St Bridget of Sweden (1303-73) mystic and co-patroness of Europe
Bridget
of Sweden had a profound influence on the affairs of Europe. Married at
thirteen, she had eight children.
After her husband died, she became
a nun and founded the Bridgettine Order.
She spent much of her life on
pilgrimage in Italy, trying to persuade the Pope to return from Avignon
in France to Rome.
She also made a pilgrimage with her daughter and son
to the Holy Land. She was named co-patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul
II in 1999.
Early years
Born in 1303 to parents who were
close to the royal family, Bridget's mother died when she was very young
and she was brought up by an aunt.
As a seven-year-old girl she had a
vision where the Virgin Mary put a crown on her head.
When she was ten
years old, she saw the crucified Christ in a vision, for the first time.
Her marriage and work
Bridget wanted to enter a
convent, but when she was thirteen she was married off to the courtman
Ulf Gudmarsson.
They lived happily together for twenty-eight years and
had eight children, four sons and four daughters.
She also took care of
some unmarried women with children. Bridget became lady-in-waiting to
Blanche of Namur, the wife of King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden.
She
exerted a strong religious influence over her husband and when their
youngest son died in 1340, they went on pilgrimage to Santiago de
Compostela. Ulf died shortly after their return.
Order of the Most Holy Saviour
After her
husband's death, Bridget sensed Christ calling her to found a new
religious order. She called it the Order of the Most Holy Saviour and
had a double monastery for both nuns and priests.
The king and queen
gave her the state demesne of Vadstena for this foundation in 1346. The
voice in her visions gave very specific directions about the numbers of
nuns who engaged in scholarship and artwork and the priests, deacons and
brothers.
Bridget in Rome
To establish a new convent rule
Bridget set out in 1349 with her daughter Katarina for Rome to seek
papal approval.
The Pope at this time was living at Avignon in France.
She spent many years at a house in Piazza Farnese, in Rome, given to her
by a cardinal.
Along with St Catherine of Siena, she worked hard to
get the Pope to move back to Rome.
Urban V eventually agreed in 1367 and
approved the Bridgettine Rule in 1370.
While in Italy Bridget visited many shrines - Milan, Pavia, Assisi,
Ortona, Bari, Benevento, Pozzuoli, Naples, Salerno, Amalfi and the
Shrine of Saint Michael the Archangel on Mount Gargano.
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
In 1371 Bridget set out
accompanied by her daughter Katarina and her two sons on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem.
One son Charles died at Naples, but despite many
difficulties Bridget and the other two went on to visit the holy places.
When they arrived back in Rome early in 1373, she was already ill and
died in her house at Piazza Farnese on 23rd July.
Burial and canonisation
Four months later, her
children Birger and Katarina brought her remains back to Vadstena.
There
are many stories about miracles that happened along the road.
Pope
Boniface IX canonised her in 1391, She is the only Swedish saint. In
pictures showing her we also see the pen, the ink bottle and the
revelations.
After Katarina went with her mother to Rome, she never saw her
husband again as he died while she was in Rome.
She later became a nun
herself and after her mother's death she was the first abbess of the
foundation at Vadstena. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII recognised Katarina
of Vadstena as a saint.
Her abbey of Vadstena quickly became a well-frequented place for
pilgrims, and was benefactored by kings and queens up to the time of
King Gustav Vasa who introduced Lutheranism to Sweden.
Bridget one of three co-patronesses of Europe
In
1999 Pope John Paul II made her, along with St Catherine of Siena and
Sister Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein), one of three co-patronesses of
Europe.
He praised her firstly as a laywoman doing charitable work with
her husband, her gifts as a teacher at court in Stockholm, her
pilgrimage to Compostela and then her work as a religious founding an
important order.
The spread of the Bridgettine Order
The
Bridgettine Order spread to England. A monk of this order, Richard
Reynolds (1492-1535) was at Syon Abbey, Isleworth, outside London when
Henry VIII broke with Rome and suppressed the monasteries.
Along with
three Carthusian priors he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn
Tree in London in 1535.
The order still has a monastery of nuns at
Marley South Brent, Devon, in the diocese of Plymouth, England.
Other
monasteries are at Uden and Weert in the Netherlands.
There are also
Bridgettine Sisters in Estonia.
The Swedish branch
The largest branch of the
Bridgettine order today is the one that was founded in Rome in 1911 by
Swedish convert to Catholicism Elisabeth Hesselblad.
It was fully
approved by the Holy See on the 7th July 1940 and currently consists of
convents in Europe, Asia and North America.
The Mother House is in
Piazza Farnese, in the house where Bridget once lived.
Mother Tekla
Famiglietti, who has headed the order since 1979, was among those at the
bedside of Pope John Paul II when he died.
The order has been offering to the Catholics and Lutherans living in
Rome, as well as to non-Catholic tourists, a place for cult in the
Church at Piazza Farnese.