The Brigid Alliance - they make choice possible

 

In this time of fear and action, when Roe v. Wade faces overturn by the Supreme Court in the United States, the work of The Brigid Alliance of New York is more important than ever.

I recall as a young woman being advised (by a nurse in a general hospital) to go from Canada to the States, as it was easier to get an abortion there. It may soon be, for a short but awful time, the other way around.

In Cogitosus's Vitae Brigitae, "Life of Saint Brigid," the following passage appears:

Of the Pregnant Woman Blessed and Spared the Birth-Pangs

 

1. With a strength of faith most powerful and ineffable, she blessed a woman who, after a vow of virginity, had lapsed through weakness into youthful concupiscence, as a result of which her womb had begun to swell with pregnancy. Inconsequence, what had been conceived in the womb disappeared and she restored her to health and to penitence without childbirth or pain.

This passage is often interpretted to mean that Brigit performed an abortion. It is also interpretted, and I am inclined to this understanding, much as I like the former, to mean what it says: that she removed the "sin" of the woman's sexual act and reversed the consequences of it. No abortion occurs because the foetus now never was.

Either way, it is a wonderful illustration of Saint Brigit's caring and compassion. Whether the young woman has sinned or not, she should not have to suffer a pregnancy and birth that she doesn't want.

The Brigid Alliance cannot possibly take on this moment alone, but here is what they do. There are likely many ways you can support them, if this mission speaks to you as one the Brigit you know would support. Contact them here if you want to know more.

From their site:

 

The Brigid Alliance arranges and funds confidential, personalized travel support to those seeking abortion care in increasingly hostile environments. In partnership with a network of funds and providers, we are closing the gap between the right to an abortion and the ability to access one.

Image: Stylised red-haired woman (head only) from The Brigid Alliance website.

‘Cogitosus's "Life of St Brigit" Content and Value’ Sean Connolly and J.-M. Picard

It took me an age to get this article and translation of Cogitosus's Vita Brigitae. When possible I will get a copy up on the Daughters of the Flame site along with the Liam de Paor translation that is now there. Look for the brilliant yellow button below to download the pdf. For now, I will just jot a couple of notes and give you the citation so you can track it down yourself.

By the way, in the introduction Connolly says they are preparing a longer work on the VB. Anyone know if this was ever done? A quick search has yielded nothing.

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‘Cogitosus's "Life of St Brigit" Content and Value’ Sean Connolly and J.-M. Picard The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 117 (1987), pp. 5-27

In his preface to a translation of Cogitosus’s Vita Brigitae, the author briefly discusses Cogitosus and his relationship to Brigit and to Kildare, and his presumed era of writing. Only three other works of this nature are available from the 7^th c (Tirechan, Collectanea, Muirchu, Vita Patricii, both re St Patrick; Adomnan, Vita Columbae), with Cogitosus’s likely the earliest. VB is of particular interest to historians because it shows that in the 7^th c Kildare was claiming for itself primacy over all the monasteries in Ireland, and because of what it tells about monastic life. It is of interest to archaeologists because of its references to continental trade, road-building practices, the construction of mills, and the physical layout of Brigit’s church.

Reminding us that the Irish Church was only two centuries old at the time of writing, Connolly examines the work’s “catechetical aim” of teaching religious values, particularly of faith and charity, to Irish Christians.

Repeatedly Brigit’s great faith enables her to perform miracles (all attributable to God’s power, not her own). Other recurring values are chastity and obedience, and her faith is shown in her devotion to prayer—the secret of her ability to intercede with God being her ceaseless, single-minded prayer—and to evangelism. This emphasis on preaching is supported in Vita I  (Vita prima Sanctae Brigitae) as well. (VI apparently written nearly a century later).

The second main value emphasised is charity, which expresses itself in numerous miracles, many of which are modelled on Biblical stories, which show “her concern for the poor, the oppressed or the embarrassed, or simply her guests, whether friends or strangers” (pg 9).

The language of the article is easily accessible to non-expert readers, and the ideas simple, with plenty of examples (mostly brief notations of where they can be found in the text, some with fuller explanation). He lays out with clarity his argument that Cogitosus in his Life has not simply “just strung together at random a series of miracles of folkloric interest to entertain his readers” (pg 6), but is purposefully directing his audience to a fuller understanding of and commitment to specific monastic virtues. Without familiarity with the Life itself some of the references, not being fully explained, lose some of their impact. It might be preferred to read the Life first, or to reread the introductory material once having read the Life.

Vita Sanctae Brigitae: Cogitosus's Life of Brigit

Wearying of the fact that we who are not card-carrying academics cannot easily access this invaluable document, I'm transforming the pdf I have into a multi-page JPEG and hoping I can upload it here. (For some reason I still don't apprehend Blogger doesn't let us upload PDFs.)

This version comes from St Patrick's World, Liam de Paor, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1993 - chapter 33, Cogitosus's Life of St Brigid the Virgin.

Cogitosus's is generally considered the earliest extant Life of Saint Brigit. He was a monastic at Kildare, often cited as having lived circa 650 CE. (Saint Brigit having lived in the fifth century, a good two hundred years earlier.) The author below gives reasons for thinking Cogitosus lived rather later, thus putting into question whose Life preceded whose.

Cogitosus

The Book of Dimma, an 8th-century Irish pocket Gospel Book

by Edward Alfred D'Alton

An Irishman, an author, and a monk of Kildare; the date and place of his birth and of his death are unknown; it is uncertain even in what century he lived.

In the one work which he wrote, his life of St. Brigid, he asks a prayer pro me nepote culpabili, from which both Ware and Ussher conclude that he was a nephew of St. Brigid, and, accordingly, he is put down by them among the writers of the sixth century. But the word nepos may also be applied to one who, like the prodigal, had lived riotously, and it may be, that Cogitosus, recalling some former lapses from virtue, so uses the word of himself. At all events, his editor, Vossius, is quite satisfied that Cogitosus was no nephew of St. Brigid, because in two genealogical menologies which Vossius had, in which were enumerated the names of fourteen holy men of that saint's family the name of Cogitosus is not to be found.

Nor did the latter live in the sixth century because he speaks of a long succession of bishops and abbesses at Kildare, showing that he writes of a period long after the time of St. Brigid, who died in 525, and of St. Conleth, who died a few years earlier. Besides this, the description of the church of Kildare belongs to a much later time; and the author calls St. Conleth an archbishop, a term not usual in the Western church until the opening of the ninth century. On the other hand, he describes Kildare before it was plundered by the Danes, in 835, and before St. Brigid's remains were removed to Down.

The probability therefore is that he lived and wrote the life of St. Brigid about the beginning of the ninth century.

His work is a panegyric rather than a biography. He gives so few details of the saint's life that he omits the date and place of her birth and the date of her death; nor does he make mention of any of her contemporaries if we except St. Conleth, the first Bishop of Kildare, an Macaille from whom she received the veil. 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.

On the other hand, he dwells with evident satisfaction on her piety, her humility, her charity, her zeal for religion, the esteem in which she was held by all. And he narrates at length the many miracles she wrought, and tells of the numbers who came as pilgrims to Kildare, attracted by her fame. In his anxiety to exalt her he says she had as abbess authority over all the abbesses of Ireland, although as a matter of fact she could govern only those who followed her rule; and his statement that she appointed the Bishop of Kildare could not, of course, mean that she conferred any jurisdiction.

Cogitosus writes in fairly good Latin, much better indeed than might be expected in that age, and his description of the church of Kildare with its interior decorations is specially interesting for the history of early Irish art and architecture.

E. A. D'Alton.
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Volume 4

Here goes. There are ten pages. Feel free to turn them back into pdfs for easier use.

The Hymn to Saint Brigid of Brogan-Cloen (Broccan's Hymn)

I like to reread the Lives of Saint Brigit from time to time, and other ancient writings such as prayers dedicated to her. Even more, I like to be read to. So I have recorded a couple and listen to them from time to time, and am always delighted by bits I had forgotten.

To further that end, today I recorded Broccan's Hymn, and in my zeal decided to add a visual aspect (still images of the manuscript and an icon of Saint Brigit) so that I could upload it as a video. I still don't know how to simply upload a sound file to the blog, or I'd do that.

Here is the "video", for those who are interested. Apologies for any fumbling of the Latin and Irish. Most of it is English and I manage that fairly well.

For a writeup on the hymn and the translation that I have used (by Whitley Stokes) please visit the excellent blog Trias Thaumaturga, which is dedicated to the three patron saints of Ireland.

Broccan's Hymn is mostly a poetic summing up of many of the tales from the earliest Life of Saint Brigit, by Cogitosus. If it doesn't make complete sense to you it will if you read that Life.

Well, I'll be darned. I can't find a free download of it online. I do have a pdf, so if you want a copy leave your email address in the comments (I won't publish it) and I'll email it to you.

"We put trust in my Brige — may she be a protection to our host !

May her patronage work with me ! may we all deserve escape !"

Brigit & Beer Baths: Notes on a Tale by Cogitosus from the Perspective of a Beer Historian

"St Brigid's Lake of Beer," Michael O'Neill McGrath*

As often happens, while searching an unrelated topic I stumbled across an interesting article connected to Brigit. It tells a tale from Cogitosus regarding Brigit and beer. No self-respecting Brigit-Beer article should go without the famous poem attributed to her. So let us begin there:

I should like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.
I should like excellent meats of belief and pure piety.
I should like the men of Heaven at my house.
I should like barrels of peace at their disposal.
I should like for them cellars of mercy.
I should like cheerfulness to be their drinking.
I should like Jesus to be there among them.
I should like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I should like the people of Heaven, the poor, to be gathered around from all parts.

excerpt from 
St Brigid and the Bathwater

by Martyn Cornell

...While I was putting together the order of service, I even found a suitably beery quote fromThe Life of St Brigid the Virgin, written by a Kildare monk, Cogitosus Ua hAedha, around AD650, to use as one of the readings:

On another extraordinary occasion, this venerable Brigid was asked by some lepers for beer, but had none. She noticed water that had been prepared for baths. She blessed it, in the goodness of her abiding faith, and transformed it into the best beer, which she drew copiously for the thirsty. It was indeed He Who turned water into wine in Cana of Galilee Who turned water into beer here, through this most blessed woman’s faith.

Cogitosus, of course, was keen to chalk the bathwater-into-beer event up as a miracle, just like the one at the wedding at Cana, but there is, in fact, a possible non-miraculous explanation for how St Brigid was able to make the thirsty lepers happy. A record of a fire at the monastry of Clonard in Ireland around AD787 speaks of grain stored in ballenio, literally “in a bath”, which seems to mean the grain being soaked as part of the initial processes of malting. What St Brigid drew off, I’d suggest, may have been water from the ballenium where the grain was steeping in the first stage of malt-making.

Quite possibly, if the grain had begun to sprout wild yeasts had already started multiplying in the water, and making alcohol. Cogitosus heard the story, already more than a century old, about Brigid giving the lepers water from the ballenium to drink and, presumably because he knew nothing about brewing, thought this ballenium was an ordinary bath for washing in. While water from the grain steep might have made a passable ale substitute if you were a thirsty leper, for “bath water” to taste like ale must have seemed a miracle to the confused Cogitosus.

Ale was an important part of Irish society: the Crith-Gablach, an Irish law book compiled about the middle or end of the 7th century AD, declared that the “seven occupations in the law of a king” were:

Sunday, at ale drinking, for he is not a lawful flaith [lord] who does not distribute ale every Sunday; Monday, at legislation, for the government of the tribe; Tuesday, at fidchell [a popular Iron Age board game]; Wednesday, seeing greyhounds coursing; Thursday, at the pleasures of love; Friday, at horse-racing; Saturday, at judgment.”

Who’d be an Irish king, eh?

For the full article, including an old Irish poem on the best ales of the country, go to Martyn Cornell's Zythophile: Beer Now and Then. Click here for his article "Ancient Irish Ales". Martyn is the author of Amber Gold and Black: The History of Britain's Great Beers.

* "St. Brigid's Lake of Beer" by Bro. Mickey (Michael O'Neill McGrath) an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales.

Did Brigit Love Animals Like a Good Celt Should?

Drawing by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Topographia Hibernica. British Library, Royal MS 13 B VIII, fo. 10v

I'm reading an interesting article by Cristina Olsen, "Did Brigit love animals like a good Celt should? An inquiry into Cogitosus's 'Life of Saint Brigit'". It touches not only on Brigit but on our understanding of the Celtic (most particularly the medieval Irish) attitude toward animals and nature. I got the article through an interlibrary loan; innocent that I am, I only recently learned that I could access these buried-in-vaults articles this way, when I don't have direct access to a university library that carries the particular journal I need.

To give you a sense of what it's about, I will quote a few paragraphs. She begins:

"The analysis in this paper stems from an examination and critique of a genre of modern-day literature that makes broad claims concerning a universal Celtic appreciation of the natural world and a love of animals.* The term "love" itself is problematic. Today in the western world loving nature subsumes principles of aesthetic appreciation not necessarily shared by peoples from other times and places. Given the scarcity of information concerning Celtic societies, it is impossible to draw broad conclusions regarding how ancient Celtic people viewed nature.

"A perusal of the history of western thought concerning the natural world suggests that a burgeoning love of nature is a relatively new phenomenon in the development of western human conscience. While the ancient Greeks and Romans were interested in nature for agricultural as well as aesthetic reasons, it was not until the late eighteenth century that the educated elite, fleeing the spreading cloud of urban industrialization, discovered the "Delightful Horror" of the wilderness and the mountains...

"By the mid-twentieth century, as we awakened to the possibility of nature's annihilation, human imagination attached itself to the elusive Celts, hoping to find amongst the dim vestiges of the ancient people wise counsels concerning the proper stewardship of the natural environment. In other words, the notion that Celts (Pagan or Christian) loved nature is unlikely to be other than a romantic projection reading back into the distant past the present sense of nature's impending demise...

"It is true that there are depictions of nature in Irish literature that intrigue us. However, I am not so sure that we have a clear understanding of what constitutes the Irish or Celtic "approach to the natural world"...In this paper I critique these tendencies to romanticize the ancient Celts and suggest an alternative approach to understanding the Celtic sense of nature by analyzing three animal stories in Cogitosus's seventh-century Life of Saint Brigit. If we truly wish to understand the relationship of the ancient Celts to their natural environments, we need to set aside our mythmaking and return to the primary sources, in this case the text."

In her conclusion, Olsen writes:

"...the animal stories in the Life of Saint Brigit are not about the animals but about Brigit's power and authority over all aspects of rural life in the environments of Kildare and, if Cogitosus would have his way, over all of Ireland. The animals are merely pawns in Brigit's hands in order to demonstrate the strength of her God-given power, and nowhere is there any evidence that these animals elicited concern in their own right.

"That the Life of Saint Brigit is replete with animal stories indicates that they were important; the analysis presented above demonstrates in what sense they were important...they were the center of the Irish rural economy."

Of course there is much more than this but I shall have to leave it here. For those interested in hearing her arguments in full, the bibliographical information is all below.

Blessings on you and your animal friends!


* "A full bibliography of the genre is too vast for footnoting, but the trend is best represented by Caitlin Matthews, The Elements of the Celtic Tradition...and Peter Beresford Ellis, Celtic Inheritance..." She then lists a large number of "works with a specific Christian outlook" beginning with Esther de Waal's Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition.

"Did Brigit love animals like a good Celt should? An inquiry into Cogitosus's 'Life of Saint Brigit'" by Cristina Olsen. COMITATUS--A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES  Vol/Issue: 33, Date: Jan 1, 2002, Pages: 1-17

„Untersuchungen zu den ältesten Vitae sanctae Brigidae“

There is online a German language thesis, written by Karina Hochegger, which compares the earliest life of Brigit (Cogitosus, 650 CE) with the Vita Prima Sanctae Brigidae (750 CE). These texts have different aims and means for achieving their goals, as described in Lisa Bitel's excellent book, Landscape with Two Saints. For those German speakers amongst us, I link you to „Untersuchungen zu den ältesten Vitae sanctae Brigidae“. Below find her abstract.

ANHANG

ABSTRACT

This thesis shall provide a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the two oldest Lives of saint Brigid of Kildare, the “Life by Cogitosus” and the so-called “Vita Prima”. It will also illustrate the most important findings concerning the intentions of the presumed authors in writing these Lives. Dating of the Life by Cogitosus to the third quarter of the 7th century appears to be appropriate based on the reference that Muirchú makes to Cogitosus and his work. Cogitosus was likely an intellectual member within Kildare’s monastic society and he would have been able to write. His political aim in creating a Life of saint Brigid and establishing her as one of the main saints was to strengthen both the influence and power of the monastic centre and its parochia. The Life contains accounts of miracles describing the beauty and greatness of the church of Kildare, the sepulture of Brigid and her bishop Conleth, and the wonders that supposedly took place after Brigid’s death. This would inspire believers from across Ireland to make pilgrimages to Kildare. The reason for establishing the Life may have been the competition between the two main churches of Ireland during the 7th century, Kildare and Armagh. Both of them wanted to spread their power and their parochia. There is no proof of a direct relationship between Cogitosus and the Uí Dúnlainge, the ruling dynasty of Leinster at that time. But it is clear that the expansion of the sphere of control of Kildare was on behalf of the governance of Leinster. There are compositional and structural aspects which support McCone’s theory that the Vita Prima came after the Life by Cogitosus, in the middle of the 8^th century. This is because passages from the Life by Cogitosus can be found at the end of Vita Prima and because of the friendly relationship between Patrick and Brigid, the two main saints of Armagh and Kildare. Despite the efforts of Vita prima’s author to create a thorough account of Brigid’s travels, there can be found inconsistencies throughout this Life. The author also neglected Kildare, and emphasized Brigid as a nomad saint; he intended to establish a national saint in Brigid by compiling miraculous stories in order to illustrate her nationwide political-ecclesiastic influence.

Karina Hochegger
angestrebter akademischer Grad
Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. phil.)
Vienna, 2009