BRIGID of Kildare, Saint. — Virgin, patron and protector of Ireland, second only to St. Patrick in the veneration of her people. There are no certain historical data concerning her, but it is to be believed that she was born in the second half of the 5th century and died around 524. Daughter of Christian parents, learned and beautiful, she is said to have refused marriage and, having received the veil from the hands of a bishop named Mac Caille, to have founded a large double monastery in the valley of the Liffey, near a sacred oak, at Cell-dara (“church of the oak”), now Kildare. Her remains are preserved beneath the high altar of the church, together with those of Bishop Conlaed, to whom she is said to have entrusted the priestly functions for the double community.
Around the middle of the 7th century, the community of Cell-dara commissioned a certain Cogitosus to write a Life of the foundress, which has come down to us and forms the basis of all Brigidine hagiography, dwelling especially on the miracles attributed to her. Cell-dara remained one of the principal monastic churches of Ireland until the Norman invasion, when Gerald of Wales visited it, leaving an interesting description of it (Topographia Hibernica, chaps. 34–36). It seems certain that the double monastery existed in the time of Cogitosus, but it is uncertain whether it was so in the days of St. Brigid. In any case, there are no other examples of such monasteries in Ireland, nor generally in the Celtic Churches.
The feast of the Saint falls on February 1st. Irish monks and pilgrims soon spread her cult throughout Western Europe. In Italy it is still alive in Piedmont (often associated with that of the Irish St. Orso of Aosta), in Liguria, in Lombardy, in Emilia (especially at Piacenza), in Trentino, and in ancient times also in Tuscany.