SAINT

See also:

• BRIDGET, BRIGITTA, BIIGITTA, OF SWEDEN, SAINT (c. 1302-1373)
• SAINT BRIDGET

BRIDGET  , more properly BRIGID (c . 452-523), one of the patron saints of Ireland, was born at Faughart in county Louth, her father being a prince of Ulster . Refusing to marry, she chose a life of seclusion, making her cell, the first in Ireland, under a large oak tree, whence the place was called Kil-dara, " the church of the oak." The city cf Kildare is supposed to derive its name from St Brigid's cell . The year of her death is generally placed in 523 . She was buried at Kildare, but her remains were afterwards translated to Downpatrick, where they were laid beside the bodies of St Patrick and St Columba . Her feast is celebrated on the 1st of February . A large collection of miraculous stories clustered round her name, and her reputation was not confined to Ireland, for, under the name of St Bride, she became a favourite saint in England, and numerous churches were dedicated to her in Scotland . See the five lives given in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Feb. r, i . 99, 119, 950 . Cf . Whitley-Stokes, Three Middle-Irish Homilies on the Lives of Saint Patrick, Brigit and Columba (Calcutta, 1874) ; Colgan, Acta SS . Hiberniae; D .

O'Hanlon, Lives of Irish Saints, vol. ii.;

Knowles, Life of St Brigid (1907); further bibliography in Ulysse Chevalier, Repertoire des sources hist . Bio.-Bibl . (2nd ed., Paris, 1905), S.V .