page_title: Brigid of Kildare
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Brigid of Kildare / Veneration / Iconography
context_page_description: Saint Brigid of Kildare or Brigid of Ireland is one of Ireland's patron saints, along with Patrick and Columba. Irish hagiography makes her an early Irish Christian nun, abbess, and foundress of several monasteries of nuns, including that of Kildare in Ireland, which was famous and was revered. Her feast day is 1 February, which was originally a pagan festival called Imbolc, marking the beginning of spring. Her feast day is shared by Dar Lugdach, who tradition says was her student, close companion, and the woman who succeeded her.
  The saint shares her name with an important Celtic goddess and there are many legends and folk customs associated with her.
context_section_description: In liturgical iconography and statuary Saint Brigid is often depicted holding a reed cross, a crozier of the sort used by abbots, and a lamp. Early hagiographers portray Brigid's life and ministry as touched with fire. According to Patrick Weston Joyce, tradition holds that nuns at her monastery kept an eternal flame burning there. Leitmotifs, some of them borrowed from the apocrypha such as the story where she hangs her cloak on a sunbeam, are associated with the wonder tales of her hagiography and folklore. In her Lives, Brigid is portrayed as having the power to multiply such things as butter, bacon and milk, to bestow sheep and cattle and to control the weather.
  Plant motifs associated with St Brigid include the white Lilium candidum popularly known since medieval times as the Madonna Lily for its association with the Virgin Mary, and the Windflower Anemone coronaria, called the "Brigid anemone"  since the early 19th century. Kildare, the church of the oak Quercus petraea, is associated with a tree sacred to the druids. The colour associated with Brigid is white, worn not only by the Kildare United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion, but also by Kildare sports teams in more recent times.
caption: St.Joseph Catholic Church; Macon, Georgia (state)
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