In Hunting Magic Eels I talk about the place of St. Brigid within Irish Christianity, and how she's become a location of pagan and Christian syncretism in Ireland. It is regularly claimed that St. Brigid was a Christianization of a pagan goddess. The case for this is thin, and rests mostly upon the fact that St. Brigid's feast day falls on February 1, the same day as Imbolc, the first day of spring. Some scholars trace Imbolic back to a pre-Christian, pagan festival that celebrated the start of the lambing season in Ireland. And when you look at the life of Brigid, many of her miracles have to do with agriculture and farming. Cows giving milk, supplying honey, making beer, affecting weather. In light of these miracles, along with the association with Imbolc, people sense some sort of pagan "nature goddess" lurking behind the Irish veneration of Brigid.
My take on the historical literature is that the case for "Brigid as pagan goddess" is a modern phenomenon attempting to wrest Brigid away from Christianity. I'll share more about this in a post come. For now let me say that I don't think Christianity stole Brigid from the ancient pagans. It is, rather, modern pagans who are stealing Brigid from Christianity.
That said, there are some odd things within the Brigid tradition. Specifically, how Brigid is associated with Mary.
Brigid is called "Mary of the Gaels." The Gaels being the Irish. Now, throughout Catholic history there have been Marian visitations and apparitions, from the Lady of Guadalupe to Our Lady of Lourdes. In these cases, Mary appears as herself, though sometimes, like the Lady of Guadalupe, in changed form. What we don't see is a living woman being identified as Mary. And yet, that's what we find in the Brigid tradition. As "Mary of the Gaels" Brigid is treated very much like a Marian apparition within Irish spirituality. For example, in one of the early lives of Brigid the story is told of a holy man who had a vision of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, leading a company of virgins across a plain to bless an episcopal synod. Soon after, the holy man sees Brigid, accompanied by her virgin sisters, making their way across the Plain of Liffey to the synod. Upon seeing Brigid, the holy man exclaims, "This is the Mary I beheld!"
The curiosities continue. In Broccán's hymn to St. Brigid, Broccán describes Brigid as the mother of Jesus: "mother of my high king" and "she slept the sleep of a captive--the saint, for the sake of her Son...she was One-Mother of the Great King's Son." In the An Leabhar Breac, an early vita of Brigid, this claim is repeated:
This is the father of this holy virgin--the Heavenly father. This is her son--Jesus Christ.
Reflecting on these texts, Phillip Campbell observes:
Historically, there has been a general Christian sensibility that the motherhood of Jesus is predicated of Mary uniquely--that, however perfectly a woman may model Mary spiritually, calling her Jesus's "mother" and He her "son" is a line never crossed. That Brigid's early biographers were at ease crossing this line is a peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism, one that authors of later generations felt the need to carefully walk back from.
This "peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism" in treating Brigid as a Marian figure--Brigid as the mother of Jesus--along with her feast day falling upon Imbolc, makes the Brigid tradition, both ancient and modern, a fascinating place to reflect upon divine feminine imagery within the Christian tradition.
