Brigid in the Book of Armagh

The Book of Armagh copied in about 807 states that St Bridget (or Bride) journeyed to Mann to receive ordination at the hands of Bishop McCuill; and that she founded the Nunnery at Douglas. Below is the account:

The renown of his [St Maughold's] sanctity was so great that it was divulged of him as that the famous St Bridget, one of the three patrons of Ireland, left her native country of Ireland, then commonly called the Island of Saints, yet was she not veiled by St. Patrick, although very familiar with him, and made the shroud wherein he died, but it may be by his command that she came into the Island of Man with three virgins more in her company, all which received the white veil of virginity at the hands of the venerable bishop St. Maughold, as her own nephew Cogitosus (who lived in her time and wrote her hfe) has said, and after it seems she would not part from that house wherein so holy a man lived, and he had given her such satisfaction, and builded a monastery there for herself and the three virgins that accompanied her in this Isle of Man. And there lived, died, and was buried, and after was translated into Duno in Ireland, to be put in the same tomb where was buried St. Patrick and St. Columbus

Graphic: the ornatley designed leather case that contained the book of Armagh


living water reprint from 2009