I've chosen to include this page about Ireland and the Celtic Catholic Church in the time of St. Brigid to give the reader a better understanding of her world.

It is based on an essay by Celtic historian and author Peter Tremayne.

During the time of St. Brigid, Ireland consisted of five main provincial kingdoms. Four provincial kings - of Ulster, of Connacht, of Munster and of Leinster - they gave their allegiance to the High King, who ruled from Tara, in the fifth province of Meath.

Ireland was governed by a system of sophisticated laws the Brehon Laws. It was not until the seventeenth century that the English colonial administration in Ireland finally suppressed the use of the Brehon law system, following the devastating conquests that lasted from 1541 to 1691. To even possess a copy of the law books was punishable, often by death or transportation even towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Under these laws, women occupied a unique place. The Irish laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other western law code at that time or until recent times. Women could, and did, aspire to all offices and professions as co-equal with men. They could be political leaders, command their people in battle as warriors, be physicians, local magistrates, poets, artisans, lawyers and judges. Women were protected by law against sexual harassment; against discrimination; against rape; they had the right of divorce on equal terms from their husbands, with equitable separation laws, and could demand part of their husband's property in a divorce settlement; they had the right of inheritance of personal property and land and the right of sickness benefits when ill or hospitalized. Ancient Ireland has Europe's oldest recorded system of hospitals.

The Celtic Church of Ireland was in constant dispute with Rome on matters of liturgy and ritual. Rome had begun to reform itself in the fourth century, changing its dating of Easter and aspects of its liturgy. The Celtic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches refused to follow Rome, but the Celtic Church was gradually absorbed by Rome between the ninth and eleventh centuries while the Eastern Orthodox churches have continue to remain independent of Rome.

One thing that was shared by both the Celtic Church and Rome was that the concept of celibacy was not universal. While there were always ascetics in the Churches who chose celibacy, it was not until the Council of Nicea in AD 325 that clerical marriages were condemned but not banned in the Western Church.

By the fifth century, Rome had forbidden its clerics from the rank of abbot and bishop to sleep with their wives and, shortly after, even to marry at all. The general clergy were discouraged from marrying by Rome but not forbidden to do so. Indeed, it was not until the reforming papacy of Leo IX (AD 1049-1054) that a serious attempt was made to force the Western clergy to accept universal celibacy. In fact, Leo went so far as to order that wives of priests should be sent as slaves to the Lateran palace, then the papal centre, while Urban II, in 1189, ordered that wives of priests could be seized as slaves by members of the nobility. Many wives of the clergy were driven to suicide by these rulings. The bulk of the religious of the Celtic Church took centuries to give up their anti-celibacy attitudes and fall into line with Rome.

In this world both sexes inhabited abbeys and monastic foundations, which were known as double houses, where men and women lived in Christ's service. St Brigid of Kildare was a community of both sexes during her time. When Brigid established her community of Kildare (Cill-Dara - the church of the oaks) she invited a bishop named Conlaed to join her. Her first biography, completed fifty years after her death, in AD 650, was written by a monk of Kildare named Cogitosus, who makes it clear that it continued to be a mixed community in his day.

It should also be pointed out that, demonstrating women's coequal role with men, women were priests of the Celtic Church in this period. Brigid herself was ordained a bishop by Patrick's nephew, Mel, and her case was not unique. Rome actually wrote a protest, in the sixth century, at the Celtic practice of allowing women to celebrate the divine sacrifice of Mass.

Unlike the Roman Church, the Irish Church did not have a system of "confessors" where "sins" had to be confessed to clerics who then had the authority to absolve those sins in Christ's name. Instead, people chose a "soul friend" (anam chara), out of clerics or laity, with whom they discussed matters of emotional and spiritual well-being.