For this assignment, please write an approximately 1000-word-long commentary on Cogitosus’s Life of St Brigit Download Life of St Brigit(translation starts on page 11). Please cover the basic ‘who, what, when, where, why’ questions and also consider the question:
Does this source suggest that the spread of Christianity changed Ireland, or did Christian institutions adopt Irish societies’ pre-existing symbolism and preoccupations?
As a reminder, the basic questions include:
Who made this text? What else do we know about them? And for whom did they make it?
What is this source? Which genre is it? What information is it trying to convey?
When was this source made? What else was going on at that time?
Where was this source made? What else was going on in that place?
Why is this source useful for historians? (Hagiographies are a key surviving source, and they focus heavily on miracle stories. Miracle stories are, at best, unprovable. How can historians use miracle stories as evidence?)