Bridget of Sweden
Bridget of Sweden (Birgitta of Sweden) (1303–73), foundress and visionary, patron of Sweden. The daughter of Berger, the rich governor of Upland, she married Ulf Gudmarrson at the age of fourteen. For many years, she lived as chatelaine on his estates and bore him eight children, one of whom was St. Catherine of Sweden. In 1335 she was summoned to court to be the principal lady-in-waiting to the queen, Blanche of Namur, wife of King Magnus II. She now began to experience supernatural revelations; the king and queen respected her but did not reform their lives; the courtiers gossiped about her. Bridget made pilgrimages: one to St. Olaf 's shrine at Trondheim (Norway), another (with her husband) to St. James at Compostela (Spain). Her husband died soon afterwards at the Cistercian monastery at Alvastra, where Bridget then lived as a penitent (1343–6).
Having recovered from her husband's death, and now more clear about what she should do, she founded a monastery in 1346 at Vadstena (on Lake Vattern) for sixty nuns and twenty-five monks, who lived in separate enclosures but shared the same church. In temporal matters the abbess was supreme, but in spiritual ones the monks. All superfluous income was given to the poor; luxurious buildings were forbidden, but all the inmates could have as many books for study as they wished. In some respects the Brigettine Order was modelled on Fontevrault; like it, Vadstena enjoyed the generous patronage of royalty, in this case, King Magnus.
In 1349 Bridget went to Rome to obtain approval for her Order, as well as the jubilee indulgence of 1350. She never returned to Sweden but spent the rest of her life in Italy or on various pilgrimages, including one to the Holy Land. Her austerity of life, her devotion both in visiting shrines and in serving pilgrims, the poor, and the sick were impressive. Meanwhile her visions continued. Some of these were of the Passion of Christ; others, underlined by comminatory prophecies, were concerned with political and religious events of her own day. She tried to dissuade King Magnus from a so-called crusade against pagans of Estonia and Latvia; like other visionaries she also warned Pope Clement VI to return to Rome from Avignon and to make peace between England and France. Threats of punishment for persistent wrongdoing feature fairly prominently in her writings.
Unfortunately, her experiences can be known only through the editions published by her directors. These imply the work of one or two editors, recording and sometimes interpreting the message. Her original perception too was human and fallible. She was canonized for her virtue, not her revelations.
Her Order was approved by the Holy See. It once numbered seventy houses, but now there are only twelve Brigettine nunneries in the world; one, at South Brent (Devon), has unbroken continuity with Syon Abbey, Isleworth, founded by King Henry V. The Brigettine monks, in spite of an attempt to revive them by an Englishman of the 20th century, are now extinct.
Feast: 23 July, formerly 8 October, which was both the day of her canonization (1391) and the day her relics were translated to Vadstena Abbey. There they remain and part of her nunnery has been restored.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Oct. IV (1780), 368–560; Lives also in Scriptores Rerum Suevicarum Medii Aevi (1871), pp. 185–206; I. Collijn, Acta et Processus canonizationis beatae Birgittae (1924–31): id. Iconographica Birgittina (1915); modern Lives by H. Redpath (1947), and J. Jorgensen (Eng. tr. 1954); E. Graf, Revelations and Prayers of St. Bridget (1928); A. Butkovich, Revelations: Saint Birgitta of Sweden (1972); B.L.S., vi. 180–6
