Life
Feast Day, 1 February; female patron saint of Ireland, formerly a pagan
deity associated with Imbolg (season); and later the object of a Christian
cult centred at her church in Co. Kildare; prob. related to the Brigantes,
a dominant group in North Britain at the arrival of the Romans, 43 a.d.;
there is an early Latin life of Brigit by Cogitosus and another by an
unknown author; a life in Irish was composed in c.800; she one of the
saints treated in John Colgan’s Trias Thaumaturga (1647),
with St. Patrick and St. Columcille (Columba).
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- Richard Sharpe, ‘Vitae S. Brigidae, the oldest Texts’, Peritia I (1982) 81-106;
- Kim McCone, ‘Brigit in the Seventh Century, a Saint With Three Lives?’ Peritia I (1982) , pp.107-145;
- Kenny, The Sources, 356-63; Felim Ó Briain, ‘The Hagiography of Leinster’, in John Ryan ed. Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill (Dublin, 1940), pp.454-64;
- Louis Gougaud, Les Saints Irlandais hors d’Irlande (Louvain & Oxford, 1936);
- E. G. Bowen, ‘The Cult of St. Brigit’, Studia Celtica VIII & IX (1973-74) , pp.33-47;
- Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘Sainte Brigitte, Paradigme de l’Abbesse Celtique?’ in Michael Rouche, Jean Heuclin, ed., La Femme au Moyen-Age (Maubeuge, 1990), pp.27-32;
- Donncha Ó hAodha, Bethu Brigte (Dublin 1978).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)