Mater Misericordia
The Visions of St. Bridget of Sweden
When I was a young, intellectually curious undergraduate, my rediscovery of the Faith coincided with a deep interest in literature and language, and particularly in the attempt to communicate religious experiences that are, essentially, ineffable. Looking to study the writings of the Middle Ages in graduate school, I found myself a semi-finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. I had outlined a research project to study the use of language in the writings of female medieval mystics—women like St. Hildegard of Bingen and St. Catherine of Siena. Female medieval mysticism was a “hot topic” among scholars in those days, and my intention was to provide a corrective to the emerging and dominant radical feminist interpretations of the lives and writings of these women.
My interview took place around a conference table filled with former Rhodes Scholars in an office building in my home state of Michigan. Though predictably nervous, I thought the conversation was off to a good start, and then one man—a hard-headed auto executive who spoke slowly and with precision—leaned forward, raised his hand to his chin, and said, “I read somewhere that Catherine of Siena levitated. Do you think that’s really true?”
Thus ended my aspirations to be a Rhodes Scholar.
To the overly rational, scientific modern mind, the lives of the saints, especially those who experienced mystical visions, are not simply a little odd—they’re positively crazy. In the case of St. Birgitta of Sweden (1303-1373), also known as St. Bridget, or, in England, St. Bride, this is especially so. Devoted to meditating on the Passion of Christ since an initial vision at the age of 10, she received a particular vision informing her of the exact number of blows (5,480) Our Lord received during His Passion, along with instructions for daily prayers honoring each wound over the course of a year. When the Blessed Mother told her in a vision that she needed to learn Latin and difficulties presented themselves, St. Agnes came in visions to teach her. When the rule for her new order, The Order of the Most Holy Savior (later known simply as the Brigittines), was dictated to her verbatim by Our Lord, she spent the next twenty years (1350—1370) doggedly petitioning the Pope to accept it (he eventually did). She was also granted numerous visions of souls in both Purgatory and Hell, depictions which rival in intensity and terror anything imagined by Dante.
It was Martin Luther who nicknamed St. Bridget die tolle Brigit—“that crazy Bridget”—and made light of her revelations and prophecies. He, along with Henry VIII, ushered in the disastrous era that saw the suppression or destruction of all the major Brigittine religious houses in England and Europe, including the thriving Syon Abbey in England, from which comes an early Middle English translation of the original Latin account of her visions: the Liber Celestis, or Heavenly Book. (Though poverty was embraced by the Brigittines, their joint religious houses were allowed an unlimited number of books, and St. Thomas More considered Syon Abbey to have the best library in all of Europe.) It is this Middle English version of St. Bridget’s visions, published in one volume by the Early English Text Society, through which I became introduced to the life and writings of this amazing saint.
Despite her unparalleled popularity and her influence on art, spirituality, and culture in the Middle Ages, many Catholics—even Catholic scholars—remain unfamiliar with her life and writings. If they know this widowed mother of eight at all, it is perhaps through her powerful meditations on the Passion. Yet for all their outrageousness—I would argue because of it—the life and writings of St. Bridget are intensely edifying and instructive, and her visions speak with particular urgency to our own fractured age.
St. Bridget lived in a time of widespread illness and contagion (only roughly 20% of the population of her home territory of Uppland survived the Black Plague), of pervasive immorality even among her own family members, of Church corruption at every level, of the collapse of law and order, even in major cities like Rome. Her chief task, as she experienced it through her revelations, was to elevate the moral tone of the age. “How stands the world now?” Christ asks his spiritual daughter at the outset of her visionary journey. The saint responds: “It stands as an open sack to whom all run, and as a man running who does not heed what will happen.” One would be hard-pressed to find a better description of the lives of many in our own day. In Conversations with an Angel, a vision which St. Bridget says was dictated to her by an angel, she describes the degradation of Rome:
Oh, my daughter, this city of Rome was in times past a city in which dwelt the warriors of Christ, its streets were strewn as if with gold and silver. But now all its precious sapphires are lying in the mire. . . . Toads and vipers build here.
St. Bridget was deeply concerned with the salvation of the least soul on earth—her early work in Sweden was for the care of unwed mothers and their infants, and her final vision articulates Christ’s rebuke to the slaveowners of Naples for not baptizing their “thralls” and instructing them in the Faith:
The maisters will noght lerne thame ne informe thame in the cristen mannes bileue, ne how thai should have thame in resaiuinge of the sacraments; and so thai can noght have contricion and shrift as to be restorid to grace. (The masters will not teach or inform them in Christian men’s beliefs, nor do they allow them to receive the sacraments, so they cannot have contrition and penance in order to be restored to grace).
St. Bridget came from a long line of legal experts—her father, Birgir Persson, was “Lawspeaker” for the Uppland district of Sweden—and her visions emphasize Our Lord’s role as “domesman” or judge of mankind. Many of her visions take the form of a trial, with demons coming forward to condemn and “claim” the soul because of his iniquity on earth. But time and again, St. Bridget presents God’s mercy, often at the last minute and through slender but sincere acts of contrition, charity, or penance on the part of the sinner, as a stay against damnation. In her visions, the essential role of Our Lady’s intercession, as well as the prayers and petitions of the Saints in Heaven and pious folks on earth, is repeatedly emphasized. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the beautiful devotional image of Mary as the mater misericordia, or Mother of Mercy, is largely the result of St. Bridget’s compelling visions.
In one revelation, a fiend accuses a soul: “O you rightful Judge, grant me this soul, and hear his works; for now his life is near the end. Allow me therefore to punish the body with the soul, until they are separated.” The fiend goes further, suggesting that if Our Lady “had sinned mortally and died without goodly contrition, you love justice so that her soul should never have got to Heaven, but it should have been with us in Hell. Therefore, Judge, why do you not condemn this soul to us, that we may punish it after his works.”
But with this impious speculation, the fiend has gone too far. At these words, a blaring sound of the trumpet is heard, and a voice cries out: “Be still and listen angels, souls, and fiends, to what the Mother of God speaks.” The Virgin then appears before the Throne of Judgment, “having under her mantle as it had been some great private things,” and chastises the demons: “O, you enemies, you persecute mercy and without charity you love justice.” She then says: “Yet see what I have under my mantle.” When she opens her mantle, on one side “appeared as like a little church, in which seemed to be some men of religion” and on the other “women, and men, friends of God . . . they all cried with one voice saying, ‘Have mercy, merciful Lord.’” The demons, before shrinking away, attempt to trivialize this intercession of religious, saints, and Our Lady: “‘We see,’ said they, ‘that in the world a little water and great air balance out the anger of God. And so by your prayer is God weighed to mercy with charity.’”
St. Bridget makes it clear that intercessory prayer is anything but “a little water and great air.” Of course, the soul, corrupted by sin, must cooperate with and desire the mercy offered by God and mediated by Our Lady and the saints. Christ’s bitter sacrifice on the Cross for the salvation of a sinful mankind reminds us that salvation is available to even the most vile of sinners. When St. Bridget, toward the close of her life, journeys on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Christ appears on the Throne of Majesty and tells her that He
loued mankind als mekill now as that time that he died on the crosse. For, if it were possibill, yete wald he dye for mannes saule. (He loved mankind as much now as when he died on the cross. If it were possible, he would die again for man’s soul.)
It is understandably difficult for Christians to be reminded that God’s grace and mercy are extended even to those who are the most notorious public sinners of our age, be they celebrities, politicians, or prelates. In one of her most extended visions, “The Father of Heaven showed to Saint Birgitta a severe judgment upon a king who was unkind and disobedient to the counsels of God.” In this vision, souls in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory come forward to ask wrath upon the king and all temporal rulers who mislead multitudes and cause widespread suffering. Then follows Abraham and the Patriarchs, the Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, all of whom cry judgment upon the rulers who have disobeyed God and His precepts. After this extended vision, which runs to several pages and presents overwhelming evidence of the condemnation of these earthly rulers, there occurs a brief exchange which, in understated yet powerful language, alters everything:
After all this, the Virgin who sat by the Lamb said: “O most sweet Lord, have mercy upon them.”
To her the Judge answered, “It is not right,” he said, “to deny you any thing. Therefore they who cease from sin and do worthy penance shall find mercy; and judgment shall be turned away from them.”
Saint Bridget was canonized in 1391, just eighteen years after her death. When Dame Margery Kempe visited St. Bridget’s former apartment in Rome not long after the canonization, she spoke there with Catherine of Flanders, who had been a longtime serving maid of St. Bridget and still occupied her mistress’ former home. Catherine described to Dame Margery the saint’s perpetually joyful countenance: “sche was goodly and meke to euery creatur and that sche had a lawhyng cher” (she was gentle and kind to every creature and she had a ‘laughing cheer,’ or cheerful face). To maintain such cheer in the midst of constant trials and widespread corruption is the task of every aspiring saint, and indeed every Christian. As St. Bridget’s writings remind us, it is a task made all the lighter by the contemplation of the intercessory mantle of Our Lady and the boundless mercy of Our Lord.
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