Mea Culpa: A Wee Mistake I Need to 'Fess Up To

In my review of novels involving Brigit, I gave a number of reasons for not recommending Heather Terrell's Brigit of Kildare. One small part of this was her representing Brigit as a legitimate daughter of well-to-do Christian parents, when the accepted version is that she was the daughter of a slave and her owner. I had entirely forgotten that in Cogitosus's Life of Saint Brigit, probably the oldest if not the most magical of her Lives, he says, "The holy Brigid...was born in Ireland of noble Christian parents".

Oops. A good reminder to me that the tales are not unified and indeed are often in direct conflict with each other, particularly when their authors are serving different aims. See Lisa Bitel's Landscape with Two Saints for a detailed explanation of the divergent aims of her hagiographers. E. A. D'Alton in The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 4 (1913) points out that he "gives the names of her parents, but is careful to conceal the fact that she was illegitimate, and that her mother was a slave." So even he was not buying what Cogitosus was selling--at least not that bit.

D'Alton also examines the evidence and concludes that Cogitosus must have lived in the ninth and not the seventh century, as is commonly assumed. I would be interested to know if anyone has followed up his thoughts on the matter and where they led.

You can read his comments about Cogitosus and Brigit here, as well as download the De Paor translation of Cogitosus's Vita Sanctae Brigitae, which seems awfully hard to find online.

Landscape with Two Saints: Upcoming Book Release

Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe by Lisa M. Bitel

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ISBN13: 9780195336528ISBN10: 0195336526 hardback, 320 pages; 15 halftones, 11 line illus.;

Apr 2009, Not Yet Published, Oxford University Press

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At a time when Europeans still longed to be Roman and were just learning to be Christian, two extraordinary holy women-Genovefa of Paris (ca. 420-502) and Brigit of Kildare (ca. 450-524)-began to roam their homelands. One of these saints raised an apostolic church in the imperial city that would become Paris. The other scavenged fragments of that dwindling empire for the foundations of a grand Roman basilica built deep in barbarian territory. Both brought Christianity and romanitas (Roman-ness) to their people. By examining the ruins of their cities and churches, the workings of their cults, and the many generations of their devotees, Lisa Bitel shows how Brigit and Genovefa helped northern Europeans map new religion onto familiar landscapes. Landscape with Two Saints tells the twin stories of these charismatic women but also explains how ordinary people lived through religious change at the very beginning of the Middle Ages.

Tales of ancient conversions on distant landscapes have much to teach us about lived and built religion, why people choose new beliefs, and how they act out those beliefs in meaningful ways. The combined history of Brigit and Genovefa explains not just how a couple of legendary peripatetic women could become targets of devotion, but how and where Europeans became Christian, and what it meant to them on a daily basis. The story of these two saintly cults-not just in the pages of manuscripts, but on the streets of cities, in the stones of cemeteries, and in the walls of churches-also demonstrates the pervasive influence of gender and ethnicity, as well as regional culture and material environment, on the whole process of religious change. Bitel contends that in the building blocks of their churches and the tracks they once traveled, Genovefa and Brigit show us what the written words of missionaries and theologians never can: the active participation of converts in the history of their own conversion.

Reviews

"Lisa Bitel's most recent book offers a fascinating window into two disparate late fifth-century landscapes: the first, Paris during the Hunnic invasions, and the second, rural Ireland following the conversions. ....Bitel's treatment of two highly enigmatic women makes a decisive contribution to our understanding of late antique and early medieval gender, hagiography, and religious history."
--Bonnie Effros, professor of history at Binghamton University (SUNY), author of Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World, Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul , and Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages
"Lisa Bitel's Landscape with Two Saints is a wonderful book-scholarly, yet fascinating for anyone interested in the development of Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Bitel skillfully brings to life the world of Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare to highlight the often-neglected role of women in the medieval Church of western Europe."
--Philip Freeman, Orlando W. Qualley Chair of Classical Languages at Luther College and author of St. Patrick of Ireland
"This is a wonderful book - fascinating, provocative, and erudite. Utilizing a variety of sources, Bitel provides a detailed comparative study of the worlds of Saints Genovefa and Brigit and their remarkable accomplishments in the building of a new Christian society. No one knows these early sources better than Bitel who has been deeply involved in this research for many years. This will become a classic study of these important figures and the landscapes of Paris and Ireland during this formative period of early Christianization."
--Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Professor of History, Department of Liberal Studies and the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100

About the Author

Lisa Bitel is Professor of History, Religion, and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California.
from the website of Oxford University Press, USA.