiritual atmosphere, and this the influence of the Irish monks of that age was certainly likely to produce." The first bishop-abbot to rule over the monks' half of the settlement was Conlaeth, now patron saint of the Kildare diocese. Known as one of the "three chief artisans of Ireland," he set up a school of metalwork and manuscript illumination which supplied the rapidly expanding church with bells, crosiers, chalices, patens, shrines, and illuminated copies of the Gospels. A monk of Kildare, Cogitosus, Brigid's first biographer, who wrote about a hundred years after her death, described the Kildare church as it was in his day, giving a glimpse of the wealth lavished on the shrine by the grateful Irish kings. Nothing remains today of that ancient splendor. The site is now occupied by a Protestant cathedral of little historic interest. Near it is a well-preserved, medieval Round Tower, a landmark to the surrounding countryside.
Brigid was remarkable for brevity of speech, hospitality, gaiety, love of music and song, and boundless generosity to the poor. Her legends have a charming pastoral character, making her the tutelar spirit of Irish homes and farmsteads. She tended sheep, worked in the dairy, and supervised such field operations as sowing and harvesting. Among her pets were a wild fox and a boar that she had tamed. The wild duck came at her call. These episodes provide a strong analogy between Celtic Christianity and the later Franciscan movement. Brigid died on Feb. 1, 524, and her body is interred in Downpatrick Cathedral. Her right hand is said to be preserved at Lumiar, near Lisbon, Portugal, and another relic is kept at St. Martin's, Cologne. Her feast day is February 1.
The chronology of her life and the facts of her parentage have been revised by the Irish scholar, Father Felim O'Briain, O.F.M. He died before completing the manuscript.