Notes

¹To be published by Focus Books in their series on mediæval women, edited by Professor Jane Chance.

² Further projects are being undertaken. An essay on St. Birgitta's influence on Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Chaucer's Alice of Bath, with an appended list of Brigittine, Julian and Margery manuscripts and incunabula is appearing in a volume on Margery Kempe, edited by Professor Sandra McEntire for Garland Press. A group of scholars are editing a document in the Florentine State Archives from the Paradiso convent on Saint Birgitta's life, prepared for her canonisation in 1390, the process of which was completed in 1391. In October 1991 we intend to present this edited text to the Brigittine Sixth Centenary in Rome to be held under the auspices of the King of Sweden for the Lutherans and Lech Walesa for the Catholics-the Solidarity Movement began at the Church of Saint Birgitta, Gdansk, Poland. The magnificent editio princeps of Saint Birgitta's Revelationes was printed in Lübeck in 1492 by the Vadstena monks who had the original manuscripts at hand and I hope to publish it in facsimile in 1992.

³ André Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: d'aprés les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome (Palais Farnese), 1981).

⁴ Jean Gerson, Tractatu de Probatione Spiritum in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 9 (Paris: Desclée, 1973): 179. The Cardinal Torquemada of the Inquisition was another of St. Birgitta's champions.

⁵ See Birger Gregersson, Vita S. Birgittae in Scriptores rerum svecicarum medii aevi . 3 (Uppsala: Edvardus Berling, 1876); Birgerus Gregorii Legenda S. Birgitte, ed. Isak Collijn (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksells, 1946); Birger Gregersson, Officium Sancte Birgitte, ed. Carl-Gustaf Undhagen (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksells, 1960); AASS 50, Oct. 4): 370, 373.

⁶ Published in The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS 19 (London: Early English Text Society, 1873): pp. xlvii-lix, ix, originally printed by Richard Pynson, 1516. Thomas Gascoigne also fostered the cult of Archbishop Richard le Scrope who was beheaded Whitmonday, June 8, 1405 by King Henry IV, after giving a speech on the five wounds, typical of Brigittine iconography. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, manuscript Lat. lit. f. 2= Arch f.F.11 and Ashmole Roll 26. Henry V then founded England's Brigittin Syon Abbey in 1415 to expiate the murders by his father of Richard II and Richard de Scrope.   Oxford, Balliol, 225, is S. Birgittae Revelationes with Thomas Gascoigne's marginalia.

⁷ Oxford , Bodleian Library, Digby 172B, fol. 27, marginal notation. R.L. Poole notes that Gascoigne translated the Life of Saint Birgitta into English “for the edification of the sisters of Sion” (Dictionary of National Biography, p. 140). He believed that this was Pynson's 1516 Life.

⁸ Winifred A. Pronger says that the ascription is erroneous because the printed version does not contain the story of “Robert Tenant who was freed from devils by the intervention of St. Bridget... [He] says he included this incident in the vernacular life of St. Bridget which he compiled for the nuns and monks of Syon. The vernacular life which has been printed, however, does not contain the story and so presumably was not Gascoigne's work” (“Thomas Gascoigne” English Historical Review 53 (1938): 624 and 54 (1939): 26).

⁹ Folio 36 v.

¹⁰ Gascoigne says several times in marginal annotations that he wrote a life which was at Syon in England (“Syon in Anglia”). We know, in fact, that the “Annotata quadam de S. Brigitta et miraculis eius” were in the now burnt British Library Cotton Otho A. xiv, at folio 6 of the works of Ivo of Chartres. Today if one requests this manuscript, one receives a box with a few charred fragments of the writings of Hugo of Fleury. Mary Bateson noted that Gascoigne's translation of the life of Bridget which he wrote for the nuns was not in the men's catalogue. This would mean that it would have been in the uncatalogued sister's library (Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898]: p. xiv).

¹¹ Aron Andersson and Anne Marie Franzén, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1975): pp. 18-29, 57. The wrought button or clasp is worked in the same fashion as those seen on Brigittine manuscripts. When the Poor Clares abandoned Saint Lawrence in Panisperna, this relic was taken by them to Saint Lucy in Selci, Rome.

¹² Andersson and Franzén, Birgittareliker,  pp. 33-44, 58-59. Thomas Gascoigne, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 172, fol. 37, describes her death on a miserable board of poverty, covered by her ancient and mended mantle, “coperta de super antiquo et emendatio mantello.”

¹³ Andersson, Birgittareliker, pp. 45-51, 59-60.

¹⁴ Stockholm, Kungl. Biblioteket, manuscript A65.

¹⁵ I have seen the arm reliquary in the chapter room at Altomünster. See A. Bygdén, N.-J. Gejvall and C.-H. Hjortsö, Les reliques de sainte Brigitte de Suède: examen medico-anthropologique et historique (Lund: C.W.K.Gleerup, 1954). Bones removed from Saint Birgitta's skeleton in her shrine were replaced with those from other saints.

¹⁶ London, British Library, manuscript Add. 22,285, Martilogy of Syon, has paste-down written by Thomas Gascoigne (1454) “Pater dominus Robertus Bell Secundus Confessor generalis in Monasterio Syon in Anglia dedit michi Doctori Sacre Theologie Thome Gascoigne magna partem illius ossis sancte Birgitte sponse christi eterne includi in berillo inclusa incapsa seu scrinio argentes et deaurato. et sic inclusum dedi monasterio beatissime semper virginis marie de Osneye, iuxta Universitatem Oxon ...”

¹⁷ Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, manuscript D255, Les Heures de Jean le Maigre dit Boucicault, fol. 42. See Carl Nordenfalk, “Saint Bridget of Sweden as Represented in Illuminated Manuscripts,” in De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss (New York: New York University Press, 1961): pp. 371-393 and 38 figures.

¹⁸ Life of seynt Birgette, fol.c.xx in Here begynneth the kalendre of the newe Legende of England. Richard Pynson, 1516. British Library copy owned by monk of Syon. Prologue, fol. iii, “¶Moreover next after the sayde kalendre foloweth the lyfe of seynt Byrget shortlye abrygged a holy and blessed wydowe/ which lyfe is right expedyent for every maner of persone to loke upon moost in especiall for them that lyve in matrymony or in the estate of wydowhood...” Prefaced with engraving of Saint Birgitta, used also in Richard Whytforde, The Martiloge in Englisshe after the use of the chirche of Salisbury/ & as it is rede in Syon / with addicyons, printed, Wynken de Worde, 1526, and The Myrroure of Oure Lady, printed “by me Richarde Fawkes,” November 4, 1530. Text concludes

¹⁹Gascoigne, like all the other early accounts, has “Sighryd.” This passage is found in the Paradiso document in the Florentine State Archives written at Vadstena in 1390 by Johannes Johannis Kalmarnensis (Monastero di Santa Brigida detto del Paradiso 79, fol. 3). The acceptance by modern scholars of “Ingeborg” as the name of Birgitta's mother is based on the vernacular life written at a late date by Margaret Klausdottir, Abbess of Vadstena. See Magnus O. Celsius, Monasterium Sko in Uplandia ( Stockholm : Wernerianis, 1728): p. 14.

²⁰Acta Sanctorum [henceforth ASS], Oct. 4, 50:377.

²¹ Scriptores rerum svecicarum medii aevi III, [henceforth SRSMA (Uppsala: Edvardus Berling, 1876)]: 189,190; ASS ,  Oct 4:381C; ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 3. On the island of Öland a stone cross still stands, said to have been raised by Bride in memory of this event.

²²The priest who had the vision was likely not the Bishop Hemming of Äbo, Finland, though the latter person played a significant role in Birgitta's life, serving as her envoy to the Pope in 1349.

²³SRSMA, 190, 227; ASF 79, fol. 3.

²⁴SRSMA, 190; ASF 79, fol. 3.

²⁵ Aunt Catherine, who must then have been very elderly, retold these stories at Bride's trial for canonisation: ASS Oct 4:383E.

²⁶Aunt Catherine also saw a lady who was working with Birgitta as she sat embroidering with golden threads but vanished when she entered. She put that fine piece of work away, preserving it as a relic: ASS Oct 4:384A; Jørgensen 1:43.

²⁷ On children's hallucinations, see Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976).

²⁸In Digby 172B, Thomas Gascoigne corrects the error “Ulf Ulfsson” to “Ulf Gudhmarson,” This is another indication that this version reflects the author's corrections and research to the official vita.

²⁹ASS Oct 4:384F-385A ; ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 3v ; Jørgensen 1:63.

³⁰See also ASS Oct 4:392E; SRSMA, 192.

³¹Benedict means “blessing”; ASS Oct 4:387F; SRSMA, 200; Bride uses Augustine, Confessions 3.12, where his mother Monica is told that her tears for her wayward son will save his soul.

³²In the Life of Catharine-likely written by Johannes Johannis Kalmarnenensis and sent to Syon Abbey-this scene is illuminated with a drawing of two delicate hands in elegant sleeves plucking a bunch of grapes (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 172B, fols. 36-36v ). Thomas Gascoigne has heavily annotated this vita and drawn from it these episodes concerning Catherine.

³³ASS Mar III [henceforth Mar 3], “De S. Catherina Svecica, filia S. Birgittae Vastenae in Svecia,” 3:503-531; 515D; Oxford Bodleian Library, Digby 172B, fols. 36-36 v . Saint Birgitta's daughter, who oversaw her mother's canonisation, was in turn canonised a saint. See Stockholm, Kungl. Biblioteket, manuscript A93, Processus canonizationis beatae Katarinae 1475-1477, originally bound at Vadstena in Italian materials, red damask with pomegranate pattern, ornamented in gold and silver, lined with green linen, covered with green silk, sealed with four seals. The manuscript had been in the Birgitta Hospital in Rome, was stolen and taken to Krakow in 1589 and restored to Sweden in 1865: Processus seu negocium canonizacionis B. Katerine de Vadstena, ed. Isak Collijn (Hafniaei: Einar Munksgaard, 1943).

³⁴Bride's dead mother and daughter perhaps shared the same name.

³⁵Bride, who had not consented to the marriage, refused to come to her daughter Martha's wedding. Pregnant with Cecilia, the child in her womb said, “Mother, do not kill me.” Bride then dressed and went to the wedding and later Martha became governess (magistra aulae) to Queen Margaret of Norway (ASS Oct 4:388A; SRSMA , 192; ASS Oct 4:469E; ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 3 v). See also British Library, Cotton, Claudius B.1, fol. 2, “Fell in one tyme that she was in dispaire of hir life in travellinge of childe. and sodanli there entirde one woman bpe faireste that ever sho saw clothed in white silke. and laide hir hans on all the partis of hir bodi. and als sone as that woman was went furth againe sho was delivered withouten any perell. And sho wiste wele it was oure ladi.” Elizabeth Makowski discusses such vows of chastity as requiring the consent of both spouses in “Canon Law and Medieval Conjugal Rights,” Journal of Medieval History 3 (1977), 99-114.

³⁶SRSMA , 192-193. On this pilgrimage the Cistercian monk Svenung had a vision of Bride, crowned with seven crowns whose light obscured the sun. The sun represented King Magnus and the seven gifts of the Spirit, Bride: ASS Oct 4:398E, 514. Bride and her husband also went on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Olav in Trondheim, Norway (ASS Oct 4:398A), thus repeating what had been done by Birger Persson and by his father, grandfather and great-grandfather (Jørgensen 1:99).

³⁷ Her husband placed his wedding ring on her finger while he lay dying, but she shortly removed it from her finger, saying her love died with him and she wished now to dedicate herself to God: SRSMA, 227; Jørgensen 1:129-130.

³⁸ ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 4. Thus does God speak to Abraham: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee” (Gen. 12:1) . This was the formula for mediæval pilgrimage.

³⁹ASS Oct 4:374F; ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 5.

⁴⁰SRSMA, 204-205; ASF Paradiso 79, fols. 4-4v . See Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

⁴¹ SRSMA , 204-205; ASF Paradiso 79, vol. 4v. Gentian has a blue flower and is of medicinal use.

⁴² ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 4v.

⁴³At Bride's process for sainthood, Catherine and Peter Olavi remembered her work visiting the sick, feeding the poor, washing the feet of travelers, providing dowries for young girls who wished to marry or enter convents, rescuing harlots from their trade, and caring for the dying (ASS Oct 4:392F, 393AB; ASF Paradiso 79, fols. 4v. -5; Jørgensen 1:54-55).

⁴⁴The major vision which prompted her writings came on the shores of a Swedish lake when God said, “Thu skalt wara min brudh”-“You shall be my Bride”-and also told her to consult Master Mathias, her confessor and tutor. At these words, Bride “in corde suo sentiebat esse quoddam vividum, ac si infans ibi jaceret, volvens et revolvens se” [in her heart she felt something as if it were living, and as if it were a child, turning and turning around]. Note that this maternal metaphor is written in the male, celibate language of Latin: Jørgensen 1:137, 278, 284.

⁴⁵His son, Birger, later gave a chalice to Vadstena with the inscription: “BIRGERUS MILES FILIUS SCE BIRGITTE ME DEDIT AD ALTARE BTE VIRGINIS” with a Gothic Virgin and Child at the base (Andreas Lindblom, “Altar Kärl,” in Birgitta utställningen 1918, Beskrifrande förteckning öfrer utställda föremål , ed. Isak Collijn and Andreas Lindblom (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksells, 1918), p. 31, Plate II).

⁴⁶The text mistakenly says “twenty-eight.”

⁴⁷See Uppsala University Library, Ms. C86 in which Alfonso of Jaen gives her pilgrimage itinerary to Jerusalem and her visions, bound with a copy of John of Climacus' Scala virtutum; See also Ms. C89 (the Vadstena Diary) for a chronology of the events of Saint Birgitta's life; Ms. C251 for notes made in Rome and preserved in Sweden concerning Brigittine life and miracles; Curia Generale, O.F.M.: Liber de miraculis beate Brigide de Suecia (Codex S. Laurentii de Panisperna in Roma, 1374); Vatican, Ottob. lat. 90: Acta et processus canonizationes S. Birgitta de Swedia, 1391; Stockholm, A14: Acta et processionus canonizationes S. Birgittae de Swecia.

⁴⁸Thomas Gascoigne, Bodleian MS Digby 172, fol. 37, notes that she died on the trestle board on which she customarily ate and wrote her books, although Sister Patricia, O.S.S., Vadstena, considers that this is an embroidery upon the truth. It is still in the Casa di Santa Brigida in Rome, pieces of it treasured in reliquaries. It thus supported not only her book but also her body, conjoining flesh and blood with parchment and ink.

⁴⁹British Library, Ms. Julius F.11, fol. 254, notes that she died on the day after the feast of Mary Magdalen (ed. Cummings, p. xvi). Catherine of Sweden then became  abbess of Vadstena and negotiated the papal bull for the Ordo salvatoris and the canonisation of her mother--and became herself included in the process (SRSMA, 241-244).

⁵⁰ Codex Saint Lawrence in Panisperna, fol. 23; ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 6v.

⁵¹Her name was Francesca Sabella (Jørgensen 2:303) and as Francesca di Panisperna, she would be a witness at the process (Codex Saint Lawrence in Panisperna, fol. 23v, Vatican Ms. Ottob. lat. 90, fol. 1v) . The healing from a stomach disorder mirror reverses Birgitta's terminal illness from a stomach disorder.

⁵²Her body was garbed not as a Brigittine--a habit Bride never wore-but as a Poor Clare, as if she were a member of The Third Order of St. Francis: she normally dressed in black and white, the attire of a widow. The sarcophagus in which she was buried survives today at Saint Lawrence in Panisperna; it is marble sculpted with putti, little winged cupids. Catherine, her daughter, was prepared to boil the cadaver with aromatic herbs to render the bones clean but found this unnecessary (SRSMA, 224).

⁵³On their journey, Catherine and Birger stopped at Gdansk before proceeding on by way of Söderköping to Vadstena: ASS Oct 4:460A, D; Mar 3:513B. The miracles-both in Rome and Vadstena-justified Catherine's return to Rome to negotiate her mother's canonisation as a saint. While travelling through Prussia on her way home, Catherine became ill and died at Vadstena on the feast of the Annunciation, March 24, 1378. Miracles similar to those associated with her mother were also attributed to her (ASS Mar 3:518B-519).

⁵⁴ASF Paradiso 79, fol. 7 mentions also that the mother gave a wax image of her child an ex voto to the shrine.

⁵⁵In actual fact, some members of the Brigittina Order-among them Johannes Johannis Kalmarnensis-claimed that her Revelationes should be given the same credence as the Gospels. The 1433 Council of Basle determined that this claim was rash, untrue and inadmissable but it did not impugn Birgitta's sanctity, canonisation, cult or Rule. See Eric Colledge, “ Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organizer of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda” Mediæval Studies 18 (1956): 19-48.