SOURCE: An introduction to Birgitta of Sweden: Life and Selected Revelations, edited by Marguerite Tjader Harris and translated by Albert Ryle Kezel, Paulist Press, 1990, pp. 13-51.

[In the following introduction to The Life of Birgitta of Sweden, Nyberg examines the structure of Birgitta's Revelations and the theological doctrine it propounds.]

Spiritual background and early life

Mystic union with God, redeeming words and deeds born out of a burning heart—all that we summarize under the heading "spirituality"—is not to be labelled male or female. It is both and at the same time either of them; seemingly a contradiction. In studying the mystics and the great men and women of spiritual life we find this contradiction dissolved into a kind of dynamic interaction between the level of the splendor of eternity, and the level of huruan relations in the sphere of creation. Many great spiritual men had the comfort of a female companion on their path. Catholic tradition shows that Francis of Sales had the countess Jeanne Françoise de Chantai, Francis of Assisi had St. Clare as an intimate associate, and the early story of Western monasticism offers the striking model for both of them and for many others: St. Benedict with his sister St. Scholastica.

The relationship of two such personalities was always one of deep interior affection and feeling of oneness, and yet at the same time restrained, demanding distance to a degree which sometimes seems incomprehensible to outsiders. Still more striking is this in the lives of women chosen to spiritual preeminence. Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schonau, the two Mechtilds of the thirteenth century, Catherine of Siena, and many others had their confessors: men of high huruan and educational standards, dedicated to serving God, hurubly impressed by God's work in a woman assigned to their spiritual direction and care, a woman in whom they often recognized higher gifts of grace than the ones to which they could pretend in their own lives. Such men saw that if theirs was the gift of discursive thinking and literary form, they would have to use these gifts to channel an overwhelming spiritual eruption, or the boundless richness of images and messages brought forth in a woman committed, under their care, to a higher vocation.¹

Such, in short, was the situation of the three priests, theologians, and spiritual directors who play such an eminent role in the life and development of Birgitta of Sweden. First, there is the remarkable and learned theologian, Canon Matthias of Linköping, the first Swede known to have translated and ingeniously commented upon the Bible in the Old Swedish language and whose commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John has been copied in a number of manuscripts from all parts of Europe. Then there are the two Peters: the Cistercian prior Peter Olavsson from Alvastra, who practically gave up his monastic seclusion to be able to assist Birgitta during her many years abroad; and Magister Peter Olavsson from Skanninge, a gifted spiritual director, theologian, and musician. The two Peters are the authors of the Life of St. Birgitta which forms the first section of this volume.

A Life, a Vita, had been a fixed literary pattern for centuries,² and the two confessors in composing their work had to follow the reading habits of the 1370's and of the papal court, since such texts were meant to be used in the investigations leading up to a canonization. Ancestry, childhood, and early evidence of God's special calling would have to come first, followed by examples of heroic faith and action in the person's mature life. Attention is always paid to supernatural events in this kind of literature. The two confessors were not short of material in any respect. Their account became a sober document marked by huruble confidence in God's prophetic call through Birgitta. Many things which the modern reader might have wished to know are lacking, e.g., her Christian life with her husband on the estate of Ulväsa, her social attitude toward servants and beggars during that half of her life. Now, we only know of these aspects from witnesses during the canonization process.³

There are two main versions of the Vita.⁴ The fullest account, well worked out stylistically as well as in regard to signs of Birgitta's holiness and divine election, is the one rendered in English here below. There has been, however, an important scholarly discussion on this version of the Vita, its origin and function. We find the text in its fully elaborated form among the acts of the process of canonization, and there its purpose is perfectly clear: to underline all characteristics of Birgitta which were most properly fitting to a saint of the Church, according to the standards of the late fourteenth century. As such, the Vita is a final evidence of attachment, affection, and awe among those who were able to follow her posthuruous fame until the solemn declaration of her sanctity by Pope Boniface IX in 1391, only eighteen years after her death.

Although the canonization process was brought to its fulfillment by a pope who represented only a part of European Christendom—the Roman obedience in the Great Schism, as opposed to the Avignonese obedience to which, among others, France, Spain, and Scotland adhered—its juridical form was nevertheless lawful and traditional. Its validity was not questioned once the Great Schism was brought to an end at the Council of Constance by the election of Pope Martin V (1417). The so-called "Canonization of St. Birgitta at the Council of Constance," which took place on 2 February 1415, was nothing but a vain effort undertaken by the leader of the short-lived Pisan obedience, Baldassare Cossa, the antipope John XXIII, to vindicate, in the last minute, his authenticity as the only true bishop of Rome by invoking the prophetic voice of Birgitta. Yet this restating of the canonization may have worked as a preparation for the final solution of the Great Schism among his own adherents.⁵ In all these events the Vita Processus, as it is called, was the authorized document making evident Birgitta's sanctity and divine election.⁶

There is, however, a shorter version of Birgitta's Vita, preserved in the MS C 15 of the University Library of Uppsala,⁷ one of the numerous manuscripts from the medieval library of Vadstena Abbey happily saved and handed down to our days. As always in the case of two versions, the question was raised: is the Vita Processus the original version and the Vita C 15 a shortened form of it, or is the Vita C 15 the true original text which was later embellished and enriched upon? And if the second alternative is true, then were elements added to the Vita Processus which were not altogether authentic?⁸

The Swedish scholar Sara Ekwall, who studied this question carefully, brought forth in 1965 her conclusion: the Vita C 15 must be the original one. Several characteristics led her to this view. The text shows a structure with chapters of basically equal length having each its own heading, whereas in the Vita Processus some chapters are unreasonably long (e.g., that on Birgitta's stay in Alvastra, which contains a number of anecdotes on persons who experienced Birgitta's help and the strength of her prayer during this period: Gerekin, Bishop Hemming, a nun called Catherine, Master Matthias, and the Dominican master Algot). Another long passage without heading is devoted to some of Birgitta's mystical experiences of early years. This, says Sara Ekwall, cannot have been omitted in a shorter version produced out of a fuller one; but it may well have been added to a shorter version to make it more rich and attractive.

What is rendered in the addition should not be suspected of being untrue; it simply stems from another source, or it may have been added at some later point by the original authors, who thereby changed the origi nal cast of the text. In same manner, the chapter on how the devil tempted Birgitta … brings forward short events which carry the mark of having been added later, says Sara Ekwall. Basically, the same may be true for the final portion of the Vita dealing with Birgitta's life in Rome and Italy. The passage on Naples and Jerusalem carries so strongly the character of a conclusion that the original Vita may have ended here….

There are also a number of significant differences between the two versions pointed out by Sara Ekwall. In several passages the fuller version has a more correct Latin but also uses more literary and devotional formulas than the shorter one. In the shorter version Birgitta is often called "God's bride," but in the longer version the expression "Christ's bride" is much more common. The shorter version does not enter upon Birgitta's noble ancestry in the way the longer version does, where she is more often called "Lady Birgitta"(domina Brigida by the Itällan form of the name). A number of persons are anonymous in the shorter version, while in the longer one their name and social status are given. The word divinitus, "divinely" re vealed, which is common in the long version, is not used at all in the shorter one.

As decisive evidence, Sara Ekwall quotes a testimony of Prior Peter Olavsson and Master Peter Olavsson given in the canonization process. They recount how they wrote the Vita of St. Birgitta in Rome shortly after her death, but that they knew much more which they were not able to write down then because of their approaching departure from Rome in the fall of 1373 with Birgitta's earthly remains destined for Sweden.¹⁰

These arguments amount to a strong support of the view that the two confessors, shortly after Birgitta's death, wrote a concentrated Vita of her life without yet having an explicit purpose of convincing the judges of a canonization process about Birgitta's sanctity in canonical forms. Someone later worked the text over thoroughly and extended it with the canonization process in sight. But if this was not done by the two confessors, who created the final version, the Vita Processus translated here below? Sara Ekwall is not in doubt. After stylistic and other comparisons with texts whose origin and author are secure, she reaches the conclusion that no one but Alphonsus Pecha, bishop of Jaen, is the author and redactor of the final, full version of the Vita.¹¹

The question of who put the last finishing touch to the Life of St. Birgitta, then, enables us to arrive at a better understanding of the world of Birgitta as a spiritual writer. Four men guided her development successively: Master Matthias, Prior Peter Olavsson, Master Peter Olavsson, and Bishop Alphonsus Pecha. From their Vita and other sources, we can follow Birgitta's life in its main lines.

Born in the winter of 1302-03—probably around St. Sylvester, says Birgit Klockars, the able biographer of her childhood, youth, and married life in Sweden—Birgitta was surrounded by spiritual impulses preparing the way for her first confrontation with divine election: her first revelations in the period 1344-49.¹² She was guided by Master Matthias in interpreting them. Birgitta's religious experiences in childhood are faithfully recorded in the Vita. Nils Hermansson or Nicolaus Hermanni, a cleric born around 1326, prepared the way. He was perhaps the teacher of young Karl, Birgitta's eldest son, although probably of the same age as he. Later he was teacher to Birgitta's next son Birger. He became canon and bishop of Linköping and was one of Birgitta's faithful supporters in establishing Vadstena Abbey. He was a model for a cleric and a priest in Birgitta's eyes, serving God in daily prayer, pastoral care, and spiritual friendship. He died in 1391 and was venerated as a saint throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.¹³

Master Matthias's influence upon Birgitta has been studied by scholars like Bengt Stromberg, Hjalmar Sunden, and Anders Piltz.¹⁴ Sundín, applying Jungian psychology to Birgitta's relationship to Master Matthias, based himself upon the image of Matthias as a theologian and a spiritual writer that Stromberg had created in 1944. Piltz has deepened our understanding of Matthias's theology considerably since then. "There is something anachronistic about him: he was a dedicated anti-dialectician some hundred or two hundred years behind his times. He would have been better off with John of Salisbury or Saint Bernard or Roger Bacon, and he echoes, as it were, their warnings against the perils of biblical studies detached from the biblical texts," says Piltz. He then quotes Matthias as saying: "A great corruption has prevailed in the Church for a long time, since theology is taught in a philosophical way and the philosophers are venerated instead of theologians."'¹⁵ This gives us an indication of how Matthias strove for a biblically centered theology and pastoral teaching.

Strömberg has demonstrated how Matthias found the model for his theological work among the Dominicans and the Franciscans, the preachers of those centuries. In his great theological treatise which starts Homo conditus in omnibus bonis habundabat (Created man overflowed in everything which is good) biblical quotations recur in every paragraph, whereas long philosophical deliberations are entirely lacking. Man's beauty according to God's creation is placed at the very beginning, man's corruption through sin and seduction constitutes the background for the full story of redemption, restitution, fullness of grace, and vision of God.

Faith, hope, charity are the healers of the sickness of the soul, which is sin. Suffering and Christ's Godwilled passion reopen the path to the Father; the sacraments are the signs that communicate to us what Christ has won. Vices have their remedies in the virtues, the burden of which we impose upon ourselves. Christ in the gospel texts is our example and the saints guide our path in daily life through example and intercession.

Whereas Homo conditus probably was written for the use of parish priests, a more advanced and confidential teaching was presented in the same author's Alphabetum dis tine tionum, a selection of biblical passages in alphabetical order. Its commentaries often elaborate upon evils of the Church and of the clergy; the tone is not very different from what we often find in Birgitta's writings.¹⁶

It is not impossible that Master Matthias arranged Book I of Birgitta's Revelations, the first 60 spiritual texts which she apparently already received in Sweden. The famous introduction of Master Matthias to the Revelations called, after its first words, Stupor et mirabilia (Amazing and marvelous things are being heard on our earth) was meant to introduce the start of this new revelation of God's message through a woman. Birgitta was still living as a God-devoted widow in Sweden, planning the foundation of a monastery, writing letters to Pope Clement VI (1342-52) to have him act as a peace negotiator in the war between England and France.¹⁷ There was not yet any prospect of her passage from Sweden to stay abroad for the rest of her life.

This changed with the Crusade which King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden and Norway launched against the city of Novgorod in 1347-48, and with the clash of opinions on how to carry out the Crusade—where apparently Matthias also entertained views of his own.¹⁸ The situation was decisively altered when the great pestilence, the Black Death, started its ravaging tour across Europe. It is generally assumed that Master Matthias died in the great pestilence around 1350. He was buried in the Church of the Dominicans in Stockholm, but his body was later transferred to Vadstena, where he was venerated as a saint.¹⁹

Master Matthias, in his preface, presents the text of Birgitta's first recorded revelation, the text of which is given here in full:²⁰

The devil sinned in three ways: by pride, because I had created him good; by desire, to be not only similar to me, but superior to me; and by lust to enjoy so much my divinity that he willingly would have killed me, had he been able to, so that he might reign in my place. Because of this he fell from heaven, filled the earth with these three sins and so violated all mankind. Therefore I took on huruanity and came into the world, to annihilate his pride by my huruility, to destroy his desire by my poverty and simplicity. And I submitted to the most immense penance of the cross in order to annihilate his abominable lust and to open heaven, closed through his sins, to man by the blood of my heart and by my death—yet so far as he inserts his will to work for it, according to his ability. But now the men of Sweden, especially those who call themselves courtiers or knights, sin in the same manner as the devil did before them. They take pride in their well-shaped bodies, which I gave them. They surround themselves with fortunes which I did not give them. They overflow with their abominable lust to such a degree that they had rather killed me, were it possible for them, than abstained from their lusts or endured my frightful justice, which threatens them for their sins. Therefore their bodies, which they take pride in, shall be slain by sword, lance, and axe. These precious limbs, which they boast of, wild animals and birds shall devour them. Let strangers make spoil of all that they have drawn together against my will, and let them be wanting (Cf. Ps. 108:11). Because of their abominable lusts they offend my Father so that he does not hold them worthy of being admitted to see his face. And since they had rather killed me, if they could, they will be given over into the hands of the devil to be slain by him by eternal death. But I would have let this judgment pass over Sweden long before, if the prayers of my friends, who live in the midst of them, had not resisted; they moved me to mercy. Therefore, the time shall come when I shall draw these friends of mine to me, so that they shall not see the evil which I will make befall this country. Verily, some of my friends will live then, and they will see in the fullness of their merits. But now, since kings and princes and prelates do not want to recognize me in my good deed, and come to me, I will gather the poor, the wicked, the minors and the wretched, and with them I will fill up the place of the others, so that my army will not be weakened because of their absence.

The collaboration of the two, Master Matthias and Birgitta, grew into a procedure for cautious self-control. In his testimony at the canonization process Prior Peter Olavsson stated:

In case she was experiencing an illusion in these [revelations], she herself submitted all her visions and her way of experiencing them to the examination of Master Matthias, her aforementioned confessor, and of other masters in theology, and of men highly skilled in the knowledge and way of the spirit. She bowed totally to their decision, which was that … these ways of experiencing visions and of having visions were a gift of the Holy Spirit, taking into account the person seeing them, and the matter of the visions, and the ways they were seen.²¹

The first book of the Revelations contains themes and passages of great weight and impressiveness. In contrast to Books IV and VI, there is no mixture here of long and short, extravagant and straight, more and less important texts. Nothing seems to have been added or deleted—the number sixty indicates an original ar rangement, just as the thirty revelations of Book II probably reproduce the very first plan for the arrangement of these texts. All the sixty chapters of Book I have been carefully worked out, each around its principal theme. They are often already in dialogue form, as later on in Birgitta's life, but here speeches or messages in direct form spoken by Christ or our Lady predominate. Sometimes there are additional teachings or explanations by angels (ch. 10), John the Baptist (ch. 31), St. Peter (ch. 41). Numerous quotations and allusions to the Old Testament make their mark upon Book I. The basic Jewish-Christian experience laid down in Exodus recurs often: Yahweh's witness to himself in the blazing of the bush is echoed in chapter 47; the staff of Moses in chapters 53 and 60; the plagues of Egypt in chapters 44 and 56; the Exodus from Egypt in chapters 26, 41, 49, and 60; the pillar of cloud in chapter 26; the march through the Red Sea in chapters 15, 45, 48-49, 53, and 60. The giving of the Law on Mount Sinai is referred to in six revelations: 10, 26, 45, 47-48, 53; the Golden Calf in three: 48, 53, 60. A similar amassing of references to the Exodus themes is not to be found in any other single book of the Revelations.²²

One example from chapter 53 of Book I shows us how Birgitta interprets three great deeds performed by the staff of Moses. First, the staff is transformed into a serpent, to the fright of the enemies of Israel. Secondly, it divided the Red Sea in two halves to allow the people to walk safely in the middle to reach the other shore.

Lastly, the rock gave out water by means of that staff. The rock is the hard parts of the people, for if they are struck with the fear of God and love, remorse and tears of repentance flow out. No one is so unworthy, no one is so evil that his tears do not flow from his eyes and all his limbs are quickened toward virtue if he turns to me interiorly, considers my suffering, realizes my power and thinks of the goodness which lets earth and trees bear fruit.

Here the stories from Exodus 4:2ff; 7:8ff; 14:16ff; 17:5ff have been drawn together and condensed into one single application containing three stages of God's action toward mankind. Very often this is the way Birgitta's meditation of Holy Scripture is echoed in her revelations.

The Monk on the Ladder

During her Swedish years as a widow, Birgitta's relationship to God and to his intermediary, Master Matthias, underwent a deep change. Recent scholarly work on this process seems to be unanimous in one respect: something like a "crisis" must have taken place.²³ There is no unanimity, though, concerning this crisis, or the deeper cause behind it. K. B. Westman (1911) and others understood it as the result of Birgitta's confrontation with God's calling to her after the death of Ulf, her husband—a "vocational" crisis, as it were, leading her under the guidance of Matthias straight to its logical historical scope. Sunden (1973) adhered to the idea that the crisis was due to the deterioration in Birgitta's relationship with the king because of the importance this relationship had for the future of the planned monastery for which the king had donated Vadstena royal castle. As Birgitta Fritz has shown recently (1985), however, this interpretation is open to doubt for chronological reasons. The more subtle problems of religious psychology have not yet been tackled in this regard.²⁴ But there seems to be one important agreement between scholars today: that Book V of the Revelations is a vestige of this crisis and thus constitutes a primary document of what really was at stake during this period of transition in Birgitta's life. Before entering upon other sections of the main bulk of the Revelations and the story of their redaction, then, we will have to halt for a moment and have a closer look at Book V, which makes up an important portion of the texts printed below.

Book V has been analyzed several times by scholars, primarily from the point of view of the texts and their authenticity,²⁵ and secondarily from the vantage point of C. G. Jung's school of psychoanalysis.²⁶ Some basic stages of research into this work, however, seem to have been forgotten. First of all, the sequence of questions which make up the basic pattern of this treatise conceived by Birgitta in the summer of 1349 has not yet been lucidly explained. The treatise consists of sixteen challenging interrogations directed to "the judge" by the "monk on the ladder, full of guile and devilish malice," who seemed, "in his most restless and unquiet bearing, to be more devil than huruble monk." Each interrogation has five or seven questions and the corresponding answers of the judge. Thirteen longer or shorter messages and visions in the form of revelations have been irregularly inserted between the interrogations. One part of the scholarly discussion has been devoted to the problem of whether these revelationstions were put there by Birgitta herself or distributed in such manner by the redactors. Before entering upon this topic, let us follow the sequence of questions. This sequence is identical in the Latin text and the Old Swedish translation of the Latin text, whereas the insertion of revelations does not follow the same pattern in the two versions.

The first four interrogations, each consisting of five questions, belong so closely together that the Old Swedish text made one introductory chapter of the first three of them. A monk is seen standing on a ladder in front of Jesus Christ as judge; the judge is surrounded by all the heavenly host. The first questions are all modelled upon the questioner's individual needs: why, judge, did you give us senses and limbs, property, law, diversion, food, will, sex, vitality, if we may not use these things as we want? Why ought I feel pain when enjoying created things? Why should I suffer when the world is full of happiness and I myself, of noble birth, am meritorious, rich, and honorable and therefore deserve my reward? God's answers to these egotistic questions remain extremely short, never exceeding six lines in the critical Latin edition of the text. The common characteristics seem to make out of interrogations 1 to 4 (= chapters 1-2 in the Old Swedish text) a first separate entity of Book V.

With interrogation 5, the answers of the judge become fuller and more extensive. Even the pattern of questioning changes. Instead of questions like "Why did you give" and "Why should I," the monk now asks: "Why did you create…?" "Why does N. N. suffer…?" "Why did you make…?" "Why did you not make…?" This goes on from interrogations 5 to 8, with the exception of interrogation 7, which has six questions instead of five; they center again around the monk himself in his relationship to the created world. The answers of the judge show a similar shift: instead of the iterated "I have" in the answers to interrogations 1 to 4, we find at the opening of the first answer in interrogation 5 the decisive: "I created." This aspect is stressed again when it comes to the worship of idols in interrogation 8. The monk's questions insist upon created goods and their place in God's plan: How can you, judge, advocate being the originator of sickness, fear of death, bad judges, wild animals, and the well-being of evil men, all that which is a threat to happiness in this world? Why do you accept that many peoples adore idols, why don't you appear convincingly in your glory to all the world, why don't you show quite openly how detestable the demons are, so that all men avoid and detest them?

It has escaped scholars so far that there is a switch in the sequence after interrogation 8. Until now, Birgitta or her redactors have practically no comment in the form of a message, a revelation, in addition to the answers of the judge. After no. 8, commenting or concomitant revelations are added to each single set of answers.

Then there is the switch of subject. By interrogation 9 the monk leaves the order of creation and moves into the order of salvation. He signifies it by addressing for the first time the judge as son of Mary. Why are the gifts of creation so unevenly distributed between angels, men, animals, and unspirited matter? Interrogation 10 enters deeper into the mystery of incarnation by accusing the judge, now precisely as Christ, for having submitted himself to these insulting huruan conditions without really being obliged to do so according to the plan of salvation. Christ ought to have followed another plan, as implicitly stated in interrogation 9. Number 11 elaborates on the same subject in that the monk is accusing Christ of having become subject to time instead of having revealed his glory and majesty in one second.

The set of interrogations proceeds according to a distorted salvation history. The basic plan of God's incarnation having been attacked by the monk, he now pursues his attack in detail: why did you not prove openly that Mary was a virgin, that you were God born to mankind? Why did you flee to Egypt letting the innocent children die for you—and how could you allow yourself to be so insulted during your passion? After this fulminating accusation in interrogation 12, there is an end to the sequence of subjects belonging to the order of salvation.

The last four interrogations (13 to 16) seemingly return to themes touched upon earlier. In fact, however, the uneven distribution of grace, which is the object of the monk's attacks in number 13, does not concern gifts of the creational order, but clearly belongs to the order of grace, connected to the working of the Holy Spirit. Why do you call men so differently with your grace, the monk asks? Some are called in their youth, some in old days; some receive a good understanding and some are as stupid as an ass. Some are always tempted, some are continually being consoled; the evil man gets a better life than the good man. The answers of the judge are now getting very discursive. This is also true for the answers of interrogation 14, where the monk turns to the injustice of children carrying their fathers' sins, of giving birth in pain, of fear for the unforeseen and of the good end of evil men, whereas the good sometimes are stricken unprepared by sudden death.

Central issues of faith are broken into pieces in the questions of the last two interrogations. Why do you not always listen to the prayers of the faithful? Why does the evil man not have your permission to go on being evil? Why do evil things happen to the good ones, and why does the devil stay for years with some and not with others? And finally: How can you find joy in separating the good from the evil on the day of judgment, the date of which you do not even know, although you are coequal with the Father? And why, at all, did you postpone your incarnation so long, if it really was so necessary? How can the gospels be so full of contradictions if the Holy Spirit spoke through the evangelists? And why did your word not yet reach out to all the world?

Interrogations 1 to 4 bring forward a set of questions concerning individual doubts of a single person only. For the other interrogations we arrive at this scheme:

4 interrogations (5, 6, 7, 8) move within the order of creation;

4 interrogations (9, 10, 11, 12) move within the order of salvation;

4 interrogations (13, 14, 15, 16) move within the order of sanctification.

Birgitta's treatment of huruan doubts is, then, fundamentally trinitarian in its set-up. Book V demonstrates her situation in the summer of the great European pestilence, the Black Death, when she was faced with the decision to leave Sweden or not for the sake of faith. We meet her here thoroughly imbued and animated by the revelation of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Book Vis a sequence of doubts, growing out of the monk's personal discomfort, accelerating from his doubts about the reasonable purpose of creation, via his doubts about God's plan of salvation, to a challenging reproach to God for a number of allegedly false principles of spiritual life laid down in the Christian teaching of man's sanctification, of life in the unction of the Holy Spirit.

Understood according to this structure, Book V is evidently a challenge to any theologian acting as a confessor to the interpreter of such doubts, Lady Birgitta. The plotting out of revelations among interro gations 8 to 16 may well have seemed ephemeral to Birgitta herself, if hers was such a clear spiritual insight into trinitarian theology. In the first long revelation summing up interrogations 1 to 8 (or 5 to 8) the imagery of the doctor healing the sick is displayed….

There is every reason to stress the importance of revelation 13 of Book V, as Hjalmar Sundén has done.²⁷ This message of the Father—only rarely does the Father and not Christ speak—appears as the solution to all sixteen sets of doubts laid down in strategical and trinitarian order in the sequence of interrogation. It is no wonder that Sunden found in this arrangement a confirmation of his Jungian interpretation of Book V as a testimony of the process of individuation which Birgitta allegedly went through prior to her departure for Italy. The monk is, according to Sundén, the animus of Birgitta; the doubts are but her own doubts projected upon the figure of the monk, who then takes over all the negative elements, whereas Master Matthias, who might have given rise to many of these problems, is free from being accused in the last run.

Seen in the perspective of the literary form, the sixteen interrogations without regard to the series of revelations added to them are powerful enough to be evaluated even outside the key of Jungian psychology. If God's action is seen as a sequence, it does not necessarily mean that it is being understood as a sequence in time, either in Joachimite terms as ages of world history,²⁸ or in Jungian terms as stages in the history of a soul.²⁹ It could also refer to the different ways God turns his face to mankind: sometimes in his power over creation, sometimes in his message through huruan word and action, sometimes in the transformative, continuous stream of divine inner working. The symbolic arrangement of four times four interrogations evokes a pattern of limitless extension and expansion of God's power in all the four quarters of the world. For that reason, one might even imagine the set-up of Book V according to the geometrical pattern of the triangular pyramid, where one side is always at the bottom and the appearance from any side is a tripartite one, although it has four sides and four edges.

On the other hand, this does not ridicule a Jungian interpretation of the same text. One might rather see it as an explanation of how Sundén could arrive at his conclusions. For if God acts with man according to his different attitudes in a series of approaches, some points in time will inevitably become more important, more decisive than others to a person, since the huruan person is bound by the conditions of time and space. To the one person, God's action in the order of creation will be decisive, to the other, his action in the order of salvation. Most decisive to all, however, must be God's action in the order of sanctification, to which the gospel words on the unforgivable sins against the Holy Spirit have always been linked. The ultimative charac ter of the order of sanctification certainly does not rest upon an arbitrary divine decision, but is based upon the internal order of things in themselves—for how can there be access to God if no attention is paid to the basic call of the Spirit to complete conversion and attachment to God through contrition, repentance, remission of sins, and the works of the Holy Spirit?

Sundén, therefore, is certainly right in focusing upon the process of Birgitta's identification and purification of self by and through the concepts about God's action which she brought forth in Book V. Only Sundén's assignment of Birgitta's crisis to a certain historical moment and a very specific situation in Birgitta's life may have been too much influenced by the doctrines inherent in Jung's psychology. Much of the process may have been far behind Birgitta in the summer of 1349. Her task was then to summarize all in the face of the imminent judgment of God—maybe also as a testament to her life in Sweden, to leave behind a document of the essence of her mystical relationship to God, as she had experienced it so far.

Salvation History

Birgitta's exodus from a Sweden overflowing with pride and concupiscence took place in late 1349. The prospects were good and bad at the same time. Master Matthias had supported her prophetic task and King Magnus Eriksson had been won over to the idea of transforming the castle of Vadstena ("Watz stena," the stone house on the water [of lake Vättern]) into a monastery (1346) and of proceeding in the form of a crusade against Novgorod east of Swedish Finland (1348). But then there was the expected "Egyptian Plague," the Black Death. The ravaging sickness, for which there was no known remedy, reached Norway's western coast by ship from England early in 1349, and rumors already spread fear and terror in advance. After having depopulated large stretches of Norway's cultivated valleys, it reached Sweden only in early 1350.³⁰ No doubt Birgitta fled as God's judgment approached. Birgitta must have felt like crossing the Red Sea with the chosen people of God, traversing Europe in the middle of death, protected as it were by the pillar of cloud through the desert. Her arrival in Rome, probably toward the opening of the Holy Year 1350, meant the end of Master Matthias's guidance in her life and the opening up of a new chapter, characterized by her two confessors by name of Peter Olavsson. From then on, they were her spiritual directors until she met the Spanish bishop Alphonsus Pecha, the "guardian angel" of her last years and of her spiritual heritage to future generations.

Prior Peter Olavsson, a Cistercian monk of Alvastra, joined Birgitta in Rome, but soon left again for Sweden. Because of his frequent travels, we cannot exactly follow his role in Birgitta's spiritual life during these first years abroad. Instead, Master Peter Olavsson from Skänninge must have been her most intimate guide during the early 1350's when she stayed in a flat at San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome. He was a key person in the long process—over at least a year—when an angel regularly appeared to Birgitta, dictating to her a dogmatic treatise on salvation history known as "The Sermon of the Angel."³¹ This treatise is best understood as a unit in itself, as one single revelation, yet received and written down during a long period of time. Its particular function in Birgitta's world is closely bound up with her hopes for the establishment of a monastic community. The Sermo Angelicus, divided into twenty-one long lessons, became the daily readings in the weekly Office of Our Lady of the nuns in the Order of the Holy Savior.³²

The three times seven lessons assigned to seven days' matins (the night prayer office of monks, nuns, and other religious) treat seven stages in salvation history. Antiphons, responsories, prayers, and other liturgical items were written to match the main subject of each of the seven days and were repeated in identical manner every week through the year. The ordinary year of the Church from Advent to Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Last Judgment was present through the priestly office prayed by Prior Peter, Master Peter, and other priests and members of Birgitta's household. So it was a considerable advance for the spirituality of a female community when, instead of a simple Marian office prayed in the same way every day, the so-called Officium parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis, the nuns of the Order of the Holy Savior could pray and sing a "Great Marian Office" proper to their own order. Here the priest who must have been Birgitta's spiritual advisor during this period enters into the picture: it seems indisputable that Master Peter Olavsson actually wrote the liturgical texts of the Great Marian Office and even composed or adapted Gregorian chant to the texts, to fit the twenty-one lessons "dictated" to Birgitta by the angel.³³

The Sunday texts were devoted to God's work of creating the world according to the most beautiful "model" for it, which was the Mother of God, the Virgin existing in God's consciousness and premeditation before all ages. The office proceeds on Monday to the angels, their beauty and fall; on Tuesday to Adam's fall, to the patriarchs and to the premeditated protection of the people of God through the Virgin, the Mother of God to come. Wednesday deals with the birth of the Virgin, her childhood and youth while chosen and elected with preeminence among all women. Thursday is devoted to the incarnation of the Word Divine, and Friday to the suffering and death of Christ in his manhood.

On Saturday, contrary to what one might expect, the meditation does not stay with Christ in his tomb, in expectation of the day of resurrection. Characteristi cally, it concentrates upon the theme of the Virgin's faith in Christ, in spite of all odds—her confidence during the first great Sabbath, when Christ went down to the nether world, that he would rise again, and, finally, her bodily assumption into God's presence. Nowhere is Birgitta's Mariology brought to a fuller expression.³⁴ And yet there is nothing entirely new compared to the revelations from her Swedish period collected in Book I. A good number of them start with the introductory: "I am the Queen of Heaven" or "I am Mary," if speaking to Birgitta, or referring to Birgitta as seeing her in a vision, or to the Mother as speaking to the Son. But whereas Mary in Book I is speaking and acting, the Sermon of the Angel is at face value a treatise on her role in salvation history—and therefore Mariology, not Marian piety. It is the doctrine of what she means in God's plan, not the story of her intervention in the present-day life of the Church. But on the other hand, being Mariology, and inasmuch as salvation history is present and working in any epoch of world history and in any stage of an individual's life, the Sermon of the Angel also tells of the daily, eternal story of Motherhood and Virginity interceding in any salvific events that surround us.

Master Peter's engagement in the shaping of the Marian Office for the nuns is revealing. It raises the question if, by chance, there was something in his religious outlook which helped bring Birgitta into a state of mind where this perspective on salvation history was close at hand. We cannot know this, since there are no distinct literary works known to be exclusively written by Master Peter. But considering the importance of confessors, the Sermon of the Angel may be taken as the fullest expression of Birgitta's first meeting with Rome, the city of martyrs, on the one hand, and the guidance of Master Peter on the other. In this situation the strict theological training of Master Matthias ceased to press its mark upon Birgitta, and the Itällan milieu, perhaps also imbued with fresh experiences of Franciscan piety, made its impression upon her. As Toni Schmid has pointed out (1940), Birgitta's understanding of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is close to that of the Franciscans of the fourteenth century, more distant from that of the Dominican school, whereas for the assumption she deviates somewhat from the Franciscan view, absolutely stating against skeptics, however, the Virgin's bodily assumption (VI, 60).³⁵

Psychologically and spiritually the Sermon of the Angel marks the end of crisis, Birgitta's arrival into the promised land in an even deeper sense. What used to be a perverted, chaotic world, an "inverse salvation history" presented by the monk on the ladder in his challenging God, has now turned into a cosmos, in which the essence of womanhood and motherhood has become the center toward which all doctrines and dogmas of faith are being oriented. In this case, as for the Book of Questions, the literary result of the process no doubt lags far behind the real event that made it possible. The moment Book V was conceived and written down, Birgitta must have overcome the crisis described in it and may already have arrived at a new cosmos, which was then activated and made productive in a literary sense by the apparition of the angel. God's answers to the monk's attacks may have paved the way for this new history of salvation.

Monastic Family

Two great revelations of Birgitta have been mentioned so far: Book V from the summer of 1349 and the Sermon of the Angel from 1352-53. These two texts give witness to Birgitta's transition from a life of a noble lady in Sweden to that of a noble guest and pilgrim in the holy city. She exchanged a life at home for that of a foreigner—a transition we encounter most dramatically in the Irish monks of the early Middle Ages taking lifelong exile as the most harsh form of penance, which it also certainly is in all ages of mankind. But the third great revelation of Birgitta, that of her vision of the Rule of the Holy Savior, has not yet been treated here, although it probably came first in time. There is a general assumption that Birgitta had this vision in Vadstena on one of the occasions when she stayed with King Magnus Eriksson and Queen Blanca in the royal palace, which was later to become the first monastery of the Order of the Holy Savior.³⁶

The problem of the text is that we do not possess any original version to bring us back to the very moment of her vision.³⁷ What we have is an echo of the primary mystical experience she had, worked out to fit the exigencies of canon law, but framed by revelations retelling the circumstances surrounding her vision. If we remove the surrounding revelations, the division into chapters, the chapter headings, and a number of particular directives clearly intended at adjusting the text to the genre of a monastic rule, we become aware of three stages of mystical experience gradually broadening Birgitta's understanding of the task God wanted to entrust to her.

The first field of the vision is the young virgin chosen by Christ the Lord to lead a life of the elect in the sisterly community under the guidance of her mother abbess. In a solemn rite of transition she is taken out of the secular world, and removes her secular clothes, to be invested by Christ, here in the person of the bishop, in the gown of the chosen ones, and crowned with Christ's five marks of passion.

In the second field of the vision we meet the sisterly community of the elect in need of the complementary element of male assistance to represent the fullness of divine redemption. In a grand general view, the recruitment of this sister- and brotherhood of the elect is being sketched: how dowries and gifts are to be accu mulated until a certain level of self-support has been attained, and how, thereafter, any surplus is to be distributed to the poor and needy.

The third field of the vision reveals the community's purpose: first, perpetual service of God in the love of a burning heart, where everything has to be directed towards this goal, on the huruan as well as on the material scale; second, ascetic practice, confession of sins, the preparation of the altars for the daily sacrifice of the mass, and the disciplinary supervision exerted by the bishop. In the final passage death is evoked: the daily rehearsal of the rite of memento mori is prescribed to prove that death is conquered by this perpetual, neverending praise of God, which lets individual death become nothing more than birth into a new life, making room for a new member to enter into the community of the elect.³⁸

The Rule of the Holy Savior does not have its like in the history of monastic rules. Few other rules ever approved were composed of so few basic elements, and paid so little attention to all the practical needs of a monastic community. This perhaps explains the thorny path of this visionary text from its first version probably produced by the Swedish confessors in the 1340s, through its first presentation to the pope probably around 1367, its first summary approval by Pope Urban V in 1370, and the final approval of a revised version by Pope Urban VI in 1378, although formally only as constitutions to be added to the rule of St. Augustine.³⁹ But at that time Birgitta had already left the scene, and sons and daughters of her monastic family had to be content with this image of an original visionary impetus. And yet they found access to the fresh water in the vessel in which it was contained.

The Rule of the Holy Savior has been for hundreds of followers to the call the first acquaintance they ever had with Birgitta's visionary world. It is a text derived from the walk of her soul with Christ, her Lord and bridegroom, a walk in which he, with delicate care, introduces her to one secret after the other in stages of well-measured time. In like manner, new recruits to the Order of the Holy Savior met Christ taking their hands to introduce them with subtlety into the three stages of the community life of the elect: the personal decision and election; the huruan fullness of divine praise and its continuation through the generations; and the perfect sacrifice of the chosen people in spite of material limitations and individual death.

The Seven Books

There are, as we have seen, three great revelation texts in Birgitta's writings. Their relative sequence in time is: Monastic Rule, Book of Questions, Sermon of the Angel. But probably only the last-mentioned revelation got its final shape comparatively soon af ter it had been given. The Book of Questions was enriched by inserted revelations, the Rule was probably worked over again and again, so that the text, as we know it, is more recent than those of the other two great visions.

The bulk of Birgitta's writings consists of about six hundred longer or shorter texts stylized as sayings of God the Father, Christ, his Mother, or another saint. Birgitta herself as the bride is often found speaking in⁴⁰ the text, sometimes even opening it up by a question or by the retelling of something which happened to her. So many messages, spread out over a period of maybe thirty mature years, had to be arranged according to some external criteria. Scholars have discussed which one of Birgitta's confessors is to be credited for the arrangement of most of the texts in eight "books": one of the two Peters, or Bishop Alphonsus. The conclusion of Salomon Kraft (1929) was that the sequence is partly chronological, but on the basis of a scheme laid down by Bishop Alphonsus.⁴¹ We can discern characteristic traces of the division in eight books. The first book, already treated above, contains sixty distinct revelations, all from Birgitta's time in Sweden. The second, third, and seventh books each contain thirty texts or a little more—30, 34, and 31, respectively. This is hardly accidental. The number of items joined into a unit was taken as a form to mirror a basic order inherent in matter. It seems to me very probable that an ideal number of 60, 30, 30, and 30 texts collected into four units may have been projected at a very early stage of the arrangement. This corresponds to the four different origin situations of the four groups:

Book I:	60 great revelations from Sweden
Book II:	30 other revelations from Sweden
Book III:	30(?) revelations from Italy
Book VII:	30(?) revelations from the Holy Land

An examination of Book III shows that among the 34 texts of the authorized version some are extremely short exhortations, of a type which can be found more often in Books IV and VI and among the Extravagantes, but is clearly exceptional here: chapters 9, 25, 32. Also chapters 22, 23, and 34 are comparatively short. It is easy to assume that four of these six texts have been added to an original number of 30 chapters. In Book VII, on the other hand, long and short texts have the same value inasfar as they each refer to a particular phase of Birgitta's journey to the Holy Land. Possibly chapter 9 is a later addition, a short promise to Birgitta increasing the total number from a planned 30 to 31 chapters; but this, of course, is a guess.

In any case, four books are arranged to give an approximate number of 150 revelations. To play a little with the numbers, one might also put it in another way: three opening books render a total of approximately 120 chapters. This is interesting, since Book IV at some stage seems to have consisted of 130 chapters, at the end of which the authorized version says: "This is the end of Book IV according to Alphonsus." What follows is an addition of special revelations addressed to popes and high prelates, raising the total number to 144 chapters. Of the first 130 chapters there are many rather short ones: 26-32; 35; 41-43; 56-57; 66; 73; 84; 91; 116-23. One might easily imagine ten of these texts to have been squeezed in among an original number of 120 chapters, which would bring a rather neat balance between Books I-III on the one hand, and Book IV on the other, as two units with 120 texts each.

One might even consider the 109 chapters of Book VI as a result of an increase from 90; adding Book VII to Book VI, then, would render a third great unit of roughly 120 chapters.

Whatever the plan might have been, it could not, however, not even with adjustments, comprise the total number of Birgitta's revelations. Some texts apparently unknown or discarded in the first run appeared again and again, as, e.g., when Prior Peter returned to Sweden in 1380.⁴² It was, then, hopeless to try to force all the texts into the framework of the seven books which can be proved to have existed first. A Book VIII, containing political messages, was added; and yet there were still 116 revelations floating around that finally—after resultless efforts to arrange them in different series—were brought together and called the Extravagantes— texts outside the main collection (also inadequately called Book IX).

The story of the confessors trying to bring order into the mass of divine messages left behind by Birgitta is itself witness to the incredible span of inspiration in her mystical and literary heritage. Some texts are visions written down, with or without a summary, a goal indicating the inner tendency of the vision. Many texts are doctrinal, ascetic, or didactic treatises, in which an original visionary nucleus is surrounded by constructions such as applications to the moral life, often in a scholastic set-up. This fits perfectly well into the pattern worked out by Peter Dinzelbacher (1981),⁴³ who is able to identify a similar mixture of visionary and didactic elements in much female mystical writing of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

No effort has been made yet among scholars to treat Books I, II, and III as a unit of some sort, the parts of which remain characteristically distinct. Is it merely accidental that Book II starts with the threefold temptation by the devil at Birgitta's calling? And that Book III initiates a sequence of personal messages to bishops and priests, some spoken by saints of Itällan shrines—St. Ambrose (Milan), chapters 5-7; John the Baptist (St. John Lateran), chapter 11 ; St. Agnes (Rome), chapters 12 and 30; St. Dominic, chapters ΠΙ 8; St. Benedict, chapters 20-22—some directly addressing the moral corruption of the eternal city of Birgitta's years (chapter 27 ff.)? The common link between Books I, II, and IN seems to be the transition in Birgitta's calling from the Swedish to the Itällan scene, demonstrated in magisterial and solemn visionary texts, as if the redactor(s) wanted to collect in these first books the clearest, most outspoken, most predicative messages that Birgitta had received. One might easily imagine that in between she might have received many of the short glances of the divine will which we encounter so often in the many short texts of Books IV and VI, and among the Extravagantes. The proportion between great visions and short, didactically formulated insights in God's mysteries might have been about the same as that transmitted in Book VII, for the reasons stated above. This, then, makes Book VII, which is rendered in full in this translation, much more interesting.

First, however, what makes Book IV differ most from Books I, II, and III is probably the subject matter and the addressees of the revelations.⁴⁴ There is an opening sequence of revelations addressed to kings; there are visions of Rome, of the judgment; several times St. Agnes is speaking, once, John the Evangelist. The sequence in chapters 26-32 of several short messages by the Blessed Mother may indicate the end of a first section, for then, in chapter 33, a series of grand visions starts again: on Rome, on penitence, on the corruption of religious orders, on priests, on the government of the Church on earth: pope, bishops, priests. Chapters 64-66 constitute short, perhaps concluding messages of the Blessed Mother. New items are treated next: from chapter 67 onward great messages on obedience, temptation, and the passion of Christ are introduced, followed by the important messages on Christian knighthood and on "God's friends." Amici Dei, rendered "die Gottesfreunde" in German, was a special notion in Birgitta's time: a term used by groups of believers to designate themselves as Christians withdrawing from the world, cultivating an intimate, unpretentious friendship with God without immersing in worldly interests and desires, but also without formally joining a religious order.⁴⁵ Again, some very short texts are inserted here, e.g., chapters 83-85, 93-98. Somewhere around chapter 100 we meet still another type of text: the famous political messages to the kings of England and France; Birgitta's conversation with St. Denis, the patron saint of France; Christ's teaching on repentance, penitence, pride, huruility, and good intention; and, in conclusion, a tremendous judgment vision on a bishop, as well as a mysterious vision of seven animals with strong symbolism (chapters 125-26). The unity of Book IV is indicated by the curious fact that the vision in chapter 2 is explained in chapter 129—the second last chapter in Book IV "according to Alphonsus."

Thus, Book IV is certainly more than a hodgepodge of everything which does not fit elsewhere. One might easily consider Books I, II, and III as a result of a first selection of solemn, magisterial revelations, those dealing with the most universal subjects of Christian faith. In Book IV, then, the redactor(s) may have undertaken a second selection, collecting texts directed to more specific categories of Christians and treating more specific matters of faith and morals. This very general attempt to explain the genesis of Books I, II, and III, in relation to Book IV is, of course, no more than a working hypothesis for further study; nevertheless, it may be worthwhile to try to see the texts in the light of such a hypothesis.

There is enough evidence to show that Books I, II, III, and IV were kept together as such at a very early stage of redactionary work and then generally followed by Book V, which by force of its extraordinary character may have been placed there as a kind of first conclusion to the preceding books. Westman and Kraft made the puzzling discovery that in the second earliest extant manuscript dated 1388, Book V is followed by Book VII, and only then comes what we afterward know as Book VI.⁴⁶ This seems to indicate that Book VI is indeed the arrangement of a number of remaining texts which probably did not reach the level of "great visions" and also were not, like Book VII, kept together by a common origin like the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. If the order of Books VI and VII can be reversed, it would be worthwhile to find out if Book VI also contains subgroups corresponding to units of some 30 revelations. Is this the case?

There are in fact some striking cuts in the sequence of the originally 109 (at present 122) texts of Book VI. How is it to be explained, for example, that chapter 34 starts out with a message of the value of the revelations in general and turns it into a message on the conflict between England and France—and that chapter 63 deals with the letter Birgitta was to send to Pope Clement concerning the same conflict? Between chapters 34 and 63 we find a number of texts testifying to the credibility of God's message: a knight at his judgment (ch. 39), sins of kings (ch. 41), purgatory (ch. 52), and the sequence of Marian texts on her Immaculate Conception, assumption, flight to Egypt, the birth and ascension of Christ, etc. (ch. 55-62). It seems reasonable to see chapters 34 and 63 as a kind of brackets, marking the beginning and end of the second section of Book VI. Chapter 65 is the opening of the third section: the very extensive revelation on Mary and Martha as symbols of the two vocations, the contemplative and the active. All the remaining texts, chapters 66-109, can be understood as illustrating both vocations: the contemplative way of priests and religious, the active way of men and women serving God in the world. Book VI, chapters 1-33, then, appears to concentrate on moral values, expanding upon impatience (ch. 6), pride (ch. 5, 15), luxury (ch. 19), temp tation (ch. 6 and 17), repentance (ch. 20, 24), and conversion (ch. 26). Chapter 33, on the mutual love of bride and bridegroom—an old imagery with many symbolic implications—would be justly understood as the final summing up of such a first section of Book VI. Taking into account later additions to Book VI, we may assume an original plan of a third unit of 120 texts (90 for Book VI and 30 for Book VII) to balance Books I, II, and III on the one hand, and Book IV on the other.⁴⁷

This allows us finally to turn to Book VII, in its entirety contained in the following translation.⁴⁸ There are 31 chapters, all dealing with the preparations and stages of Birgitta's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1372. This book was long regarded as the last of the whole collection, until Book VIII was added. Thematically Book VII starts with a prophecy from "after the year of the jubilee," that Birgitta was to go to Jerusalem and Bethlehem (ch. 1), a vision of the sorrows of Mary which Birgitta had in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore on 2 February (ch. 2, possibly in 1351, the first Lenten season Birgitta spent in Rome), and finally that very intimate experience she had of St. Francis on one of his feast days in the church dedicated to him in Trastevere (ch. 3). To share our Lady's sorrows and St. Francis's food and drink meant to enter on the narrow path to follow Christ on his earthly way from birth and childhood to manhood and death on the cross. This was prepared through Birgitta's visit to St. Thomas's relics in Ortona (ch. 4), her message to young Elziario of Ariano in Naples (ch. 5), and, finally, Christ's calling to her on 25 May 1371, to prepare herself for the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre (ch. 6).

This is the signal for another series of six texts, chapters 7 to 12, dealing with subtle matters of conscience and spiritual distinctions, and basically located in Naples. A new series of six revelations starts with Birgitta's long-lasting doubts concerning the spiritual destiny of her own son Karl, who had a liaison with the queen of Naples (ch. 13). Expressedly, it is stated that her anxiety over the destiny of Karl followed her to the Holy Land. In such manner the scene is dramatically turned to Jerusalem, where Christ appears and talks to Birgitta on the grace of pilgrims (ch. 14), showing her the entire story of his passion and death (ch. 15) and the meaning of it (ch. 16). After this a short chapter on Birgitta's lodging (ch. 17) leads to the matter of Cyprus: first a letter she wrote to the king of Cyprus giving advice (ch. 18), then her confrontation with the actual situation there—apparently new to her—including the Greek Church and its representatives on Cyprus (ch. 19). Perhaps the letter in chapter 18 was added later, for there follows another sequence of six texts: the long chapter 20 dealing with the Franciscan Rule and the true followers of St. Francis, the four visionary texts from Bethlehem (ch. 21-24), and, finally, the speech of our Lady on huruility (ch. 25). Then we reach the last section: Birgitta's last visits, which gave her the vision of the assumption of our Lady (ch. 26), the return to Italy by way of Naples (ch. 27 and 28), her letter to a bishop of Ancona (ch. 29), one of the great visions of the Judge (ch. 30), and, finally, Birgitta's last revelation five days before her death (ch. 31).

Regardless of the length of time which Birgitta spent in these different places, the redactor, doubtless Bishop Alphonsus, handed down to us in Book VII a wonderful piece of literary art, built up and held together by means of carefully selected texts and revelations. Much has been written on the profound devotion expressed in Birgitta's words when she describes Christ's and our Lady's appearances to her in the Holy Land.⁴⁹ But it ought not to be forgotten what a high degree of spiritual attachment has been laid down in the redactionary work found in this collection, so that each one of the great visions from the Holy Land stands out in its own force to convey the message of the divine meeting a chosen woman and revealing to her the secrets of heaven. No geographical or chronological affinity is comparable to this unity, stemming from the maturity of someone beholding God's mysteries after a long life of loving and suffering in God's presence.

Scholars agree that the first seven books of Revelations constitute the main corpus of God's message through Birgitta. But not everybody will consult such a huge collection of texts. The need for a digest was urgent already in the fourteenth century. Alphonsus himself took the first steps to comply with such wishes. He had three groups of addressees in mind:

1. kings and other civil authorities
2. pontiffs and bishops
3. the monastic family of the Order of the Holy Savior.

For each of these groups he produced a compilation in which texts already placed in one of the Seven Books were mixed with other texts of Birgitta which Alphonsus had either not known at the time he created the seven books, or which he had ruled out during the process.⁵⁰ The first compilation he called "The Book of the Heavenly Emperor to the Kings"; this has since that time been called "Book VIII" of the Revelations, although about half of the texts—there were originally 58 chapters, later 3 more were added—were already part of other books.⁵¹ '

The second collection, addressed to popes and bishops, Ad pontifices, has in fact not survived; it is found only in one manuscript. Its content is spread around at the end of Book IV and as sequences among the Extravagantes.⁵²

The third collection, meant for the religious of the order, has been widely spread and studied under the name of Celeste viridarium, "The Heavenly Pasture," or, in the classical and renaissance sense of the word, "The Heavenly Garden." Book VIII has been adopted into the main collection probably partly because Alphonsus wrote his magnificent preface to it: "The Letter of the Hermit to the Kings," where he defends Birgitta against attacks which were bound to come, although at the time he wrote, in 1379, they were not yet as fierce as they became later on.⁵³

Finally there are the extraordinary Four Prayers also translated and included in the present selection of texts.⁵⁴ The knowledge we have of these prayers and their origin is limited. They are extensive meditations in the form of prayers of praise to God for his blessings to mankind through the life on earth of our Lady and of Christ (first and second prayers), and through the beauty of Christ in his manhood (third prayer), and of our Lady (fourth prayer). This type of prayer and meditation was widespread in the Middle Ages: Christ's head, face, lips, eyes, ears, tongue, shoulders, intestines, breast, arms, hands, legs, and feet are the objects of meditation for the part they play in the salvific action of God. Of all these devotions we have kept in our epoch only one: that to the Sacred Heart, which is also part of the third of Birgitta's four prayers. The same is true for the meditations on the limbs of our Lady in the fourth prayer.

The Doctrine

The doctrine of St. Birgitta is certainly, as can be derived from what has been said so far, most aptly understood as the result of a dialectical process partly between Birgitta and her confessors and spiritual advisors, partly between her own experiences and her mental and affective life.

The basic stages of spiritual development are all present in her life: purification from sin through contrition and acceptance of God's majesty, mercy, and care; illumination through steady progress in the virtues and through an ever greater understanding of and affection for God's salvific action towards his people by innumerable means; union of the soul with God as a bride is embraced by the bridegroom.⁵⁵ This spiritual development is decisively Christian in that Birgitta accepts God's grace in and through the Messenger, the Messiah, the Anointed One, Jesus Christ. With Christ the heavenly host is always present in dynamic activity and yet all-enduring peace and communion with God—Christ's Mother Mary, all the angels and saints. On the periphery the fallen angels, angry at not being allowed to participate in God's essence, are trying to disturb as much as possible the path of the huruan soul toward its goal.

Let us examine for a moment the teaching in Birgitta's revelations on the first steps of the path to heaven: contrition and repentance for sins, the return of the erring child to the caring love of its parents. "Come and rise quickly through penance and contrition, then I will forgive the sins and give you patience and strength to be able to withstand the plots of the devil" (VI, 30). It is Christ's program for the bride to proceed from the first to the second stage of spiritual life. There is "true" contrition if the person has a perfect intention of making good what was formerly destroyed, as in the parable of the goldsmith (II, 14), or, in a more subtle distinction, if the person has the firm intention of doing no more evil and of persevering in good deeds (VI, 24). If, as the words given to a Swedish lady in Rome show, contrition is not as deep as the lust in doing evil was great, God's special love is necessary to fill out the gap (VI, 102). As when two lovers meet in stages such as sending letters, talking together, and embracing, penance and contrition are like the second stage, the mutual talk between bride and bridegroom by which they become one heart and one soul, to proceed to the union of the naked huruan soul with God, which is pure love and heavenly desire (IV, 75).

Praying to God with contrition entitles one to be called God's friend precisely because of this contrition; and if contrition is firm, not only sin but also the penance for sin will be forgiven (III, 26). The symbols of a golden key, a silver vase, and a crown adorned with precious stones, all offered to God by an angel, denote the three stages of spiritual life. Here, the golden key is "pure" contrition for sins, by which the heart of God is being opened to let the sinner in (IV, 107). Two ways lead to the heart of God: the first is huruility's true contrition leading man into spiritual discourse with God; the second way is meditation on Christ's passion, so that the hardness of man's heart is weakened and he runs with joy to the heart of God (IV, 101). All sorrow and tears of contrition are recalled in the scene when Birgitta suffers for her son Karl in Naples (VII, 13). Once contrition is likened to golden shoes which enable you to walk (III, 24), once to an undershirt which is closest to the body and therefore comes first when you dress (I, 7).

Contrition is like the point of a sword in the warrior's hand, since it kills the devil (IV, 89). Here, contrition hits and strikes; but on other occasions it also purges and Birgitta can place it in the intestines because this is where the cleaning process of the body takes place (IV, 115). Even the devil knows perfectly well the disastrous effects of contrition on his affairs. In a speech concerning a bad monk he characterizes it as a whirlwind which, if it leads to confession of sins and is strongly upheld, is the most secure path to peace with God—"and just from such heights," the devil declares, "I succeeded in pushing him down by his own desire to sin" (IV, 102).

Birgitta often returns to the theme of contrition immediately before death and its effect upon the eternal destiny of the soul, as, for example, when "for charity's sake" a contrition characterized as "divine" was given to a person shortly before his death; this contrition separated him from hell (IV, 9). Once the "Word" from the "Pulpit" told Birgitta that many who are guilty of numerous crimes receive the gift of full contrition before death, and that such contrition might even be so perfect that not only sins were forgiven, but also the punishment that ought to have been suffered after death (VIII, 48). But there is another side, as is clear from another passage: someone confessed his sins, but there was very little contrition in his confession, and so he was not saved—he did not deserve the kingdom of heaven. As the conclusion states: "If my friends want to be reconciled with my grace and friendship, they must needs make penitence and have contrition of all their heart for having offended me, their Creator and Redemptor." The next step after contrition is confession of sins, the third is communion with the faithful, the Church (IV, 7, cf. below, VII, 27).

A person who had lived all his life without confession and communion in despair of salvation (such was possible even in the Middle Ages!) confessed his sins several times shortly before his death, so that the devil, with whom he had entered into a covenant and to whom he had given an oath of fidelity, fled. This was precisely because of his contrition. This contrition was given to him as a gift of God because the man had always felt some type of compassion with the Mother of God when he thought and heard of her, without, however, really loving her in his heart. But this was enough for a compendium salutis suae, as the text runs—an expression which might mean the "property" or the "area" of his salvation, but which could also mean "compendium of salvation" in the modern sense (VI, 97). The same expression is used for the bishop of Vaxjo, to whom contrition and confession are a compendium for life in this world (III, 12).

It is interesting to note that God's answers to the monk on the ladder in Book V do not enter upon contrition. It is as if God—being here the accused one—does not want to open his heart to the conversion of the monk, but rather marks the distance between what the monk propounds and what is in reality the true context of things. Contrition is a gift of God and a concept to denote a very intimate relationship between the soul and its Creator, as the likeness of the lovers tells us. The monk on the ladder has nothing that can serve as a vessel or a vehicle for the gift of contrition. Not the slightest compendium of salvation is present in him, only doubts and reasoning.

One explanation for this might be hinted at by another symbolic interpretation of the key. The only key to open and to close is the desire for God alone, so that man does not want anything but God, and him only because of his love. Only husband and wife, only God and the soul, can dispose of the key to their partner's intimate chamber, so that their common desire for each other is the only key to open it (II, 27). That contrition for sins can range among the meanings carried by the key indicates that it also has this character of intimate confidence which is peculiar to the act of opening and closing the door with the key.

The full doctrine of the spiritual life is again propounded in one of the revelations placed after Birgitta's journey to Jerusalem. The first stage is penance and contrition of heart because of the offense one has committed against the Creator and Redemptor. Confession of sins, huruble and iterated, marks the beginning of the second stage which consists in making reparation for sins according to the advice of the confessor, so that God can approach and the devil withdraws from the person. The third stage, then, consists not only in the participation in the sacrament of the altar—our meaning of "communion"—but also in the "receiving of my body with a firm intention never to fall back into previous sins but to endure in good until the end" (VII, 27). "My Body" here obviously means the full communion and unity with the Church, Christ's mystical body.

Penance, characteristic of the second stage of spiritual life, may sometimes be only an empty gesture, as we saw in some examples above—penance without real and worthy contrition for sins. But generally Birgitta's teaching is that penance is a proof of the socialization of the person in that he or she starts to confess their sins regularly and to take the advice and submit to the guidance of their confessor. "While I abhorred penance I felt heavy as if in chains, but since I started to go to confession I feel so relieved and peaceful in my soul, that I don't care for honors nor if I suffer losses in my property," runs a personal comment added to a revelation (VI, 20). The grace of penance keeps a person in God's hands, even though he or she justly ought to have been handed over to the devil because of crimes (Extravagantes 89). Penance can wash clean what has become dirty (II, 26, and IV, 39), but this is true also for confession (VI, 16). The evil smell of a sinner, registered by Birgitta, can only be healed by penance, to evade God's wrath (Extravagantes 81). There will be no more account for those sins for which penance has been done; sins for which there was no penance done will have to be cleansed in other ways or remedied here and now (I, 36). In open words the Mother of God stated to Birgitta before she left for Jerusalem that God will never deny his grace to a sinner with a true contrition, a will to satisfy for sin, honest penance, and huruble prayer with burning love to receive God's mercy (VII, 7).

But remedy for sins committed also implies hard efforts and training in acts of self-denial. To this and many other forms of mastering one's own will, feelings, thoughts, and abilities, Birgitta often uses the word labor, work, in more or less the modern sense of the word. "My friends should work diligently that justice be observed and upheld, that care be taken of society, that God's honor grow and that rebels and criminals be punished," says Christ to one of the kings (VIII, 18). This "work" is certainly understood as part of what in religious terms is called penance: "God's friends … ought to work in order that the evildoer improves and the good reaches perfection" (IV, 21). To preach and show others the way can be a "work" (I, 40), and by this same word ("before I started my work") Christ can refer to the beginning of his active three years of pronouncing the message (II, 15). We often have also the other meaning which the Latin word labor are can take: to suffer, to endure hardships. Mary says about Jesus: "He worked with his hands" (VI, 58), and a mother's prayers and tears for her son can be called her "work" or "suffering" for him (VII, 13). There is intellectual work, as can be seen from a speech between two masters (II, 22), and the five senses can be said to have each their work to do (VI, 66). God's friends ought to work in order to save souls (VI, 47), and someone will have to work with the ground to earn his living (Extravagantes 83). Even the devil works, not against man's bodily existence, but against virtues, patience, and moderation in man (VI, 43), or to make him deaf and mute (IV, 107). But there is difference between work and work: some work only for material reasons and they receive no "crown," no eternal glory for that; but if this work is God's precept to them, then they serve him in their work (IV, 74). To attain true love we need huruility, mercy, and the "work" or "suffering" of love, labor caritatis (III, 12, and IV, 126).

We get very close to Birgitta personally in her little dialogue with the Mother of God upon Birgitta's question: "Should I never work in order to earn my living?" The Blessed Mother gives her a question in reply: "What are you doing just now and every day?" Birgitta answers—in fact, the text reads, very exceptionally: "And I answered"—"I learn grammar and pray and write." Then the Blessed Mother said: "Don't give up such a work for physical work!" (IV, 46).

We reach another dimension, that of "good works" or "good deeds," when Christ speaks to Birgitta about Jacob who worked long to win Rachel as his wife. Love made his work easier, and this is true, then, for the spiritual life: "Many work in a manly way with prayers and good deeds in order to reach heaven, but when they think they have attained the peace of being with God, they get involved in temptations, their troubles increase, and just as they envisage themselves perfect, they discover that they are totally imperfect" (V, revelation 6).

It is in the nature of things that the third stage of spiritual life, called "the peace of contemplation," here rendered as "the peace of being with God," cannot be described in ordinary words, since it is a wordless union beyond letters and sentences—see the imagery of the lovers quoted above (IV, 75). If "communion" stands for this third stage, it is clear to us that this word cannot denote solely the act of receiving the Blessed Sacrament, the Body of Christ under the shape of the unleavened bread, and the Blood of Christ under the shape of wine mixed with a drop of water. Not even the "confession" of the second stage can be understood in Birgitta's writings as just the holy sacrament of penance. It means a more specific readiness to admit to all the fellowship that we are sinners, and that therefore we are called to appear in God's presence to be at his disposal in his salvific action towards all mankind. In like manner, the "communion" of the third stage must mean a permanent union with God's friends in whom God appears visibly to us and to our huruan eyes and understanding.

Taking this as basic to what Birgitta meant by "communion," we may have a closer look at some of her visions and messages belonging to this dimension.

Once in Italy on the first Sunday after Easter, Birgitta was inspired by 1 John 5, read on that day at mass. "There are three who give witness on earth: Spirit, Water, and Blood; and three who give witness in heaven: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The three are then linked to faith, baptism, and adoption in God, and Birgitta, as daughter of the Godhead, is told to receive the Body and Blood of Christ's manhood from the hands of the priest thereby to signify her readiness to do "our" will (says the Triune God) and in order that Christ testifies to her being his and belonging to him. In Christ, then, the Father and the Holy Spirit also testify to the same effect, that she belongs to all the three Persons by force of her true faith and her love (III, 23). No doubt "faith" here stands for the beginning, the first stage of spiritual life; "baptism" for the second stage, corresponding to contrition and confession in the texts quoted earlier. To be the daughter of God, adopted as it were, to be "his" without any further addition, then, must refer to the unitive stage of spiritual life; and precisely here Birgitta is told to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament of the altar. Not the divinity of Christ, but the huruanity of Christ is the way to union with God according to Birgitta's teaching here, for then the Godhead—Son, Father, Holy Spirit—testify to where their daughter belongs.

In like manner, the feast of Pentecost once revealed to Birgitta some of the most evanescent of God's expressions of love. During early morning mass, Birgitta saw a fire descend and surround the altar. In the fire she saw the priest with the Host in his hand, and in the Host she saw a lamb, and in the lamb "an inflaming face, like that of a man." The vision was interpreted to her by a voice telling her about the fire of Pentecost inflaming the hearts of the disciples. But the voice continued its message: "Through the word the bread becomes the Living Lamb, which is my Body, and the Face is in the Lamb, and the Lamb in the Face, for the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and the Holy Spirit is in both." "And then," the text adds, "in the hand of the priest the bride saw, at the elevation of the eucharist, a young man of extraordinary beauty, who said: I bless you who believe; to those who don't believe I am a judge" (VI, 86). From what she saw first: an inflaming face like that of a man, Birgitta is carried on finally to stand face to face with Christ in the shape of a young man of extraordinary beauty. The transition is made possible by the fire from heaven and the final stage is closeness; but the intermediate stage is the short passing through doctrine and clarification of the Triune God before entering into the final union and communion, signalled by the elevation of the Host.

The last week of Birgitta's life sets forth an immemorial record of her union with the bridegroom. For a long time in June-July 1373 (the text does not say how long) Birgitta had felt the emptiness and desolation of her heavenly spouse not being with her—that feeling of night which other mystics have written more about. Sunday, the 17th of July, the fourth Sunday after Pentecost, she attended mass in her house. It may have been the Sunday named after its entrance verse: Dominus illuminatio mea—"The Lord is my Light and my Savior," and the gospel may then, as later, have been Luke 5:1-11, on the faith of St. Peter towards Jesus at the great fishing in the Lake Genesareth. Monday or Tuesday, Christ finally spoke to Birgitta, giving her relief with the words: "I was to you just like a spouse generally is, when he hides from his bride in order that she has greater desire for him…. So now after this probation proceed and be prepared, for now the time has come when that shall be fulfilled what I promised you, that … you shall be counted not only my bride, but also a nun and the mother in Vadstena" (VII, 31). On Friday, July 22, fell the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, and on Saturday, July 23, Birgitta died in her room which still exists at the Piazza Farnese in Rome.

The third stage of spiritual life, to her, was the indissoluble union with God, in which no element of mystical love was lacking.

Notes

¹ Recent publications with further references: Temi e problemi nella mistica femminile trecentesca (Todi, 1983), and Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer, eds., Frauenmystik im Mittelalter (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart, 1985).

² Michael Goodich, Vita perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Stuttgart, 1982, = Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 25), pp. 48-68.

³ Isak Collijn, ed., Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte (Uppsala, 1924-31, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska skrifter, I).

⁴ Sara Ekwall, Vär äldsta Birgittavita och dennas viktigaste varianter [summary: La plus ancienne vie de sainte Brigitte et ses deux variations les plus importantes] (Lund, 1965, = Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar, Historiska Serien, 12).

⁵ Karl Kup, "Ulrich von Richenthal's Chronicle of the Council of Constance," Bulletin of The New York Public Library (April, 1936). Eric Colledge, "Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonce of Pecha as Organizer of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda," Medieval Studies 18 (1956): 19-49, here pp. 44-45.

⁶ Claes Annerstedt, ed., Vita Sanctae Birgittae, in Scriptores Rerum Suecicarum medii aevi, III, 2 (Upsallae, 1876), pp. 188-206, and I. Collijn, ed. (supra, note 3), pp. 73-101. Another version of this text was published by I. Collijn, ibid, pp. 612-41, and by the same editor as facsimile in Corpus Codicum Suecicorum Medii Aevi, VII (Copenhagen, 1946).

⁷ John E. Kruse, "Vita metrica s. Birgitte," Acta Universitatis Lundensis (Lund, 1891-92): 10-28.

⁸ Ekwall, op. cit., pp. 16-17.

⁹Ibid, pp. 62-63.

¹⁰Ibid, p. 70, from Acta et processus. (note 3), p. 73: et quod plura alla sciunt de vita dicte domine Brigide, sed propter eorum repentinum recessum ad partes Swecie ea scribere et testificari protunc non poterant.

¹¹ Ekwall, passim. Colledge (note 5) does not yet consider Alphonsus redactor of the Vita.

¹² Birgit Klockars, Birgittas svenska varld [The Swedish World of Birgitta] (Stockholm, 1976), pp. 32-33.

¹³Ibid, pp. 136, 152. Tryggve Lunden, ed., Processus canonizacionis beati Nicolai Lincopensis (Stockholm, 1963). Idem, Nikolaus Hermansson, biskop av Linköping (Lund, 1971), with summary in German, pp. 62-70, and edition of liturgical texts composed by Nikolaus, pp. 77-138.

¹⁴ Bengt Strömberg, Magister Mathias och fransk mendikantpredikan [summary: Magister Mathias et la prédication des religieux mendiants français] (Lund, 1944). Hjalmar Sundén, "Den heliga Birgitta och hennes biktfar magister Mathias," Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 73 (1973): 15-39. Anders Piltz, Prolegomena till en textkritisk edition αν magister Mathias' Homo conditus (Uppsala, 1974, = Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Latina Upsaliensia'7).

¹⁵ The quote is from Anders Piltz, "Magister Mathias of Sweden in his theological context. A preliminary survey," lecture given in Stockholm 1984, unprinted. Cf. idem, ed., Magistri Mathiae canonici Lincopensis opus sub nomine Homo Conditus vulgatum (Angered 1984, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, IX:1).

¹⁶Idem, "Mathias Ouidi," Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, 2nd ed. (Stockholm 1918- ), 25: 248-51.

¹⁷ Carl-Gustaf Undhagen, ed., Sancta Birgitta Revelaciones Lib. I (Uppsala, 1978, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, VII:1), pp. 229-40. Birgitta Fritz, "Den heliga Birgitta och hennes klosterplaner,"Festskrift til Thelma Jexlev (Odense, 1985): 9-17.

¹⁸ Anders Piltz, "Mathias Ouidi" (as in note 16). The crusade: J. L. I. Fennell, The Emergence of Moscow 1304-1359 (London, 1968), pp. 265-67. Idem, "The Campaign of King Magnus Eriksson against Novgorod in 1348," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 14 (1966): 1-9. John Lind, "The Russian Sources of King Magnus Eriksson's Campaign against Novgorod 1348-1351 Reconsidered," Mediaeval Scandinavia 12 (1986): pp. 248-72.

¹⁹ Anders Piltz, "Mathias Ouidi" (as in note 16).

²⁰ Undhagen (note 17), pp. 237-38.

²¹ Collijn, Acta et processus, p. 485, quoted from Birger Bergh, "A Saint in the Making: St. Bridget's Life in Sweden (1303-1349)," in Francis Cairns, ed., Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 3 (1981): 371-84, here p. 378.

²² As can be gathered from the excellent indices in Birgit Klockars, Birgitta och böckerna. En undersökning av den Heliga Birgittas källor (Lund, 1966, = Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar: Historiska Serien, 11). The observation of the Exodus theme has been made also by Roger Ellis, "A Note on the Spirituality of St. Bridget of Sweden,"Spiritualitat heute und gestern, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg, 1982, = Analecta Cartusiana, 35): 157-66, here p. 166.

²³ Birger Bergh (note 21) with further references.

²⁴ Knut B. Westman, Birgitta-studier (Uppsala, 1911), pp. 107-16. Hjalmar Sunden, Den heliga Birgitta. Ormungens moder som blev Kristi brud (Uddevalla, 1973), pp. 66-89. Birgitta Fritz (note 17).

²⁵ Birger Bergh, ed., Sancta Birgitta Revelaciones Lib. V: Liber Questionum (Uppsala, 1971, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, VII:5). Sunden (note 24). Bergh (note 21).

²⁶ Sundén (note 24). Bergh (note 21) and Fritz (note 17) do not basically challenge Sundén's position.

²⁷ Sundén (note 24), pp. 85-89.

²⁸ Recently, e.g., Robert E. Lemer, "Antichrists and Antichrist in Joachim of Fiore," Speculum 60 (1985): 553-70, with further references.

²⁹ As in Sundén above.

³⁰ Yngvar Ustvedt, Svartedauen [The Black Death] (Oslo, 1985), pp. 82-92.

³¹ A. Jefferies Collins, ed., The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey (Worcester, 1969, = Henry Bradshaw Society Vol. XCVI), pp. xvii-xxx. Tryggve Lundén, ed., Den heliga Birgitta och den helige Petrus av Skänninge, Officium parvum beate Marie Virginis, I-II (Lund, 1976, = Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studio Historico Ecclesiastica Upsaliensia, 27-28), pp. xi-xxxi (summary: The Lady-offices of Saint Bridget and Venerable Peter of Skänninge, pp. cv-cxii). Sten Eklund, ed., Sancta Birgitta Opera Minora II: Sermo Angelicvs (Uppsala, 1972, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, VIII:2).

³² Lundén, op. cit., and Dom Ernest Graf, Revelations & Prayers of St. Bridget of Sweden (London, 1928).

³³ Collins and Lundén, op. cit.

³⁴ Gabriele M. Roschini, La Madonna nelle "Rivelazioni di S. Brigida " nel sesto centenario delia sua morte (23 luglio 1373) (Roma, 1973), pp. 69-86.

³⁵ Toni Schmid, Birgitta och hennes uppenbarelser [Birgitta and her Revelations] (Lund, 1940), pp. 94-98, 108-10.

³⁶ Sten Eklund, ed., Sancta Birgitta Opera Minora I: Regvla Salvatoris (Lund, 1975, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, VIII:1), pp. 21-23. Cf. Fritz (note 17).

³⁷ Eklund (note 36) uses a special letter for this unknown early version. Discussion of fragments in Old Swedish: Jostein Gussgard, To fragmenter på svensk af den Hellige Birgittas skrifter (Uppsala, 1961, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, 230).

³⁸ Tore Nyberg, "Analyse der Klosterregel der HI. Birgitta," Festschrift Altomünster 1973, ed. Toni Grad (Aichach, 1973), pp. 20-34.

³⁹ Eklund (note 36) and review of Eklund by Tore Nyberg in Theologische Revue, 77 (1981):221-24.

⁴⁰ Tore Nyberg, "Birgitta von Schweden—die aktive Gottesschau," Frauenmystik im Mittelalter (note 1), pp. 275-89, here p. 281.

⁴¹ Salomon Kraft, Textstudier till Birgittas revelationer (Uppsala, 1929, also in: Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 29 (1929): 1-196), pp. 52-69.

⁴² Known through his witness in the canonization process, the socalled Depositio copiosissima, cf. Lennart Hollman, ed., Sancta Birgitta Reuelaciones Extrauagantes (Uppsala, 1956, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, V), pp. 85, 90-91.

⁴³Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1981, = Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 23).

⁴⁴ The critical edition of Book IV is being prepared by Hans Aili, Stockholm.

⁴⁵ Francis Rapp, "Gottesfreunde," Theologische Realenzyklopedie (Berlin, 1975-), 14:98-100.

⁴⁶ Westman (note 24), p. 264. Kraft (note 41), p. 68-69. Undhagen (note 17), p. 174-77. The ms. is W. 318 of Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln.

⁴⁷ The critical edition of Book VI is being prepared by Birger Bergh, Lund.

⁴⁸ Birger Bergh, ed., Sancta Birgitta Revelaciones Lib. VII (Uppsala, 1967, = Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2: Latinska Skrifter, VII:7).

⁴⁹ Karl Kup, "Bene veneris … filius meus. An Early Example of St. Birgitta's Influence on the Iconography of the Nativity," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 61 (1957): 583-89. Lottlisa Behling, "Symbole der Revelationes der HI. Birgitta in Beziehung zum Isenheimer Altar des Matthias Grünewald, insbesondere fur die Darstellung der knienden Maria im Goldtempel," Festschrift Altomünster 1973 (note 38), pp. 138-62.

⁵⁰ Colledge (note 5), p. 33-34.

⁵¹ Kraft (note 41), p. 71-72.

⁵² Colledge (note 5), p. 33, correcting Westman. The MS is Harley 612 of the British Library, London.

⁵³ Colledge (note 5), pp. 40-42, with further references.

⁵⁴ See pp. 221-35.

⁵⁵ Adolphe Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life, 2nd ed. (Tournai, 1930).