The feast day of St Brigid is celebrated on the 1st February, and in honour of this, we have delved into our resources to give a taste of the material available on the Bibliography of British and Irish History. Brigid was born into slavery in the mid-5th century but became a nun and abbess, founding several monasteries. As our range of resources show, the myth of Brigid has associations with an earlier pagan deity of the same name, explored in Brigid : goddess, druidess and saint and Brigit : from goddess to saint.
Brigid was also strongly connected with the symbol of fire, as Gerald of Wales recounts in his Topographia Hibernica how the sacred fire of St Brigid burned continually around the monastery at Kildare even after her death, yet never accumulated any ashes. It was tended by the nuns of Kildare for nineteen nights in turn, and on the twentieth night left for Brigid to tend herself.
According to Gerald, the scriptorium at Kildare produced an illuminated manuscript so sumptuous it was thought to be the work of angels. Unfortunately this manuscript is now lost, but it would probably have been of a similar quality to the Book of Kells.
Detail from fol. This copy of the Topographia Hibernica was produced in Lincoln in c. The image shows the tools of a scribe, a feather quill probably goose , and a knife. The knife was used to sharpen the quill and also to correct mistakes, by scraping the ink off the parchment. In this image, it also seems to be used to hold the quill-hand steady and secure the parchment. Like Gerald, Brigid herself was a great traveller, and was the patron saint of travellers and sailors.
The network of religious connections she belonged to is further documented in Gender and Connectivity: Facilitating Religious Travel in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries. Miracles associated with Brigid include the themes of farming and generosity, such as when she gave away her freshly churned butter to the needy, only to have it replenished through divine intervention, and the time she milked a cow three times in one day.
