Claire L. Sahlin. Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy

Scandinavian Studies, Summer, 2002 by Marianne E. Kalinke

Studies in Medieval Mysticism 3. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell P, 2001. Pp. xvi 266.

The subject of Claire Sahlin's monograph, Birgitta of Sweden, is one of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages who over a period of nearly thirty years served as mouthpiece of God, denouncing moral corruption and chastising both secular and ecclesiastical leaders for their depravity. Sahlin seeks to demonstrate Birgitta of Sweden's understanding of her vocation as mediatrix of the word of God; to analyze the relationship between Birgitta's charismatic authority and clerical authority; and to examine Birgitta's role in the debates concerning the ability of women to mediate the divine word (x). The study throws light on Birgitta's success in her role as channel of God despite "patriarchal restrictions imposed on women's public religious expressions" (x). Sahlin analyzes the major themes and images in Birgitta's Revelations and demonstrates that Birgitta understood herself to be an authentic visionary, chosen by God, like the prophets of old, as His voice on earth. She saw herself as a vessel of the divine word, authorized to counsel ecclesiastical and secular leaders and to chastise them for their depravity. Her authority to do so rested on her understanding of herself as God's messenger.

The author points out that as reflections of Birgitta's thoughts and visions, the Revelations pose certain difficulties, inasmuch as her voice was "mediated through clerics who acted as scribes, translators, and editors of the texts" (26). Birgitta was wont to record her visions in Swedish and then have her confessors translate them into Latin. According to the vita prepared in support of her canonization, the revelations were translated faithfully and submitted to Birgitta for her approval (27). Nonetheless, scholars have been able to show that explanatory and other details were added to her revelations, for example, in order to make them more intelligible to Roman or French clerics or to make them more theologically precise. While one must conclude that the extant texts do not transmit Birgitta's "precise words or exact reflections of her visions and thoughts" (32), and despite evidence of clerical interference, Birgitta was believed to have "maintained firm control over the confessors' work of revision" (33). Consequently, while Sahlin assumes that the Revelations were the result of "a complex collaboration between Birgitta and her confessors," that they were "the product of many overlapping voices," they nonetheless "depict her thoughts and inspired messages" (33). Indeed, Sahlin compares the written expression of Birgitta's revelations to that of the evangelists,

as she transformed "inspired visions and spiritual insights into a suitable written text under the guidance of the Holy Spirit" (73).

What do the Revelations disclose about the saint's visionary experiences, her calling, and her prophetic authority? Although the word prophet is never specifically applied to Birgitta, she is nevertheless depicted as mediatrix of God's voice, as one privy to hidden knowledge of the past, present, and future. A large part of the Revelations is devoted to comminatory prophecy, in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, as Birgitta voices God's anger at the pervasive iniquity of the age and exhorts mankind to repent. Yet Birgitta is not only God's prophet, but also his bride; she played the role of devoted wife and mother who was called to bear "spiritual offspring" for Christ (52). She revealed that she had experienced a "mystical pregnancy" on Christmas Eve, that she felt "as if a living child were in her heart turning itself around and around" (83). As Sahlin notes, Birgitta's experience comports with that of other medieval women, such as the Dominican nun Christina Ebner of Engelthal, who reported visions and dreams in which they believed themselves to be pregnant with Christ and to give birth to him (87). Therefore, Birgitta's experience must be understood in the context of the "intense somatic piety of medieval women visionaries," as "an ecstatic moment of spiritual intimacy between her soul as mother and Christ as a child" (91); in this respect she seems to have identified her gift of and call to prophecy with that of the Virgin Mary (98).

Although Birgitta submitted to her spiritual directors, the clergy, for guidance and in their function as ministers of the sacraments, her gift of prophecy nonetheless gave her an extraordinary authority that permitted role reversals, as she delivered advice for the administration of the sacrament of penance (126), for example, or revealed a formula of exorcism given her by Christ (128), so that she may be said to have participated with the clergy in the healing of the possessed. Nonetheless, Birgitta also had detractors, notably Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, who considered women susceptible to delusion and believed in strict clerical control over religious women. In the case of Birgitta, her lay status was problematic as she became involved in the spiritual lives of others and intervened in controversial political and ecclesiastical affairs (136-7). Her detractors even went so far as to subject her to physical abuse or, in the case of jealous members of the Swedish nobility, to accuse her of witchcraft (147-8).