St. Bridget warns the king of Cyprus his people must amend or perish

FAMAGUSTA, Cyprus, October 8, 1372 AD — Saint Bridget of Sweden, sick and on her way home from Jerusalem, made public at Famagusta this week a revelation that the uncle of the king of Cyprus had not fully believed. She proclaimed it before the king, his mother, his uncle and the whole royal council. In it Christ called the people of Cyprus his adversary and charged them with driving him out. He threatened to wipe out their generation unless they turned back.

St. Bridget, the widow of a Swedish judge, lived in Rome. The revelation was meant for the boy king and for his uncle, the Prince of Antioch, who governed for him. She sent it to them to proclaim across the kingdom, so that its people would change their ways, but the prince non prebebat fidem perfecte (did not fully believe it).

The court had taken her in once already, on the voyage out. In April, after five days at the mercy of a storm, her ship put in at Famagusta, and Queen Eleanor of Aragon welcomed her with open arms. The king was the queen’s son, a boy of fourteen. He had come to the throne after his father, King Peter, was killed. Queen Eleanor asked St. Bridget to pray for her son and for the kingdom.

St. Bridget entered Jerusalem on Ascension Day, May 13, and prayed for them there. In Jerusalem she received the revelation on the kingdom.

She fell ill during more than four months in Palestine and never recovered. On October 8 she landed at Famagusta again with her son, her daughter and the rest of her party, and the queen and the young king received them warmly.

That day, in the city, St. Bridget proclaimed the revelation before the king, the queen, the prince and tocius regalis consilii (the whole royal council). It began with her own vision at Jerusalem, told in the third person. She was awake and praying when she was carried in spirit into a vast and beautiful palace, where Jesus Christ sat among his saints on an imperial throne. His first words were Ego vere sum ipsa summa caritas (I am truly charity itself).

Then Christ turned to Cyprus. He said he had no complaint against his friends on the island. He spoke instead to all who opposed him, as if they were one man. “O people of Cyprus, my adversary,” Christ said in the revelation, “listen and attend carefully to what I say to you.” Christ reminded the people of what he had done for them: “I have loved you as a father loves his only son.” He had given them a land with everything the body needs. He had also placed them “among my enemies”, so that by their labours and battles they might win “a more precious crown” in heaven.

Next the king and his council heard the charge. Christ said the people now did their own will and “have spat me out of your mouth like a foul and tasteless thing.” They had shut the devil in “the chamber of your heart” and driven Christ out like a thief. He judged that they should be shut out of heaven, away from all his friends, and put in hell for ever “in the midst of my enemies”.

Then came the threat to the kingdom. “If you will not correct and amend yourself,” Christ said in the revelation, “I will so blot out your generation and your offspring in the kingdom of Cyprus that I will spare neither poor nor rich,” until “your memory will slip from the hearts of men as if you had never been born into this world.” After that, he said, he would plant “new plants” in Cyprus that would keep his commandments and love him with their whole heart.

The offer followed at once. “But know for certain,” Christ said in the words she proclaimed, “that whoever of you wishes to correct and amend himself and return to me in humility, I will gladly run to meet him as a good shepherd, lifting him onto my shoulders and carrying him myself back to my sheep.”

The revelation said the people it accused had not earned the warning. Friends of Christ on the island had moved him to send it “by their labours and tearful prayers”. Its last lines returned to St. Bridget at Jerusalem. The vision disappeared, and she stayed at prayer, non modico pauore et admiracione suspensa (held in no small fear and wonder).

St. Bridget sailed on to Naples and reached Rome at the end of the following February. She died there on July 23, 1373 AD.

Famagusta fell to the Genoese in 1374 AD. St. Bridget’s revelations to kings and rulers were later collected in one book. The heading over the Cyprus revelation there said Christ had commanded the king and the prince to proclaim it at once so that the kingdom would change its ways, “and because they did not, before long they were terribly destroyed by the Genoese.”