#saint bridget

[mysticmagdalene]

Crucifixion with St. Bridget, 15th century.

[maypoleman1]

1st February

Bride’s Day

Brigid: A Multi-Faceted Goddess. Source: Celtic Native website

Today is St Bridget’s Day, but it is also the feast of the Celtic goddess Brigid, or Bride. Of the historical Bridget, little is known. She lived in Kildare, where she founded a nunnery and became its Abbess; she died in 525. However, after her subsequent canonisation, a number of miracles were attributed to her, including the ability to make cows produce more milk, and her turning an armful of rushes into fish during a fish scarcity. She was also, illogically, given she lived in the sixth century, supposedly Jesus’ midwife. Bridget took on a cultish status in Ireland, Wales and the Isle of Man. In central Wales a gathering of twenty nuns fiercely guarded an ever-burning fire dedicated to Bridget, which no man was permitted to approach. If all this sounds rather pagan, it is because it was. The Christian missionaries in the Celtic west encountered strong belief in the goddess Bride, who was associated with fertility, water and the spring. The winter fires set by the pre-Christian Celts in honour of Bride explain the saint’s fire cult, and her association with fertility and child birth, explains the Christian linking of Bridget to the birth of Christ.

A more specific tale concerning Bride and the return of spring was also told in pagan times. Bride was the daughter of the “Good God” Dagda, the god of plenty. In a similar tale to that of Hades and Persephone, Bride was said to have been kidnapped by Cailleach, the goddess of winter, who held her in a mountain fastness, forcing Dagda to withdraw his benevolence from the earth and enabling Cailleach to spread her sheet of ice all over the land for four months. However, the agreement with Dagda was that Bride should be released in early February, and on this, her feast day, the young goddess would emerge from her mountain prison, and the snow would melt as she stepped through it, bringing the light of spring in her wake. The people would set candles in their windows to welcome the waxing sun and placed a bed by their door to encourage Bride to enter their homes, bringing warmth and good fortune with her.

Inevitably, come the end of October, Bride had to return to Cailleach and her winter confinement.

[koredzas]

Niccolo di Tommaso - Saint Bridget ant Vision orf the Nativity. 1372

[theraccolta]

I will meditate on thee in the morning. - Psalms 62:7

[moonsrosie]

Brigid, Bringer of Imbolc ~ A Short Story

Brigid, Bringer of Imbolc ~ A Short Story

My name is Brigid. Some know me as Saint, others as Goddess. Nonetheless, I am Brigid. Bringer of Imbolc.

Mornings in the Woodland were quaint. Especially so during this time, when the dark consumes the Earth more than the light. When the tributaries gush down hills and through valleys, towards their river’s roots. When the trees dance naked in the breeze, and the billowing bringers of…

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[servus-immaculatae]

St. Bridget's Eucharistic Vision, from St. Bridget of Sweden, Revelations and other texts, in Latin, Late XIVth Century A.D., Italy, Naples.

[textsfromthebingohall]

[theraccolta]

St Bridget of Sweden

In 1344, St Bridget founds the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, the Brigittines. One distinctive feature of the houses of the Order was that they were double monasteries, with both men and women forming a joint community, though with separate cloisters.

The small community of men, ordained to priesthood, were to act as chaplains to the monastery of nuns, but under the government of the abbess. The nuns were strictly enclosed, emphasizing scholarship and study, but the monks were also preachers and itinerant missionaries.

This painting of St Bridget is in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence.