Ten Titles (and Thirteen Books) for Brigit

I am revising my online course, Discovering Brigit, and wanted to update the brief book list included there. These books are the ones I would point people to first, for a variety of reasons. Recall that I have a slew of unread and therefore unreviewed Brigit books, which I hope to get to over the next year and a bit. But for now, I’d like to share this with you.

Only one, Ó Duinn’s Rites of Brigid, is out of print, but you should be able to get that on interlibrary loan.

Top Ten Books for Starting Out with Brigit (Also Awesome for Oldtimers)

Bitel, Lisa M. Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe (2009). (Nonfiction.)

Brigde, Mael. A Brigit of Ireland Devotional - Sun Among Stars (2021). (Poetry and essays.)

Clann Bhríde. Book of Hours - For Daily and Seasonal Practice (2013).

Curtayne, Alice. Saint Brigid of Ireland (1954). Reissued (2022). (Nonfiction.) 

Daimler, Morgan. Pagan Portals Brigid: Meeting the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Forge, and Healing Well(2016). (Nonfiction.)

Freeman, Philip. Two Lives of Saint Brigid (2024).

Minehan, Rita CSB. Rekindling the Flame: a Pilgrimage in the Footsteps of Brigid of Kildare (1999). Revised (2022). (Nonfiction.)

Mole, Chris, et al. Brigantia Vol. 1 (2021) and 2 (2024). (Graphic novels.)

Ó Duinn, Séan OSB. Rites of Brigid - Goddess and Saint (2004). (Nonfiction.) 

Phillips, M.A. Rituals of Rock Bay Series:  (Fiction.)

Book 1: River Magic (2020); Book 2: Hearth Magic (2021);

Book 3: Forest Magic (2021);

Image: "book lot on table" by Tom Hermans on Unsplash.

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.

Brigit Reviews (Series Six): Nonfiction, Academic/Popular Academic

Finally! The last installment of my promised book reviews. A pleasure it was to acquaint myself with the breadth of writing available on Brigit. I'll pin links to the reviews on the Pages tab (below the title banner of this blog) in order to make them more accessible to later readers, and will also make the whole lot available by request as a pdf. In the meantime you can find the previous reviews and introductory material at these links:

Brigit Book Reviews (1): Introduction

Brigit Book Reviews (2): List of Books to be Reviewed

The Reviews, At Last!

Brigit Reviews (Series One): Picture Books

Brigit Reviews (Series Two): Novels

Brigit Reviews (Series Three): Plays and Poetry

Brigit Reviews (Series Four): Nonfiction, Popular (Saint)

Brigit Reviews (Series Five): Nonfiction, Popular (Neo-Pagan)

Brigit Reviews (Series Six):

Nonfiction, Academic/Popular Academic

By “academic/popular” I mean books written in a scholarly style but accessible (sometimes with a real effort) to a general audience. They are footnoted, backed up citations, and so on, and so the thinking in them can be more or less traced and verified. These I can only observe as a reader, not criticize as an expert.

The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland, Mary Condren (1989)

“Fire and the Arts” (etc) in Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish

            Literature, Kim McCone (1990)

The Festival of Brigit, Séamas Ó Catháin (1995)

Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers, Miranda Green (1996)

“Imbolc: A New Interpretation”, Phillip A. Bernhardt-House (pp 57-76) in Cosmos 18 (2002)

The Rites of Brigid, Goddess and Saint, Seán Ó Duinn (2005)

Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe, Lisa M. Bitel (2009)

“Queering the Flame: Brigit, Flamekeeping, and Gender in Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan Communities”, by Erynn Rowan Laurie in The Well of Five Streams: Essays on Celtic Paganism (Immanion Press, projected release 2015) 17 pp.

Introduction

There are some delicious writings in here, with lots of obscure references and nimble interpretations; a cornucopia of ideas to mull over in building an understanding of Brigit. Two recommended sources which give abundant info on the world in which St Brigit lived are Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 by Dáibhí Ó Crónín (1995) (not reviewed here) and Bitel’s Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe. Placing her in the context of her world allows for a much deeper look into her Lives and mythos, helping us to notice where our assumptions are modern and inappropriate, and allowing us to develop a more balanced perspective.

Though the earliest of these investigations, Condren’s The Serpent and the Goddess is less about Brigit as it is the Christian church in Ireland and its treatment of women. I don’t recommend it for developing an understanding of Brigit.

In The Festival of Brigit, Ó Catháin explores the festival of Imbolc and searches far afield for evidence linking Brigit to, for example, the bear cult and horned deities. Fascinating reading, carefully explored and documented.

McCone’s Pagan Past and Christian Present contains important insights into sacred kingship, the sovereignty goddess, and the three major divisions of Celtic society and convincingly suggests their reflection in Brigit’s various personae.

Green examines the place of women and female deities in Celtic society, and focusses on a number of female-related themes and specific goddesses in Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers. Brigit is looked at in the chapter on the transition from paganism to Christianity.

Bernhardt-House offers a detailed and unique examination of the meaning of the word Imbolc and its possible links to the wolf in ancient times in “Imbolc: A New Interpretation”.

In The Rites of Brigid, Ó Duinn examines a variety of Brigit-related folk customs. He compares in detail the perpetual fires of the Vestal Virgins and Brigit, and describes other sacred and perpetual flames in medieval Ireland.Very useful.

Bitel looks at some important Lives of St Brigit in Landscape with Two Saints, comparing that by Cogitosus of Kildare with those of later writers of Armagh, and putting them into the political context of their times. She examines the legacy of Brigit, and the changing role of women in Ireland.

A rather different perspective is offered in Laurie’s “Queering the Flame: Brigit, Flamekeeping, and Gender in Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan Communities”. This piece, which could have fit well into the Nonfiction, Popular (NeoPagan) section, I place here because of Laurie’s exacting standards of research and presentation. (Footnotes and citations and quotes, oh my!)

You may notice trouble linking to footnotes through their symbols. No worries. Just scroll to the end of the post and they are there.

Read More!

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.