SOURCE: "A Note on the Spirituality of St. Bridget of Sweden," in Analecta Cartusiana, edited by Dr. James Hogg, Institut Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, 1982, pp. 157-66.

[In the following essay, Ellis focuses on St. Birgitta's spirituality and the metaphorical nature of its exposition in her Liber celestis.]

The present paper aims to describe the principal features of the spirituality of St. Bridget of Sweden, as revealed by her biographers and presented in the work which they collaborated with her in producing, the Liber Celestis)¹ Any discussion of Christian spirituality, it seems to me, rests upon assumptions like the following: (i) Christianity, the unity of man with God in and through Christ, by means of a single and perfect act, is as yet imperfectly realised, (ii) This partial realisation, which we call Christianity, is represented at any one time by the total Christian tradition then available, in relation to the particular perspectives on that tradition possessed by its followers, (iii) Such perspectives, however imperfectly, enact a man's sense of relationship with God, and presuppose their own communication. (iv) The individual perspective defines itself in relation to both the ideal and actual realisations of Christianity: in relation to the former, because it hopes to bring the realisation of the ideal closer; in relation to the latter, either by confirming its truths or by challenging its limitations. (v) Discussions of Christian spirituality therefore requires us to consider the inter-relation between a person's experience, his articulation of that experience, and the deposit of tradition, as both he and his hearers/readers understand it.

The tradition within which St. Bridget operates, and which she faithfully presents to her readers, is that of a centralised (Latin) church under attack from without and betrayed from within: from without, by pagan practice (6.78A, 6.82A); by non-Christian religions (the most regularly cited is Judaism, eg 2.5, 4.6ID, normally with reference to its historical rejection of Christ, and with explicit parallels to his rejection by most Christians, (eg 1.30A, 1.37); by schism (7.19F); and, from within, by heresy (7.7-8: of course, this category is capable of almost infinite extension);² by immorality and error among the faithful (references, for example, to the apostasy of the three estates, as at 1.56); and by a corresponding depravity among the leaders (the most potent symbol for this is the 'Babylonian captivity' of the Papacy at Avignon). Ranged against these enemies, as at 1.41, which so names pagans, Jews, the Pope, and evil Christians, we have the Saints, and God's few faithful friends on earth, a pattern echoed in 2.3, where the Pope is dropped from the list and an extra category created for those Jews and pagans willing to become Christians. The spirituality of St. Bridget is therefore, like that of the Old Testament prophets, one of crisis and judgement, whose central feature is a stark opposition of saved and damned, and whose central note a call to repentance and greater holiness of life.

This position has several important ramifications. St. Bridget understands her own relation to God, typically, in terms of what Riehle has called 'a spiritual sense perception':³ that is, she encounters God with the immediacy of sense-perception, and can use metaphors of sensation to elucidate her experience of him (of course, insofar as they manifest themselves by physical signs, accessible even to independent observation, these experiences are metaphoric only in relation to God: though to say this is not to claim for all such references in the Liber the status of a literal experience.) Thus, God and good men may be encountered as a sweet smell, evil men as a foul smell (6.18C), or as sweet and bitter tastes respectively (A et Ρ pp. 24 (art. 36), 96-7, 'De speciali signo spiritus'; and cf 1.54A). More importance attaches to St. Bridget's experience of God by way of her other spiritual senses, conveniently described for us in 2.18A, and many times repeated. There we learn that the Saint saw and heard God by way of physical images, and experienced him as a palpable motion in her breast. The Liber, a book of visions and revelations, is the record of the first two gifts, as Julian's book is of hers.⁴ Occasionally the Saint declares her inability to comprehend or record what she saw and heard (4.50, 8.48, Rev. Extrav. 49) but the basic character of the message, like that of the third gift, is its absolute certainty (see below). Though there is little direct reference in the Liber to the third, it is regularly declared superior to the others, perhaps because God is operating no longer through images but directly upon the consciousness of the Saint. Elsewhere, this third motion is compared to the movement of a child within the womb (6.88: the accompanying revelation, given on Christmas Eve, urges a parallel with the Virginal conception of Christ). It is probably to be equated with the fire of love (calor) which St. Bridget is recorded to have possessed, and whose seat similarly was the heart (7.4A and cf A et Ρ ρ. 98 'ante lectum'). The motion, she is told, will last and increase according to the capacity of her heart to bear it (6.88).

These three gifts, a direct consequence of the Saint's total conversion to the spiritual life, as described in A et Ρ pp. 80-81 (though earlier visions and revelations are recorded: A et Ρ pp. 76-80), accompany, and are the principal effect of, that quietly wakeful and concentrated gaze on God described in the following from 7.27:

vni persone in oracione vigilanti et contemplacioni vacanti, dum staret in raptu eleuacionis mentalis, apparuit Ihesus Christus (cf 6.52A).⁵

This ravishing (raptus) is itself manifested by physical signs, most notably the Saint's appearance as 'semimortua' (A et Ρ ρ. 210); her failure to respond to a question, even though she could hear it as clearly as the words of the revelation then being given to her (p. 627: elsewhere, though, she is said to hear and see nothing going on around her, p. 15); lastly by hugging her arms to her breast (Rev. Extrav. 116). Servants knew the signs well enough, it seems, to leave her alone when once she went into an ecstasy on horse-back (Prologue to Book 5 : she received the whole Book in this ecstasy). Such gifts are not open to question. The revelations and visions are many times compared with those recorded in the Bible, including even the glorified humanity of the risen Christ (eg Zachariah 1.20D, prophet and Magi 1.32B, Moses 1.60, 2.10A, E, Christ 2.10E). They are declared the last, and most recent, in a series of spiritual benefits which began with the creation of man (2.17). They are not obscure like the words of the Apocalypse, nor to be hidden, like those seen by St. Paul in his own ravishing to the third heaven (1.56D, an image used elsewhere: see below). The grace of calor regularly appears in discussions on the discernment of spirits (eg 1.4, 1.54) as an infallible sign of the operation of the Spirit.

Of other spiritual graces recorded, the most notable is probably that of ecstatic prayer. Several such are declared inspired by the Saints (eg 3.29C, 4.21 A, and most notably the Quatuor Oraciones), and their 'proof is to be sought, inter älla, in a traditional but startling declaration of love, the so-called 'impossible supposition':⁶ the Saint would choose not to be, or to live forever in Hell, rather than that the divine objects of her love should lose one point of their glory (7.1, Rev. Extrav. 63: Christ often uses a variant of this pattern to declare his abiding love for mankind eg 1.1c, 1.30A, 2.5B: 'si possibile esset … libenter adhuc semel morerer pro vobis').

These gifts can be considered as ends in themselves, in which case they talk about man's final unity with God as realised, and realisable, on earth, and advance a striking claim for the sanctity of the recipient; or they can be studied in relation to their end, in which case they speak to us of a process in which we are all involved. St. Bridget has much to say about this context of the gifts, but her teaching is not as clear or as single as her account of the gifts considered as ends in themselves. 6.14, for instance, charts the Saint's spiritual progress, by way of a double metaphor, from a little taste, and from childhood, through a greater appetite, to spousehood (and thence to the maturity, 'ad etatem', of adulthood, ie heaven), under three stages: (i) God seen in relation to the worldly goods given by him and used by the Saint; (ii) God, superior to worldly goods, now seen in relation to the Saint's own will (practices of abstinence, and attempts to do good works in the name of God); (iii) God seen as the only good (abandonment of the Saint's will to him). Elsewhere, though, similar patterns are used not to chart the progress of individuals but to describe an ideal social or religious state. In 4.2, for instance, we have three groups of men ('modica … minor … minima'). All three, as friends of God, offer their hearts to him. The first acknowledge their created state, and propose to use the world's goods 'ad sustentationem et refectionem carnis'. The second recognise the vanity and instability of the world, and give up their will to another (possibly by entering a religious order). The third declare their willingness to die for God. Presumably these three groups represent individuals at different stages of spiritual growth ('ever the higher the fewer' as the old phrase has it). We could therefore compare this revelation with 6.14, and identify the spiritual/physical martyrdom of the third group here with St. Bridget's abandoning of her will to God in the third stage of 6.14 (no very difficult conclusion to draw). But elsewhere, at 3.27, these stages of holiness are appropriated to an idealised account of the three estates; the text assigns positive, comparative and superlative degrees respectively, and in terms similar to those already seen, to marriage (laity), religious life, and knighthood ('carnem suam dederunt pro amore Dei').⁷ Comparable elements also occur in 3.21, a revelation describing how St. Benedict's rule and order find place for three stages of men, simple monks, confessors and teachers, and martyrs: the first keep their monastic vows, the second give up love of worldly things and seek only the honour of God and the instruction and profit of others; the third desire to die for Christ. And there are other parallels which one could adduce (eg 4.85, Rev. Extrav. 40).

In other contexts this use of the one pattern both to map an individual's experiences and to depict an ideal society might point to a writer's conviction that the one set of experiences exemplifies and is exemplified by the other (hence readiness to die for the love of God, according to the context, is the defining property of knights, martyrs, and perfecti: and see further discussion of 1.18 below).⁸ Here, though, the use in so many different contexts of the one pattern suggests that the content of the pattern, counts for less than the fact of the patterning itself. Spirituality, that is, is to be defined primarily in terms of the fundamental orientation, whether of an individual or of a society, towards God. The stages or states of the spiritual life, as an accidental consequence of that orientation, can be treated more casually, without too great a regard for consistency. We can put this another way: in treating the three degrees as, so to speak, the arbitrary creations of the human mind, the Liber democratises the spiritual life. The three groups of men in 4.2 may be at different stages of spiritual development, but, as far as they are able, they have all offered their hearts to God, and are all God's friends. Similarly, it is revealed in Rev. Extrav. 40 that the Brigittine order will contain those who seek to make God after their own image, with little interest in receiving the fullness of the divine sweetness. Yet, though they bring forth poor fruit (and, by a neat inversion of the metaphor, do not perfectly taste the will of their spouse), they remain one of the three fruits of the Order. In their degree, they will share in the benefits even now being experienced by those who, seeking only the sweetness of God, have abandoned themselves to him, and become 'sicut iumentum et non homo' (the third, and best, fruit of the Order).

A single felicitous image focusses this sense of the unity of the spiritual life with beautiful clarity. In 2.22A spirituality is compared to two different kinds of motion, linear and circular. At first we have the image of a laborious ascent of a high and cloud-topped mountain: the process is painful ('in via duricia lapidum … difficultas et preruptum est in ascensu'), but the end is that blessed glowing darkness spoken of in ch. 26 of The Cloud of Unknowing ('habebis quod exterius est tenebrosum sed intus fulgidum'). To this is added the image of circular movement:

quasi circulus circumuoluitur, et adtrahet te sibi magis ac magis, dulciter et dulcius, donec leticia ab omni parte tempore suo perfundaris.

Beautiful though these two metaphors are, neither is adequate in isolation. The first, like that other traditional metaphor the ladder, invites consideration of the spiritual life as so many distinct stages: the second, like that other traditional metaphor the sea, describes endless process without progression. When the two motions are brought together, as in The Consolation of Philosophy, they serve typically only to contrast those who remain on the outer rim of the divine circle (hence subject to circular motion) where they acknowledge God's rule only partially and indirectly, with those journeying towards the centre (and thus the object of linear motion) and a fuller participation in the divine simplicity. St. Bridget brings the two motions together into a kind of mystic spiral. This image, first used in ps.-Dionysius only as an alternative to the other sorts of motion, was not widely used in mystical writing, but it is extremely fruitful.⁹ The logic of the spiral, as the conjunction of linear and circular motions, is that states and processes of spirituality cannot be spoken about except in relation to one another. And since Christ is himself the circle, process and end inevitably coalesce. A final complication of the metaphor is perhaps to be seen in the account of the soul, so to speak, drowned in joy ('perfundaris'): that is, ascent to God is also, as Dante discovered when he made the reverse journey in the Inferno, descent into God.

Prominent in several of the revelations so far discussed are other traditional metaphors for the spiritual life (particularly those of tasting and seeing, metaphors which, as earlier noted, St. Bridget's own spiritual experiences claim to have actualised and made literal). A most interesting one occurs in 4.81C, a revelation contrasting worldly and religious tears. The former spring from loss of worldly good and fear of the last things; the latter from mind of the love of God in Christ. The latter are compared to dew rising from, and returned as rain to fructify, the earth under the influence of the sun. The metaphor receives a very individual exposition: the dew is the soul's love for God (the earth) rising into the brain (the sky) and, warmed by the heat of God's love in the heart (the sun) returned as tears to the eyes, and producing the fruit of good works. The whole point of the metaphor is summed up in the closing words of the exposition:

lacrime que ex diuina caritate funduntur claudunt deum in anima et deus animam in se trahit.

As so often in mystical writings, the exposition suddenly and dazzlingly threatens the stability of the metaphor. Agent and patient are so drawn together in the one loving act, whose rising and falling motion comprises an all-encompassing circle, that we can hardly distinguish them, or their respective actions, from one another (or, as Julian put it, 'in the soul is God and in God is all').¹⁰

But the Saint has other, less comforting, ways of describing the soul's relation with God. She presents herself not just as a visionary but also as a person liable to error, needing information about even basic points of doctrine, and bearing a weight of personal sin past and present from which she needs freeing. Hence she humbly requests enlightenment about a difficulty (3.18D-E). At other times we see a heavenly speaker anticipate a difficulty which she may be considering so as to answer it for her (1.26C, 1.47C), or question her so as to lead her to a new understanding (1.40A). Except when in the grip of an ecstatic utterance, the Saint reacts to the divine message with anxiety (1.4A) or bewilderment (2.15A, 2.18B). Sometimes, similarly, she will acknowledge her past sins; at other times a heavenly speaker will bring them to her notice in order to explain particular difficulties now besetting her (1.32B, 3.19A, 3.28A, 3.29A); at other times she is made aware of present sin, which will exact an inevitable penalty (1.12). Not the least of her sins, though not presented as that, is a tendency to judge a person by appearances (3.22: only a spiritual grace, like that of the sweet or bitter smell, enables her to judge a person's character truly). This sense of sin co-exists with heightened utterance, the necessary makeweight to everything St. Bridget wrote about the graces of the spiritual life. Practically every passage earlier considered in this essay occurs in a context of sin and judgement, whether of St. Bridget herself or of society at large, which receives as much attention. Frequently, indeed, such a passage will be placed at the beginning of a revelation, not so much for its own sake but rather as an authentication of the divine judgements which it introduces. Thus 3.29 begins with a prayer of adoration to the Virgin as the true 'templum Salomonis', in that she housed the true Solomon, Christ. But it ends with a plea for mercy, the only virtuous act of which the Saint is capable, because her own temple

contrarium omnino tuo est. Est enim tenebrosum viciis, lutosum ex luxuria, corruptum ex cupiditatis vermibus, instabile ex superbia, labile ex vanitate mundanorum.

In context, this conventional picture sometimes seems little more than the religious equivalent of the modesty topos so beloved of medieval writers, a device to encourage faithful and faithless alike to seek for the mercy experienced by their representative, the Saint, in the moment of her ecstatic prayer. But the life of the Saint, as presented by her biographers, shows that it was no mere literary convention. We may characterise that whole life, indeed, as the co-existence of extraordinary graces and extreme physical rigours. Examples of the latter include the knotted cords she wore about her body (A et Ρ ρ. 99: these, rotted with age, were kept by her disciples after her death and shared with others as a special favour, pp. 258, 450 'super χ articulo'); the callouses on her knees as a result of her many kneelings (this detail we owe to the Bull of Canonization of 1391, which describes them, disarmingly, as like those of a camel); the wounds she inflicted on her body every Friday, as a memorial of the Passion, by dropping burning wax upon it (if such wounds healed, she scratched them open again, A et Ρ ρ. 99); and the bitter herb she put into her mouth similarly every Fri day, and whenever she spoke idly (ibid). These prac tices stand in a variable relation to the spiritual graces earlier described. Sometimes they mark a soul's distance from God, and need to atone for sin; sometimes they show a soul's identification with the crucified Christ; sometimes they are dispensed with altogether as irrelevant to the processes of unification with God (thus, while St. Bridget, throughout her life, sought, and followed, spiritual direction, dispensations from rule and custom were granted occasionally on the grounds of God's being above all rule: A et Ρ ρ. 81, 'Quomodo in principio'); at other times, they and the extraordinary graces are declared identical (cf Rev. Extrav. 63 on obedience to both St. Agnes and 'magistro tuo, qui ambo informant… de vno spiritu'). Traditionally, they are the means by which the soul comes to the graces of the spiritual life. Thus 1.15 explains that, when a man has accustomed himself to, and interiorised, the labours of ascesis, he will experience as spiritual grace what formerly he experienced, and outsiders still see, as pain and labour: 'sedent in sede que pungere videtur—quietissima tamen est' (1.15H).

All this leads to the conclusion, already insisted upon, that, however we define the stages of the spiritual life, we cannot usefully distinguish them from one another. At each such stage God calls upon us, whether directly by means of a heightened experience or utterance, or indirectly in cooperation with our preliminary labours of ascesis, to acknowledge him, and renounce sin, more wholly. A last indication of this can be seen in the obligation laid upon the mystic to act as prophet and preacher, and to participate not only in his own conversion but also that of others to the spiritual life.

The production and dissemination of the Liber is, of course, the primary fulfilment of this obligation (eg 1.52B-C), to which reference occurs many times in the work: at 4.128, where a hermit priest's question if he does well, from time to time, to come down from his solitude and contemplation to give counsel and encouragement to his neighbours, is answered decisively in the affirmative; in 2.14H, where Sts. Peter and Paul are made models for the practice (Paul's 'contemplation' is probably to be identified with his ravishing to the third heaven, Peter's with his participation at the Transfiguration);" and in 6.651, where Martha's sister Mary, as a type for the contemplative, is urged to open her mouth ('os predicacionis sue') and generate spiritual sons for God. Elsewhere, preaching, normally understood as the action of speaking, occasionally open to the wider interpretation of witness through service, is declared the summit of the spiritual life (1.43B) and enjoined upon the Christian (1.22B, 1.261: St. Bridget had a special devotion to such spiritual discourse, A et Ρ ρ. 78, 'de lectura'). The generation of spiritual sons is many times declared the principal purpose of God's word to St. Bridget (eg 1.20D 'ego per te volo generare mioni multos filios … spirituales.'). This act of gen eration can be understood with particular reference to the conversion of individuals, or more generally: the two categories imply one another. A specific example of the former comes with St. Bridget's dealings with the young Eliacius of Sabrano, who came to ask her advice about his manner of living. She received him 'quasi in filium' (A et Ρ ρ. 323) and transmitted a revelation to him (7.5). As a result, he was moved to change his life, and thereafter publicly called St. Bridget his spiritual mother (A et Ρ pp. 524-5). An example of the latter, describing conversion in general terms, comes in 1.60, which presents three classes of men and predicts salvation for all of them: those who do not believe in God; those who believe in God, but doubt the message which the Saint claims to have transmitted from him; and those who believe in God and the message of his Saint.

The Saint is forgivably vague about the process whereby the first kind of men will become the sons of God (though, interestingly, she sees more hope in pious pagan and virtuous Jew than in a wicked Christian, eg 1.41, 1.59E, 2.3, 6.83, and she even forecasts Christ's abandonment of the latter to convert the former, 1.57, a prophecy which gives some point to her narrative of the conversion of a pagan woman, 6.50). But she knows of one way, at least, of carrying out this work. She will found a religious order, to whose members she will be, as she has continued to this day, their mother. Revelations predicting a general conversion may therefore also be prophesying, implicitly or explicitly, the creation of the new Order. In support of this claim, we may note (i) close verbal similarities between 1.60, already noted, and Rev. Extrav. 19, a revelation about the founding of the Order; (ii) the use of one revelation in two different places in the Liber, once to provide instruction about the foundation of the Order (Rev. Extrav. 30), once to give more general information about the requirements of the spiritual life (1.18: hence Peter of Alvastra could speak of the chapter as treating 'de vera humilitate', A et Ρ p. 489). That is, the spread of the Order is a sign of, if not actually co-terminous with, a general conversion, and the graces which will characterise it ('vera humilitas') will be those of Christianity itself. A key image for this process is that of the Biblical Exodus. Its importance can be gauged from the prominence given in the Liber to those Saints who founded religious orders or were associated with the development of religious life (2.7 Anthony, 3.17 Dominic, 3.21 Benedict, 7.20 Francis).

A final word, by way of conclusion and, perhaps, of warning. The spirituality of St. Bridget, as revealed by the literary sources (the canonization documents and the Liber Celestis) is unlikely, for a number of cultural and historical reasons, to attract, or speak to the situation of, the modern reader. Its methods are those of medieval religious art, and the sermons for which the Saint had such affection; its perspective so strikingly medieval—even as we read, we feel the person disappearing into the Saint—that we find no easy entry into the experience of which it speaks. Yet it remains, a profoundly ambiguous witness, to remind the Christian that he is always living in the last days, that he has an obligation to greater personal holiness, and that he must bring his neighbour with him into the Kingdom. The spirituality of St. Bridget is more attractively revealed elsewhere, in the Order which she founded but did not live long enough to enter.

Notes

¹ For biographical information, the primary witness is Acta et Canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, ed. I. Collijn, SFSS Ser. II, Bd. 1 (Uppsala, 1924-31), hereafter A et Ρ, particularly a Vita (pp. 73-102), for discussion of which, see S. Ekwall, Vàr aidsta Birgittavita, KVHAAH, Hist. Ser. 12 (Stockholm, 1965). For such Books of the Liber Celestis as have appeared in critical editions (Books I, V, VII, the Regula Salvatoris, the Sermo Angelicus, and the Reuelaciones Extrauagantes, here-after Rev. Extrav., consult the bibliography in St. Birgitta Revelaciones Book I, ed. C. -G. Undhagen, SFSS Ser. II, Bd. VII: 1 (Uppsala, 1978) Sub Bergh, Eklund, Hollman. For all other parts of the Liber (ie Books II-IV, VI, VIII, Quatuor Oraciones) and related texts, like the Bull of Canonization, consult the editio princeps by B. Ghotan (Lubeck, 1492). Reference to the Liber in the present essay is by book, chapter and letter subdivision of the Ghotan edition.

² On this general point, see G. Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1967).

³ W. Riehle, The Middle English Mystics, trans. B. Standring (1981), ch. 8 (the quotation comes from the chapter title).

⁴ Julian's work has a further point of connection with the Liber. With her threefold gift 'be bodily sight and by word formyd in my understondyng and be gostly sight' (A Revelation of Love, ed. M. Glasscoe (Exeter, 1976), ch. 9, p. 11) compare—and more appropriately, in my view, than the comparison usually offered with the teaching of St. Augustine—the following, from Liber 3.5B, a variant of the pattern in 2.18: 'placuit deo…. vocare te in spiritum sanctum ad videndum et audiendum et intelligendum spiritualiter.'

⁵ I have discussed Liber 6.52 more fully in Ά Revelation and its Editors', IRIS 1 (forthcoming).

⁶ This phrase comes from F. Vernet, Medieval Spirituality (1930): see pp. 184-8 for discussion.

⁷ The placing of knighthood, instead of the religious life, at the summit of the spiritual life is a striking, occasional, feature of the Liber.

⁸ One could adduce as a rough parallel the close connection between an individual's experience and the social forms that experience assumes, in the opening chapter of The Cloud of Unknowing.

⁹ For ps.-Dionysius, see Dionysius the Areopagite on the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, ed. and trans. C. E. Rolt (1920), The Divine Names, ch. 4, pp. 98-9. It is elaborated, and discussed, by St. Thomas (STh II^a II^ae q. 180 art. 6, the Commentary on the Divine Names IV.7, and the Commentary on the Sentences Lib. I, Dist. 37, q.4, art. i. This information I owe to the kindness of the late Fr. Gervase Matthew, O.P.

¹⁰ For other images of mutuality in the Liber, see, eg, 3.20B (God as fire made by air and the breath of man), 4.2E (God as a pair of scales).

¹¹ On Peter at the Transfiguration as a type of the contemplative who must come down from the mountain, cf St. Augustine: 'Quid dicis, sancte Petre? Mundus perit, et tu secretum quaeris! Video tot gentes in unum convenire et tu quietem diligis' (source, Ludolphus de Saxonia Vita Jesu Christi, ed. L. M. Rigollot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1878), III. 19b).