Feast day: 23 July
St Bridget of Sweden (Birgitta) was the daughter of the knight Birger Persson, governor and lawspeaker of Uppland and one of the richest landowners of the country. Her mother was Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, a member of the so-called lawspeaker branch of the Folkunga family. She was also related to the Swedish kings of her era. Bridget was born in 1303. In 1316 at the age of fourteen she was married to Ulf Gudmarsson, Lord of Narke. The marriage was happy. The couple had eight children, four boys and four girls. Six survived infancy, which was unusual for the time. The second daughter is now honoured at St Catherine of Sweden. Bridget became known for her charitable work, particularly for Ostergotland’s unmarried mothers and children. When she was in her early thirties, she was summoned to become lady in waiting to the new Queen, Blanche of Namur. In 1341 she and her husband went on a pilgrimage to Santiago Compestela.
In 1344, shortly after their return, Ulf died at the Cistercian Alvastra Abbey in Ostergotland. Bridget became a member of the Third Order of St Francis and devoted herself to a life of prayer and caring for the poor and the sick. It was at this time that she decided to found an order, which became the Order of the Most Holy Saviour or the Brigittines, whose principal house at Vadstana was richly endowed by King Magnus IV of Sweden and his queen. A distinctive feature of the order was double monasteries with men and women divided by separate cloisters. They were to give surplus money to the poor but could have as many books as they wanted. In 1350 - a jubilee year - Bridget, with her daughter Katarina and a small party of priests and followers, went on a pilgrimage to Rome despite the fact that the plague was raging in Europe. Her intention was to have the order recognised but also to promote moral standards. However the Pope was at this time living in Avignon and she had to wait for the him to return to Rome, something for which she campaigned for years. It was not until 1370 that Pope Urban V, in his brief attempt to re-establish the papacy in Rome, confirmed the Rule of the order. Meanwhile Bridget worked tirelessly with her good works. She stayed in Rome until her death in 1378, except for occasional pilgrimages including one to Jerusalem. She continued to call for ecclesiastical reform.
During her pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Bethlehem she sent back “precise instructions for the construction of the monastery” now known as the Blue Church. She insisted that an abbess, signifying the Virgin Mary, should preside over both monks and nuns.
Bridget of Sweden was a woman of great piety; she went to confession every day and was always smiling. Her time in Rome was difficult as she was in debt and unpopular with some because of her insistence on church reform. She was buried in San Lorenzo, Panisperna, before her remains were returned to Sweden by her children Birger and Katarina. She was canonised by Pope Boniface IX in 1391.
Bridget had a vision of Christ hanging on the cross when she was ten. She asked him who had treated him like this, and he replied: “Those who despise me and spurn my love for them.” The vision made such a deep impression that the passion of Christ became the centre of her spiritual life. The revelations became more frequent and her records were translated into Latin by Matthias, canon of Linkoping, and her confessor Peter Olafsson, prior of Alvastra. Her visions of the Nativity had a great influence on medieval art, with the use of light and the figures of the Virgin and St Joseph praying before the Child Jesus. This became known as the “Adoration of the Child”, although they would have appeared before Bridget’s vision, having probably a Franciscan background.
St Bridget is said to have originated the ”Fifteen O’s” (so called because each prayer includes “O Jesu, O Rex"). She was told to recite them by Our Lord in a vision, where - in response to her prayer - he told her how many blows he had received. The prayers were to be said over a period of a year. There is however some question about their source. They became widely circulated in the Middle Ages and were regular features of the Books of Hours. They reflect the late medieval tradition of meditation on the Passion of Christ. They carried with them extravagant promises of release from purgatory for the devotee and his family. At the Reformation such practices were rejected and Martin Luther called Bridget “The foolish Bridget”.
The Vatican and the Lutheran Church jointly conceived a modern devotion to St Bridget, which had till then been a source of disagreement between the two churches. In 1954 the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office found the promises - though not the prayers - unreliable, and forbade circulation of pamphlets containing the promises.
On 8 October 1991 during the sexcentennial of St Bridget’s canonization Pope John Paul II and two Lutheran bishops met and prayed in front of the burial-place of St Peter the Apostle in Rome as an ecumenical gesture. It was the first time a joint prayer had been held by members of the two communities. Pope John Paul II made Bridget a patron saint of Europe in 1999, together with Catherine of Siena and Sister Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein).
The Brigettine Order suffered during the Reformation. Its house at Syon Park, Isleworth, Middelsex, was dissolved under Henry VIII and briefly restored under Queen Mary I. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne the order left England and eventually found its way to Lisbon, where it remained until 1861, after which it returned to England, to Syon Abbey in Devon. It was the only order to have existed without interruption since the Reformation. The last monk died in Lisbon. The order left Sweden at the end of the sixteenth century when penal laws were passed.
The revival of the Brigittine Order was mainly due to the work of St Elizabeth Hesselblad and there are many congregations throughout the world devoted to charitable work, providing hospitality to generate an income and promoting inter faith dialogue. The nuns are distinguished by their silver crown, called the crown of the Five Wounds. St Elizabeth was responsible for bringing the nuns back to England and to Vadstena in Sweden. She established a convent outside the grounds of the original abbey. In 1963 the convent was refounded as a Brigittine convent of the original branch of the order. The Blue Church nearby is a site of pilgrimage and contains the relics of St Bridget in a red casket.
St Bridget of Sweden, wife, mother and foundress of the Brigittine order, pray for us.