Her concern was to provide for the orderly direction of souls in all things and to care for the churches of the many provinces which were associated with her…
– Cogitosus, The Life of St. Brigit the Virgin
And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.
– 2 Corinthians 12.15
First things first?
Cogitosus shows his hand in this opening section of his account of the life of Brigit. Before proceeding to record “a few from the many things which have been handed down” concerning Brigit and her ministry, he made a point of explaining her desire to be a proper abbess in a proper monastery. She needed, he explained, “the help of a high priest, who could consecrate churches and perform ordinations.” So she sent for a well-known hermit “who excelled in all ways” and persuaded him to take on the job. He agreed.
This “Prologue” is designed to show that Brigit understood the importance of putting first things first. And according to Cogitosus, those first things involved bringing her work within and under the authority of the Catholic Church.
Proper order having been put in place, Brigit and the hermit established their first church and “by both their merits their episcopal and feminine see [ecclesiastical jurisdiction] spread throughout the whole of Ireland, like a fertile vine pushing it burgeoning branches out on all sides.” That much by way of prologue, Cogitosus could now proceed to “attempt to give an account of the miracles of the blessed virgin, Brigit…”
There’s lots here to make us suspect an unspoken agenda in Cogitosus’ undertaking.
Rewriting and overwriting
Cogitosus wrote during a period of change in Irish Christianity. At an ecclesiastical meeting in Britain, the Synod of Whitby (664), the British king decided that all churches in Britain and Ireland should submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome. It would take another century to shore up that decision, as the Irish were reluctant to give up the ways they had inherited from Patrick and his successors.Irish monasteries and churches did not consider themselves subject to Rome. They were an independent catholic church, the existence of which was only discovered by Rome when Irish missionaries like Columbanus began to appear on the continent.
Certain words of Cogitosus—“high priest”, “merits”, “see”, Archbishop”, and so forth—were Roman and Latin language, not Celtic and Irish. Cogitosus was among those in Ireland who favored submitting to Rome. He wrote Brigit’s story—which until then was mainly a collection of oral tales—to show that she was duly Catholic, even though, at the time she was ministering in Ireland, such Catholic terms as appear in his work were not in use among the Irish churches and monasteries.Cogitosus may have been among the first of many such Catholic efforts to rewrite the history of the faith in Ireland, or to overwrite it in such a way as to suggest that Christianity in Ireland had been Roman Catholic from the beginning. The Irish Life of Brigit, which is more a collection of stories than a comprehensive account, has much more of an Irish flavor and flair, and only mentions her relationship to Rome—and the anonymous compiler’s debt to Cogitosus—at the very end. Is that part of the Life another example of re-writing?
Not even Patrick escaped this effort to rewrite the history of the faith in Ireland. Shortly after the time Cogitosus was writing, two biographies of Patrick appeared reporting his role as a servant of the Bishop of Rome and a devotee of peculiar Roman teachings and rituals. No such attachments appear in any of Patrick’s own writings from two centuries earlier.
Cogitosus was undoubtedly correct by saying that Brigit sought to bring orderly direction to souls. But what she intended and what he was aiming for were of a different “order.” While this agenda does not wholly discredit his work, it does raise a caveat for readers to bear in mind.If we don’t want to lose our history or have it rewritten away from us, we’ll need to be more diligent about paying attention to and learning from it.
For Reflection
1. Do you agree that it is important to maintain a good understanding of the history of the Christian faith? Explain.
2. How might local churches serve as keepers of the true history and traditions of the faith?
Psalm 78.4-7
(Foundation: How Firm a Foundation)
The glorious deeds of our God in His might,
and all of the works He has done in our sight,
together with all of the words of His Law,
would we on ourselves and our children bestow.
LORD, let all our children arise and declare
the truth of the LORD every day, everywhere,
and set all their hopes in God’s wonderful Word,
and never forget all the works of the LORD
T. M. Moore
If you have found this meditation helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Cor. 4.15).
Other columns of interest this week: In our ReVision series on “The Kingdom Economy” we continue looking at ways the Law of God applies to our lives. This week in our Read Moore podcast we consider the question of what it means to know Jesus Christ. Click here to see all the other columns and writers available to you.
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Except as indicated, all Scriptures are taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter.
