Bridget, Saint

BRIDGET (Swedish and Latin Birgitta), Saint. - Foundress of the Brigittine Order of St. Saviour.

I. LIFE

She was born, it seems, in the year 1303 at the castle of Finsta in Uppland (Sweden) and died in Rome on 23 July 1373. The sources of her biography consist, in the first place, of her own writings, of a Vita s. Birgittae compiled by her confessors and theological advisers Petrus of Alvastra and Petrus of Skänninge, and of the acts of the process for her canonization. Of lesser documentary value is the Vita s. Birgittae of Bertholdus, a monk of the Brigittine Order of the 15th century, reproduced in the Acta SS., and likewise a biography in verse, the Vita metrica s. Birgittae, by an anonymous author.

St. B. could boast an aristocratic lineage, being the daughter of one of the most eminent personalities of her time, the powerful governor of Uppland Birger Persson, and of Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, of the old royal line of the Folkungs. Her mother's family was well known for its deep religiosity, and the castle of Finsta, where B. lived with her parents until the age of 12, when her mother died, was a center of high culture, both religious and otherwise, with strong tendencies toward mysticism, which did not fail to exercise a decisive influence on the formation of her character. At only ten years of age B. had her first conversation with Christ, and already as a young girl she showed a vibrant enthusiasm for asceticism. After her mother's death she was sent to live with an aunt of hers, Ingrid, wife of the Grand Chancellor of the realm Knut Jonsson, to complete her education. In the year 1318 she married, for political reasons, the eighteen-year-old Ulf Gudmarson, who later became governor of Östergötland, and the young couple took up residence at the castle of Ulvåsa. Her husband, also of royal kinship, had a gentle and rather weak character, and during the marriage, from which 4 sons and 4 daughters were born, another side of St. B.'s character had occasion to develop and stand out: her iron will, her practical energy, her indomitable tenacity. Her life was divided between the administration of her very considerable estates, a high court office — in 1335 she was called as first lady-in-waiting by Queen Blanche of Namur, wife of King Magnus — and her duties as wife and mother. Court life brought her into direct contact with the troubled political life of the time and gave rise in her to a lively interest in European politics, an interest that she thereafter always maintained.

At the center of her life, however, religion remained indisputably. She summoned to Ulvåsa the foremost Swedish theologian of her time, the canon of Linköping, Magister Matthias, as her confessor and personal adviser in matters of religion. Through his teaching she became acquainted with the contemporary mystical and apocalyptic religious literature, which played a great part in her spiritual formation. Alongside such study, the reading of Holy Scripture and of the works of St. Bernard of Clairvaux contributed to perfecting her religious education. She also gathered around herself other masters of theology, such as Nicolaus

BRIGIDA, saint. - Church of the monastery of Vadstena, built between 1388 and 1430, now a Lutheran parish church.

Hermanni, tutor of her children and later bishop of Linköping, the prior of the monastery of Alvastra, Petrus, and the abbot of the house of the Holy Spirit of Skänninge, Petrus. Ulvåsa thus became a true center of the religious life of Sweden at that time and enjoyed a clear reputation for high doctrine and generous beneficence. Around the year 1340, B. left her office at court for political reasons — she belonged decidedly to the aristocratic opposition against the monarch's totalitarian tendencies — but also and above all in order to devote herself entirely to study and to religion. Together with her husband she made a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela in Spain in the years 1341-43. Crossing Germany and France, she received a vivid impression of the great political and religious questions of the time, namely the merciless war between France and England, the struggle between the Pope and the Emperor and the consequent "Babylonian captivity" of the Pope at Avignon, impressions that later inspired her in her various activities and that gave her direct and personal experience of the spiritual and material needs of a Europe in upheaval. She also came into contact with the Fontevraud religious order, a foundation of the Benedictine rule very widespread in France, frequented by the high nobility, and with abbesses who were often of royal blood. The Fontevraud monasteries comprised monks and nuns organized in the same convent but in two separate cloisters, and it seems beyond doubt that it was this organization that inspired St. B. in the founding of her own order. On the return to Sweden, her husband fell gravely ill and died shortly after the homecoming, in 1344.

This year represents in the life of St. B. a very significant date. She left Ulvåsa and took up residence near the Cistercian monastery of Alvastra (v.) where she received the first of a long series of religious revelations. Such revelations generally came to her in a state of ecstasy, and after her awakening she wrote them herself or dictated them in Swedish to her confessor, who then saw to their translation into Latin. According to the content of the first revelation, Christ had called her his spouse and had chosen her as an instrument to guide men onto the path of Christian uprightness. In the subsequent revelations, she inveighed violently against the moral laxity of the time and especially against the court life of King Magnus, but she also sought to re-establish peace between France and England by means of divine messages, and to induce the Pope to return to Rome. Magister Matthias corrected from the dogmatic and theological point of view the Brigittine revelations, which spread rapidly through the various centers of Europe, giving their recipient a clear reputation as a prophetess and considerable influence in the political and religious world. It was in these years that St. B. conceived the idea of founding a new religious Order called that of St. Savior, the rule of which was dictated to her in one of the revelations. Meanwhile conspicuous donations began to come to her, and in 1346 the king in his testament donated the Castle of Vadstena with its adjoining vast lands for the future convent. In order to receive the Pope's sanction for her rule, she went to Rome in 1349, arriving there with a great retinue in the holy year 1350. She probably took up residence in the house of Francesca Papazura at the Campo Marzio, later left to the convent of Vadstena as the "Hospitale S. Birgittae de Regno Sueciae" for Swedish pilgrims, and lastly passed into the possession of the new sisters of St. B., a modified refoundation of the original Order (1911). The house with its adjoining church and chapel is located at Piazza Farnese 96, where the cells of St. B. and of her daughter Catherine can still be visited.

In Rome St. B. devoted herself to pious works, to study and spiritual exercises, and to dictating her revelations. In these she exhorted the Pope several times and in very clear language, when not outright threatening, to return to Rome, and she seems to have exercised a certain influence on the the policy of the Avignon curia. In 1370 she received from Pope Urban V, by means of a bull issued at Montefiascone, the sanction of her rule with certain reservations. The new Order was to follow the rule of St. Augustine, but in the convent of Vadstena and in the foundations dependent on it the life was to follow the prescriptions given in the rule of St. B. Thus it took on a development entirely its own, distinguished by the double monastery for monks and nuns with a common church. Under the guidance of Peter of Skänninge a special ritual was drawn up, the so-called Cantus sororum with two rectriceschori, two versiculariae and one lectrix. The rule was confirmed by Urban VI in 1378, and the Order — during its most fruitful and flourishing period — seems to have had about seventy monasteries scattered across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and England. After the Council of Basel (1436), which did not take a clear position concerning the revelations, and after the Reformation in the Scandinavian countries, the Order declined rapidly (on the modern restoration of the Order: v. ORDINE DEL SS. SALVATORE e DI S. BRIGIDA).

Having reached the goal so long desired with the sanction of her rule, St. B. went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the beginning of 1372. Having returned to Rome the following year, her health ruined, she died there on 23 July 1373. Her mortal remains were transported to her Vadstena. Already in 1379 the process for her canonization began, with the favor of the popes Gregory XI and Urban VI, and it ended positively on 7 Oct. 1391.

St. B. is without any doubt the most interesting and exalted personality of the Nordic world of the late Middle Ages. Nor should one omit to note how, among her religious and political activities, her singular literary gifts also stand out. Her writings in fact give the start to Swedish literature and are marked by a poetic force, by a pregnant and narrative style and by a concrete vividness that assign her not only a place of honor in Swedish literary history but also make a very great influence on all the sacred literature of the late Middle Ages trace back to her.

Erik Sjöqvist

II. THE REVELATIONS

For this characteristic work of hers B. is called the "mystic of the North." Her vocation is described in solemn, almost biblical terms in Rev. Extr. 47: in B. the prophetic mission is inscribed within the charism of mystical union. Providence had already prepared her for this mission through her noble education, her contacts with every sphere of society, her numerous readings, above all of Holy Scripture, her "most precious treasure" (at her request Magister Matthias had made a Swedish version of it: cf. G. Jörgensen, I, p. 55); after the death of her husband (12 February 1344), it disposed her even more directly, with an abundance of supernatural communications, in the solitude of Alvastra, where B., by an exceptional concession, was able to take up residence as an "oblata," in a dependency of the monastery. Thus came about the first cycle of Revelations, the Swedish one (1344-49), marked by prophetic missions to the court of Stockholm, to the great and the clergy: Marian revelations, of an ecclesiastical nature, concerning the Order of St. Saviour then being instituted, to the seven "angels" (bishops) of her nation, on Swedish sovereignty, on the decline of Christian Knighthood, for the proclamation of the second jubilee in Rome, and the related message that the prior of Alvastra and the bishop of Abo carried to Clement VI, in Avignon.

With the coming of B. to Rome, at the divine command, on the occasion of the jubilee of 1350, a second cycle of Italo-Roman Revelations opens (cf. Rev. Extr. 8): at Milan, then in St. Peter's during the opening of the holy door (24 December 1349), and on so many occasions, with warnings and threats from the Lord, exhortations to penance and the related assurance of forgiveness, and above all appeals to the Pontiffs for their return to the City. Rome and its Basilicas recall the visionary, rapt in ecstasy near the Catacombs of the Appian Way, or near the tombs of the Apostles and the ancient martyrs. In the basilica of St. Paul a marble statue represents her in the act of listening to Jesus, who speaks to her from the ancient crucifix, still venerated there.

Another cycle of Revelations harmonizes with her pilgrimages to the Sanctuaries of Italy (1364-70): Assisi (St. Francis), Ortona a Mare (St. Thomas the Apostle), Monte Gargano (St. Michael the Archangel), Bari (St. Nicholas), Benevento (St. Bartholomew), Naples, with various missions to the court of Queen Joanna and the nobility, Salerno (St. Matthew), Amalfi (St. Andrew).

A fourth cycle is given by the Revelations connected with her journey to the Holy Land (1371-73): on the Passion of the Lord (within the enclosure of the Holy Sepulchre), on Christmas (in the grotto of Bethlehem), on the life of the Virgin (in the grotto of Jerusalem), and minor revelations at the Cenacle, on the Mount of Olives, at the Jordan, and, both on the outward and

BRIGIDA, saint "Frontispiece of the Corpus Revelationum of St. B. Copper engraving by V. Humbach (Munich 1660).

on the return journey, in Cyprus, with warnings and messages for the people, the court of Famagusta and the Byzantine empire itself.

All these visions and revelations B. received in a state of wakefulness and ecstasy (Rev. IV, 77; cf. IV, 78; VI, 52). Often she had bodily visions and sensory auditions, and at the same time was enlightened as to the meanings of these symbols, and her heart was set aflame. At other times she heard voices, without seeing who spoke, but she recognized her interlocutors — the Lord, the Angels, the Saints. Sometimes she had only intellectual illuminations, recognizing even then what was communicated to her by revelation. Often, however, B. experienced the anguished doubt whether the phenomenon she had undergone was divine; in these cases a new revelation reassured her, sometimes also reminding her of the criteria of the divine authenticity of her revelations ("cognoscendi bonum vel malum spiritum": cf. Rev. I, 4; III, 10; IV, 78).

Moreover the Lord and the Virgin imposed on her, as a principle, the obligation to submit her visions to the judgment of her directors (cf. Rev. IV, 78; cf. I, 52). Magister Matthias (d. 1350), in the prologue to the Revelations of the Swedish period, enumerates the evident signs of their divine origin. He had such confidence in B. as to beg her to consult the Lord on the interpretation of the Apocalypse for his commentary (cf. Rev. VI, 89).

The words that B. heard in ecstasy remained distinctly impressed on her memory, until she had confided them to her secretaries, who translated them into Latin; afterwards she remembered only their general sense. Protesting their fidelity, they inform us that B., after she had learned Latin in Rome, checked the work to assure herself of the exactness of their translation.

1. The collection

At her death B. left a group of "friends of God" (to whom allusion is often made in the Revelations: cf. I, 55; IV, 11; VI, 76), whom she had gathered maternally around herself, persuaded of their particular divine election, imbued with her spirit, animated by invincible hopes and by zeal for the diffusion of her message. Among them were Petrus de Skinninge, Petrus of Alvastra, and, from 1368, the hermit Alfonso of Vadaterra, bishop emeritus of Jaén in Spain. These took care not only to translate into Latin, one by one, the Revelations of the Roman and Palestinian period, but also to collect them, joining them to those of the Swedish period, so that at the death of B. they were able, in the Life of the Saint they prepared for the canonization, to refer to the books of the Revelations. This work of arrangement is due above all to Alfonso of Jaén (cf. Rev., VII, 31; Extr., 49). Having returned to Sweden (1380), the two Petrus completed the Brigittine corpus, which the monks of Vadstena then presented as definitive in the editio princeps of Lübeck of 1492.

In this edition the Revelations are grouped in 8 books, and a supplementary collection called, with juridical terminology, Revelationes Extravagantes. Two books have a special title: the V is called Liber quaestionum, and the VIII Liber caelestis Imperatoris ad reges. At the head of book I is the Prologus of Magister Matthias of Sweden; at the head of the VIII the Epistola solitarii ad reges of Alfonso of Jaén.

To these Revelations properly so called are added, between the VIII and the Extravagantes, the Regula S. Salvatoris (revised in canonical style for the Roman approval), and the Sermo Angelicus de excellentia B. Mariae Virginis, adapted and divided into 21 chapters for liturgical use (3 lessons for each day of the week), and 4 Orationes, each preceded by a prologue.

Each revelation (chapter) is preceded by a summarium; not a few are also followed by some Declarationes. If one accepts book V (or "of the Whys"), concerning a vision that B. had on the road to Vadstena, in dialogic form, between a proud monk and his divine judge, book VIII (Ad reges: exhortations to sovereigns) and the last part of IV (that is, chapters 132-44: Tractatus ad sacerdotes et ad Summos Pontifices), the collection presents no logical or chronological order. Some revelation is repeated. In book VII the visions had in the Holy Land predominate. A critical edition is lacking. The best is that of Gonzalvo Durante, bishop of Montefeltro (Rome 1606), who enriched the editio princeps with Notae explicativae, a theological commentary on the individual Revelations. Prefixed to it are part of the Defensorium of Cardinal Giovanni di Torquemada and the brief of approval Cum sicut accepimus (24 July 1606) of Paul V. In the reprint of 1628, even more esteemed, he added a great Tractatus de Revelat. S. Brigittae. It proves B.'s submission to the Church in doctrinal questions, her concordance with the authorized doctors in free opinions, and her Thomistic tendencies. This edition, reprinted at Munich in 1680, has been enriched with copious indexes by fra Simone Hörmann, prior of the Brigittine monastery of Altomünster (Bavaria).

2. Partial collections

These consist of extracts made for ascetic purposes from the Brigidine corpus, for example: 1) Caeleste viridarium, by the work of Alfonso of Jaén; 2) Onus mundi, taken from I. IV, Rome 1485; 3) Opusculum Vitae et Passionis Christi eiusque Genitricis Mariae, Antwerp 1489; 4) Thesaurus animae fidelis, Cologne 1517.

3. General characteristics

A literary and mystical masterpiece, the Revelations of B. are written in a vivid, imaginative and at times dramatic style, wholly pervaded by a poetic, powerful and fascinating breath. If the Latin dress in which they have been handed down to us does not possess classical elegance, it is nonetheless dignified. The soul of the Saint reveals itself therein in its "chivalric" greatness, quivering at injustices, at the unworthiness of the clergy and of the great.

The spirituality of B., on account of its relations with the religious orders, belongs above all to the Cistercian school, and has reflections of the Franciscan school (she was a Franciscan tertiary). Its characteristic note is strength, not divorced from admirable discretion. There recur often, in the Revelations, the great ideas of the sovereignty of God and of his justice, and, at the same time, of his infinite mercy, whereby the Lord can tell her not to "ever do justice without mercy" (Rev., I, 7), even to the damned themselves (Rev., II, 12; cf. III, 28); of Providence, wholly particular for the souls of the just, called to collaborate in the divine redemption (cf. Rev., I, 56; IV, 77); of the Rome of Christ, "most excellent and most holy," whose squares are "paved with the blood of the martyrs" (Rev., III, 27; VI, 63).

The Saint describes the kingdoms of the afterlife (cf. Rev., VI, 52), which together with the present world constitute the four cities (of trial, of purification, of sorrow, of glory) with four different loves (Rev., III, 28: a concept perhaps inspired by St. Augustine); and she seems to have foreseen, as Pius XI himself used to admit, the constitution of Vatican City (cf. Rev., VI, 74).

B. also expresses the great Catholic devotions to the Humanity of Christ, to the Most Holy Virgin (whose glories she sings and whose Immaculate Conception she extols: Rev., VI, 49 ["Ego concepta fui sine peccato originali"]; cf. I, 9; V, at the end; VI, 55; Sermo Angelicus, 10), especially as mother of sorrows, and to St. Joseph, whose cult was still held in the shadows in the Church (cf. Rev., VI, 59); to the Angels, particularly the guardian angel (cf. Rev., I, 9); and she welcomes the local devotions of the sanctuaries that she visits. For this reason the Revelations also influenced medieval piety and art (cf. E. Mâle, L'Art religieux de la fin du M. A. en France, Paris 1908, pp. 80, 81, 118, 125, 128).

4. Theological value

Such Revelations were not received with enthusiasm by all; along with the apologists there were also critics and doubters: there was reluctance to grant credence to "visionary" little women (mulierculae) (St. B. and St. Catherine of Siena), who set themselves up as counselors of the Head of the Church (cf. G. Gerson, De examinatione doctrinarum, II, 3, and De probatione spirit., 3, in Opera omnia, I, Antwerp 1706, coll. 16 and 38).

The question, brought to the Council of Constance (cf. Hefele-Leclercq, VII, p. 184 ff.), was more bitterly agitated at the Council of Basel (cf. Acta SS. Octobris, IV, Brussels 1780, pp. 409-12), where it came to demanding the censure of the Revelations according to a list of 123 articles drawn from them. But the Scandinavian bishops and the Dominicans defended them effectively, and Giovanni di Torquemada, master of the Sacred Palace, later cardinal, composed a Defensorium, rectifying point by point all 123 articles (Mansi, XXX, 697-814).

Moreover Gregory XI and Urban VI had already judged them favorably (cf. Acta SS. Octobris, IV, pp. 406-18) and Boniface IX had them examined rigorously for the canonization of B., recognizing her as endowed with a "prophetic spirit" (bull Ab origine mundi, 7 Oct. 1391).

Recourse was had to the ratification of councils so that, given the schism, even the party dissenting from Boniface IX might recognize the holiness and the mission of the visionary; the canonization was confirmed by John XXIII at the Council of Constance (2 Feb. 1415), and again at Florence, by Martin V, ecumenical pope (bull Excellentium principum, 1 July 1419). The Revelations were re-examined at the Council of Basel (1433-36), where however the claim of those who wished to assimilate the Revelations to the Gospel was rejected (cf. Rev. Extr., 49), and it was declared that many passages needed clarification and revision.

Accessory defects, in fact, are not lacking, due to the environmental influence of the time (cf. for example, Rev., IV, 13 on the liberation of Trajan from Hell, also recalled by Dante, Purg., X, 76) and to the mingling of human activity with the action of God.

Definitive, therefore, remains the judgment of Benedict XIV, who, asking what must be thought of private revelations, even if approved by the Church (such as those of St. Hildegard, B. and Catherine of Siena), answers that one must not and cannot give them "assensum fidei catholicae, sed tantum fidei humanae, iuxta regulas prudentiae, iuxta quas praedictae revelationes sunt probabiles et pie credibiles" (De Serv. Dei Beatif., III, 53, 15; cf. II, 32, 11).

Catholics have always held in great esteem the writings of B. (cf. Peter Canisius, De Maria Virgine, I, 7), the reading of which elevates and fortifies the spirit.

Igino Cecchetti

III. IN FOLKLORE

The saint inspired a popular song in irregular octaves, probably of Sicilian origin, but also widespread in southern Italy: in it the vision of the Passion of Christ that she had is described at length. In Florence, on the day of her feast (Oct. 8), a fair took place, where, on improvised stalls, the well-known "brigidini" were sold, wafers with aniseed, flat cakes made with wafer irons. - See Pl. VI.

Paolo Toschi