Brigit of Kildare - Veneration Beyond Ireland

Veneration Beyond Ireland

Church dedications, artwork, folklore and medieval manuscripts indicate the extent of the cult of Brigid in England, Scotland and Wales, Brittany, northern and eastern France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy.

• Alsace: Devotion to Brigid dates to the 8th century, there are relics of the Saint in the Church of Pierre-de-Vaux in Strasbourg.
• Belgium: A fragment of a medieval Irish shawl known as "St Brigid's Mantle" is venerated at the Cathedral of Bruges, where the cultus of Brigid was introduced by its Irish bishop, Saint Foillan (died 655). There is a chapel (7th-10th century) dedicated to Sainte-Brigide at Fosses-la-Ville, a church in Liege and an altar in Hesse.
• Brittany: The Church of St. Denis in Saint-Omer is the best known of over thirty church and chapel dedications to Brigid, she is venerated in folklore as midwife to the Blessed Virgin Mary and protectress of cattle. A palton is held at Morimer each year.
• Cologne: four parish churches and seven chapels are dedicated to Brigid and a relic is preserved at the Great St. Martin Church. A church dedicated to St Brigid was destroyed in the Napoleonic period. There was also a chapel dedicated to her in Mainz.
• Italy: Donatus of Fiesole compiled the metrical Life of Brigid and built a Church in Piacenza (9th century) which was donated to the Irish order of the Monastery of Saint Colombanus, in Bobbio. The Church, and the attached hospital, was meant to serve Irish pilgrims moving to Bobbio and Rome. It still exists. The cult of Saint Brigit is particularly important in Northern Italy (Piacenza, Como, Val Brembana etc).
• Netherlands: Saint Brigid is the patron saint of the Dutch city of Ommen.
• Portugal: Brigit's skull, preserved in the Church of São João Baptista in Lumiar, was traditionally venerated on 2 February (not 1 February, as in Ireland) and in former times was carried in procession as a sacred instrument in the blessing of children and animals throughout the parish, in a ceremony called the bênção do gado (blessing of the cattle).
• Spain: A cult of Brigid at Olite in Navarre was introduced from Troyes and Picardy in northern France around 1200 and a church is dedicated to her in Seville.
• Switzerland: A sacred flame, the Lumen Sanctae Brigidae, was tended at Liestal in the 13th century and there is a chapel dedicated to her in the city of St. Gallen.

Saint Brigit, in the alternative spelling of her name, Bride, was patron saint of the powerful medieval Scottish House of Douglas. The principal religious house, and Mausoleum of the Earls of Douglas and latterly Earls of Angus being St. Bride's Kirk, Douglas. Another saint Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373) was given a Swedish variant of the old Irish name named in honour of Brigit.