Saint Brigid of Ireland

Brigid was born in Faughart around 451 and died in Kildare in 525, and after Saint Patrick she is considered the one who brought the Gospel to Ireland. She was an abbess, and the monastery she led in Kildare became one of the centers of Irish Christianity. About her, though, there’s a debate worth telling, because it’s an honest one. Since the nineteenth century some historians — De Smedt, Rhŷs, Macalister — have questioned whether she ever existed: in their view Brigid would be nothing more than the Celtic goddess Brigid dressed up as a Christian, a way to let conversion happen without a break. Other scholars argue for a middle ground: that in Kildare there really was a charismatic abbess, onto whom the whole mythology of the earlier goddess, name included, was later layered. However it went, today she is the second patron saint of Ireland together with Saint Patrick, whom she very likely never met — they lived too far apart. And she is one of only four Irish women saints for whom a hagiography exists, together with Samthann, Íta and Moninne. The first text to tell her life is the *Vita Brigidae* by Cogitosus, a monk from her own monastery in Kildare. If your name is Brigid, today is your name day — and be careful not to confuse her with the other one, Bridget of Sweden, who lived almost a thousand years later and has her day in July. A figure scholars have been debating for two centuries, and whom Ireland meanwhile keeps considering its own. Sometimes what a land chooses to remember says more than what the archives can prove.