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 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!
