Bridget of Sweden, OSsS (c. 1304 – 23 July 1373), also known as Birgitta Birgersdotter and Birgitta of Vadstena (Swedish: heliga Birgitta), was a Swedish Catholic mystic and the founder of the Bridgettines. Outside Sweden, she was also known as the Princess of Nericia and was the mother of Catherine of Vadstena.
Bridget is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Catherine of Siena and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
The most celebrated saint of Sweden, Bridget was the daughter of the knight Birger Persson of the family of Finsta, governor and lawspeaker of Uppland, and one of the richest landowners of the country, and his wife Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, a member of the so-called Lawspeaker branch of the Folkunga family. Through her mother, Bridget was related to the Swedish kings of her era.
She was born in 1304. The exact date of her birth is not recorded. In 1316, at the age of 13 she married Ulf Gudmarsson of the family of Ulvåsa, a noble and lawspeaker of Östergötland, to whom she bore eight children, four daughters and four sons. Six of her children survived infancy, which was rare at that time. Her eldest daughter was Märta Ulfsdotter. Her second daughter is now honored as St. Catherine of Sweden. Her youngest daughter was Cecilia Ulvsdotter. Bridget became known for her works of charity, particularly toward Östergötland's unwed mothers and their children. When she was in her early thirties, she was summoned to be principal lady-in-waiting to the new Queen of Sweden, Blanche of Namur. In 1341, she and her husband went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
In 1344, shortly after their return, Ulf died at the Cistercian Alvastra Abbey in Östergötland. After this loss, Bridget became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis and devoted herself to a life of prayer and caring for the poor and the sick.
It was at this time that she developed the idea of establishing the religious community which was to become the religious order of the Most Holy Saviour, or the Bridgettines, whose principal house at Vadstena was later richly endowed by King Magnus IV of Sweden and Queen Blanche of Namur. One distinctive feature of the houses of the Order was that they were double monasteries, with men and women both forming a joint community, but they lived in separate cloisters. They were required to live in poor convents and they were also required to give all of their surplus income to the poor. However, they were allowed to have as many books as they pleased.
In 1350, a Jubilee Year, Bridget braved a plague-stricken Europe to make a pilgrimage to Rome accompanied by her daughter, Catherine, and a small party of priests and disciples. This was partly done to obtain authorization to found the new order from the Pope and it was also partly done in pursuance of her self-imposed mission to elevate the moral tone of the age. This was during the period of the Avignon Papacy within the Roman Catholic Church, however, so she had to wait for the return of the papacy from the French city of Avignon to Rome, a move for which she agitated for many years.
It was not until 1370 that Pope Urban V, during his brief attempt to re-establish the papacy in Rome, confirmed the Rule of the order, but meanwhile Bridget had made herself universally beloved in Rome by her kindness and good works. Save for occasional pilgrimages, including one to Jerusalem in 1373, she remained in Rome until her death on 23 July 1373, urging ecclesiastical reform.
In her pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, she sent "back precise instructions for the construction of the monastery" now known as the Blue Church, insisting that an "abbess, signifying the Virgin Mary, should preside over both nuns and monks."
Bridget went to confession every day, and she had a constant smiling, glowing face. Although she never returned to Sweden, her years in Rome were far from happy, she was hounded by debts and opposition to her work against Church abuses. She was originally buried at San Lorenzo in Panisperna before her remains were returned to Sweden.
After Queen Margaret of Scandinavia had worked on both Pope Urban VI and his successor for it, Bridget was canonized in the year 1391 by Pope Boniface IX, which was confirmed by the Council of Constance in 1415. Because of new discussions about her works, the Council of Basel confirmed the orthodoxy of her revelations in 1436.
At the age of ten, Bridget had a vision of Jesus hanging upon the cross. When she asked who had treated him like this, he answered:
They who despise me, and spurn my love for them.
The Passion of Christ became the center of her spiritual life from that moment on. The revelations which she had received since her childhood now became more frequent, and the records of these Revelationes coelestes ("Celestial revelations") which were translated into Latin by Matthias, canon of Linköping, and her confessor, Peter Olafsson, prior of Alvastra, acquired a great vogue during the Middle Ages. These revelations made Bridget something of a celebrity to some and a controversial figure to others.
Vision of the birth of Christ with kneeling Virgin
Her visions of the Nativity of Jesus would influence later depictions of the Nativity of Jesus in art. Shortly before her death, she described a vision which included the infant Jesus lying on (not in) clean swaddling clothes on the ground, and emitting light himself, and she described the Virgin as blonde-haired and kneeling in prayer exactly as she was moments before the spontaneous birth, with her womb shrunken and her virginity intact.
Many depictions followed this scene, they included the popular ox and donkey and they reduced other light sources in the scene in order to emphasize the "child of light" effect, and the Nativity was treated with chiaroscuro through the Baroque. Other details which are frequently seen, such as Joseph carrying a single candle that he "attached to the wall," and the presence of God the Father above, also originated in Bridget's vision.
The pose of the Virgin kneeling to pray to her child, to be joined by Saint Joseph, technically known as the "Adoration of the Child", became one of the most common depictions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, largely replacing the reclining Virgin in the West. A few earlier depictions of the Virgin which show her with an ox and a donkey (scenes which are not described in the gospels) were produced as early as 1300, before Bridget was born, have a Franciscan origin, by which she may have been influenced, because she was a member of the Franciscan order.