Authors: Heather Terrell
“Are you so certain that the Roman Church and the Roman government are not one and the same? Or that the Roman Church is so separate from the church and government of our enemies in Britannia? I do not trust him, and I will not be used for his schemes.”
“Please, Dubtach, I beseech you. Bishop Patrick has asked to baptize us before our people, and I believe it is our Christian duty to honor that request.”
“I am a king, first and foremost. I must protect my cattle, my land, and my people and heed their needs. Not Patrick.”
Her mother’s voice sounds horrified. “What do you mean, Dubtach? As king, the leader of your
tuath
, you are charged with the care of your people’s souls. As a Christian king, you should guide them toward the true faith.”
Brigid smiles. Her mother is using the same tactic with Dubtach that Patrick had used on her.
“My role is practical leadership, not religious conversion. The people must choose their own spiritual guides, and if they do not feel compelled by our God, I will not drive them from theirs.”
Brigid’s smile fades. It seems that Broicsech will experience less success with the
tuath
strategy than Patrick had with her. Brigid strains but can hear no more from the chambers. After a long moment, she hears Broicsech ask in a small voice, “What of Brigid?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you allow her to be baptized by Patrick?”
Her father is quiet for a time. In the stillness, Brigid saddens at the thought of her otherwise intimidating mother having to beg her father for permission. She wonders whether women’s subservience to men will grow more common with the infiltration of Roman and barbarian notions of women. Then Dubtach responds: “You may have her baptized—in private. I do not want Brigid’s religious status to become known and jeopardize any plans we might form for her. She must be preserved for the role in which she can serve us best—as a wife.”
BRIGID: A LIFE
Brigid is slow and deliberate in her preparations. She selects a gown of unblemished white linen and closes it at her shoulder with her simplest silver pin, shunning all other ornamentation. Drawing her redgold hair back from her face, she braids it into three layers of plaits. She washes her face and hands, scrubbing them until they are raw. Then she steals a glance at herself in the highly polished silver pitcher on her table, and nods in approval at the austere visage staring back at her.
Alone, she solemnly walks the short distance to the smaller of the
cashel
’s two reception halls, as if marching along one of Dubtach’s ceremonial routes. The
cashel
no longer bustles with the arrangements for Patrick’s welcome. The bishop has already arrived, and, in any event, Dubtach’s decision has halted the need for any intricate plans. Thus Brigid passes, almost unobserved, into the hall.
Broicsech sits with the bishop at the large dining table at the hall’s center. They talk quietly, while the bishop’s monks and Broicsech’s maids stand idly behind them. No one notices Brigid, leaving her to wonder what words pass between the bishop and the queen that so engross
them. Do they discuss the finer points of Christian doctrine? Or is Broicsech trying to appease Patrick for Dubtach’s rejection?
With a start, Patrick stands. Her mother rises in quick succession. “Come,” Patrick says, “we have been waiting for you.”
Brigid approaches the bishop and kneels in respect. At his behest, she settles into the chair to which he points, across from him and Broicsech. She keeps her eyes lowered and her hands clasped as if in prayer.
“Your mother tells me you are ready for the rite of baptism.”
“I hope you find me so, Bishop Patrick,” she says, without raising her gaze.
“I am certain that I will. I understand that, with your mother’s guidance, you have been undertaking good works and reading the Words of our Lord, as is required for the sacrament.”
“Indeed, Bishop Patrick, I have prayed that the study of His Words will prepare me well for my
first
initiation into His Kingdom.” Brigid chooses her phrases, and her emphasis, carefully.
He seems not to have perceived her implication. “I have no doubt that He has answered those prayers, Brigid. And that His Words have brought you closer to Him. I know that the Words returned me to Him when I had wandered far from Him during my years in Britannia before I was taken to Gael.”
“To be sure, I have found the stories of Mary—and her decision to take the veil—to be of particular comfort.” Brigid wants to ensure that her meaning is understood and that her groundwork is laid.
“You speak of the stories of Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ?” Patrick’s voice grows cold.
Brigid does not understand the change in his tone. “Yes, Bishop Patrick.”
He turns to her mother. “Broicsech, has Brigid been reading the Gospel of Mary the Mother?”
Her mother is quick to answer: “Bishop Patrick, we live in a land far from Rome’s civilizing influence, as you well know. We must study the limited sacred literature available to us.”
“Surely, other, more appropriate texts are available to you? You do know that the Gospel of Mary the Mother was forbidden by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and a leader of our church, nearly three hundred years
ago—along with other self-proclaimed Gospels—as apocryphal and unorthodox? And that His Holiness the pope has adopted Irenaeus’s views?”
“I have heard of that edict, Bishop Patrick, and the pope’s agreement. But Brigid understands that the true Gospels are only those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. She does not read any of the other texts for the veracity of their words, only for the texture of their tales. I will let her assure you of this herself.”
Brigid hears the command underlying Broicsech’s gentle assurances. She knows how to placate her mother, and she is in accord. Though she sought to invoke Mary the Mother, she nonetheless wants nothing to impede her baptism. “My mother is correct, Bishop Patrick. I only meant to say that I find Mary’s devotion to be moving and inspirational.”
“Ah, if that was your sole meaning—”
“It was indeed, Bishop Patrick.”
“Then I do not think that you have damaged your faith or imperiled your soul by reading her self-proclaimed Gospel. And, among the three of us, I have read a copy of the manuscript as well. I find myself charmed by the anecdotes of Mary’s life, though, of course, they are not to be treated as Gospel. ”
A palpable relief descends upon the table. “May we proceed with the rite of baptism for Brigid and myself?” Broicsech ventures to ask.
“We may,” Patrick says with a signal to his monks.
Brigid watches as the robed ascetics fill a vast basin with water from jugs marked with the sign of the cross. “We will not be baptized in the river Liffey?” she asks.
Patrick shakes his head. “It is true that our Lord was born anew in a river. However, I understand that your father would prefer that you and your mother experience a more intimate rite. As would our pope.”
Broisech and Brigid kneel before the basin. Bishop Patrick articulates the sacred words of exorcism to ensure the purity of the women’s souls before the sacrament. He then anoints them with blessed oil from a tiny jar hidden within the folds of his black robe.
Patrick asks, “Do you believe that you cast off the sin of your father and mother through baptism?”
In unison, Broisech and Brigid say, “We believe.”
“Do you believe in penance after sin?”
“We believe.”
“Do you believe in life after death? In the resurrection?”
“We believe.”
“Do you believe in the unity of the church?”
“We believe.”
Patrick then turns his back to them, genuflecting and praying before the basin.
Broicsech motions for Brigid to rise. They retire to an antechamber off the hall, with their servants in tow. The maids undress them and wrap them in white cloth to protect their modesty during the immersion ritual. They hang Broicsech’s and Brigid’s pristine robes with particular care, as the later wearing of these garments will signify their new life in Christ.
Taking advantage of the servants’ preoccupation, Broicsech whispers, “What game are you at, Brigid?”
“Pardon me, Mother?”
“Your references to Mary and the veil—what are you about?”
“I do not understand your meaning, Mother.”
“And I do not comprehend yours, Brigid. But I will, mark my words.”
Alex’s second day in Kildare quickly fell into an excited rhythm. She woke at dawn and hastened to Saint Brigid’s Church, where Sister Mary had already beaten her to the bronze doors, despite Alex’s early arrival. She stood there on the marble floor of the Madonna Chapel while Sister Mary unlocked the relics from their storage space and spread them out on the altar. She waited until she heard Sister Mary lock her back into the chapel and leave the church altogether before she launched into her work. It was the most satisfying appraisal of her career to date, for the pieces lived up to every one of Alex’s initial expectations.
The chalice and paten bore the hallmarks of a true artisan. Alex’s magnification equipment revealed a remarkable minuscule design embedded in the gold filigree of the communion vessels, a pattern of interlaced knots, birds, and animals alternating with kneeling men and women. On the chalice bowl, she discovered a nearly invisible inscription, the names of the apostles and the Virgin Mary. And when she turned the chalice upside down, she uncovered the most elaborate handiwork of all: a gold filigree circle inlaid with an enormous rock crystal. The craftsman had reserved his finest work for God, as the
crystal could be seen only when the chalice was tipped up toward heaven as the celebrant drank of the communion wine.
Yet for all their beauty, Alex did not think the two objects were of sixth-century origin. Their unique Gaelic design and iconography—called Hiberno-Saxon, a fusion of the earlier abstract La Tène Celtic style and the animal art then common elsewhere in Europe—were well developed, really too well developed for the sixth century, when the style had just begun to evolve. And the materials, many of which were not native to Ireland, spoke of an established trade relationship with the Continent, a tenuous tie at best in the sixth century. To be sure, she believed they were ancient, but they seemed born of the early ninth century, in the days before the Vikings began their invasion of Kildare. Not that the later date diminished the value tremendously, Alex would assure Sister Mary. The chalice and paten were of a quality and age similar to those of the Ardagh and Derrynaflan chalices—both considered to be priceless treasures of the National Museum of Ireland.
Dating and placing the sumptuous gold and silver reliquary box proved a greater challenge, one Alex puzzled over that night at the Silken Thomas Inn. Huddled in a corner booth at the inn’s pub, she scarfed down her fish and chips while studying the array of photographs before her. The reliquary simply did not make sense. The shape was unusual for a small corporeal artifact, and its iconography—the symbols of the Gospel authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the four corners of the cross—made it a natural design for a sacred-text reliquary. The piece looked much closer to the book shrines in the National Museum—the Shrine of the Stowe Missal, the Miosach, the Domhnach Airgid, and the Shrine of the Cathach—and those reliquaries contained books that claimed saints’ ownership and were of much later origin than the sixth century.
Other incongruous design elements made Alex’s head spin. The base of the reliquary was exceptionally deep and bore a much simpler pattern, one Alex might have expected to see in sixth-century La Tène art prior to the period when the Hiberno-Saxon style took hold. To further complicate matters, a beautifully crafted golden representation of the enthroned Virgin Mary with the Christ child on her lap overlay the
cross frontispiece, but the image of the Virgin Mary arguably was not seen in Western art until the famous ninth-century illuminated manuscript the Book of Kells. So was the reliquary from the sixth century, as Sister Mary insisted, or had it been fashioned sometime in the ninth century, after the Book of Kells?
Perhaps the justification for the disparity was simple, Alex tried to reassure herself. Maybe craftsmen had reworked the reliquary over time; Alex had seen eighth-century book shrines that had been retooled as late as the sixteenth century. Yet somehow that explanation didn’t fit. The overall effect of the reliquary was too cohesive, and its materials had aged uniformly.
“Care for another, miss?”
Alex looked down at her glass and then up at the waitress as if waking from a dream. She’d drained her beer without even realizing it. “Sure, thanks.”
Rubbing her bleary eyes, Alex glanced around the room. The other tables were crowded with couples and families eating dinner, and the bar was packed with a bunch of sweaty football players fresh from a match. A roaring fire enhanced the lively, cozy feel, and Alex enjoyed the atmosphere and companionship vicariously. Then she noticed a young woman at a nearby table staring at her with a curious, pitying look.
The compassionate expression took Alex aback, almost like a slap. She’d grown used to working alone, dining alone, and living alone. During her many years at Columbia, she’d always had a few close friends, but she’d shied away from groups, seeing their games as a drain from her pursuits. Even when she selected her career, she stayed away from the predictable museums, auction houses, and academic institutions for the same reasons; all the traditional avenues seemed riddled with time-sapping office politics. There’d been boyfriends, though she was always attracted to men whose artistic endeavors demanded freedom from convention. She’d always told herself that she’d chosen the margins; but now her painful reaction to the stranger’s expression made her wonder.
The next morning Alex actually made it to the bronze church doors before Sister Mary. A highlighted reproduction of a seventh-century
Life
of Saint Brigid
practically burned in her black bag, propelling her there early. She had turned to one of the several extant histories of Saint Brigid the night before as a way to take her mind off both the puzzle of the reliquary and that of her own life. Though she’d reviewed the narrative by the seventh-century cleric Cogitosus before her flight, a reread passage suddenly struck her and took on new meaning. Cogitosus mentioned that in the seventh century, the Kildare abbey church contained a reliquary holding Brigid’s body, “decorated with a variegation of gold, silver, gems, and precious stones, with gold and silver crowns hanging above them.”