Pope Boniface IX canonizes St. Bridget, who urged popes home from Avignon

ROME, October 1391 AD — Early in October 1391 AD, at St. Peter’s in Rome, Pope Boniface IX declared Saint Bridget of Sweden a saint, eighteen years after she died in the city. His bull of canonization, the letter that carries the decree to every bishop, tells her life as the life of the “valiant woman” of the Book of Proverbs.

St. Bridget, a Swedish noblewoman and widow, wanted the popes back in Rome. She lived in the city from 1349 AD until her death in 1373 AD, but for most of those years the popes lived at Avignon, beyond the Alps. Pope Urban V brought the papal court back to Rome in 1367 AD and was preparing to leave again in 1370 AD. St. Bridget went to see Pope Urban V at Montefiascone and gave him a revelation, received in Rome, that warned against the move. Pope Gregory XI moved the court back to Rome for good only after her death.

Since 1378 AD the Church has had two rival popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon, and Pope Boniface IX is the Roman one.

Every church bell in Rome rang through the night before the ceremony. In the morning, in the papal chapel at the Vatican, Pope Boniface IX sang Solemn High Mass. Afterwards he entered St. Bridget’s name in the book of saints, and at midnight thirty thousand lamps were lit in St. Peter’s. The decree pronounces that St. Bridget “sanctam esse” (is a saint), to be venerated as a saint by the whole Church.

The bull’s account of her life begins with God as a farmer visiting his vineyard, the Church. To work in it, he brought “mulierem fortem” (a valiant woman) “from far off and from the farthest borders”, “so that some good might come even from the North”. The words come from Proverbs: “Who shall find a valiant woman? far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.”

St. Bridget was born to noble parents of the royal line of the Swedish kings. The bull then tells a story that Catholic Tradition has kept. Her mother, pregnant with her, survived a shipwreck. That night a figure in shining clothes told the mother, “Salvata es propter bonum quod habes in utero” (You have been saved because of the good you carry in your womb).

St. Bridget wanted with all her heart to serve God as a virgin, but at thirteen her parents made her marry Ulf, a nobleman. The young couple agreed at first to live together chastely, following the example of Tobias and Sara in the Book of Tobit. Later they lived as husband and wife and prayed for children who would serve God.

While Ulf was alive, St. Bridget fed twelve poor people in her house every day and waited on them at table. On Thursdays she washed their feet. She paid to repair many hospitals in Sweden that had fallen into ruin. The bull puts it in the words of Proverbs: she “opened her hands to the needy and stretched out her palms to the poor” and kept watch over her house “lest she eat her bread idle”.

St. Bridget and Ulf made the pilgrimage together to the shrine of St. James at Compostela. Ulf died after they came home, while the two of them were planning to enter separate monasteries.

From then on the bull calls her the widow: “the holy widow”, “this noble widow”. Forewarned by the Holy Spirit, St. Bridget left Sweden for Rome and Jerusalem, and she reached Rome in 1349 AD.

In Rome she sat unknown among the poor pilgrims who took alms at the convent of St. Lawrence in Panisperna. She walked to the city’s churches in rain, snow and hail when she could have ridden.

In July 1373 AD St. Bridget called her son Birger and her daughter, St. Catherine of Vadstena, to her side, made her confession and received the last sacraments. Mass was said in front of her. After she had adored the Body of Christ, St. Bridget raised her eyes and said, “In manus tuas Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit), and died.

Her body was carried to St. Lawrence, where the crowds were so large that she could not be buried for two days. At the funeral a Roman woman who had been born with a large swelling in her throat drew the dead saint’s hand around her neck. Soon afterwards the swelling went down by a miracle of God.

There Pope Boniface IX breaks off. A full list of the miracles, he writes, would keep him far too long from his many other duties. Anyone who wants to know them can look for “the book in which they are faithfully recorded”.

The bull sets St. Bridget’s feast on July 23, the day of her death. It grants an indulgence to penitents who visit her tomb on the feast at Vadstena, the abbey she founded in Sweden. In the years that followed, the canonization added greatly to the fame and wealth of Vadstena.

At its close, Pope Boniface IX asks the bishops to pray that God, moved by St. Bridget’s prayers and merits, will grant “that peace which the world cannot give”.