A boy king hears Cyprus must change or be wiped out

FAMAGUSTA, Cyprus, October 8, 1372 AD — The king of Cyprus was a boy of fourteen. On October 8, 1372 AD, Saint Bridget of Sweden brought him a message from Christ in the city of Famagusta. She had received it in Jerusalem. It warned that unless the people of Cyprus turned back to Christ, they and their children would be wiped out.

St. Bridget, the widow of a judge in Sweden, lived in Rome. She was on her way home there from a long pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

St. Bridget had already stopped at Famagusta that year, in April, on her way to Jerusalem. Her ship was caught in a storm for five days before it came into harbour there. Queen Eleanor of Aragon welcomed her with open arms.

The queen’s son was the boy king. He had come to the throne after his father was killed. Queen Eleanor asked St. Bridget to pray for her son and for the kingdom. St. Bridget reached Jerusalem in May and prayed for them there.

In Jerusalem she received the revelation about the kingdom. It was meant for the boy king and for his uncle, the Prince of Antioch, who ruled for him. St. Bridget sent it to the two of them first. They were to announce it across the kingdom so that its people would change their ways. But the prince did not fully believe it.

St. Bridget stayed more than four months in Palestine. She fell ill there and never got better. On October 8 she landed at Famagusta again with her son, her daughter and others travelling with her. The queen and the young king welcomed them warmly.

Driven out like a thief

That same day, St. Bridget announced the revelation to the king, the queen, the prince and the whole royal council. It began with what she had seen in Jerusalem. She had been awake and praying when she was carried in spirit into a huge and beautiful palace. Jesus Christ sat there on a throne among his saints.

Then Christ turned to Cyprus. He said he had nothing against the people on the island who were his friends. He spoke instead to everyone there who was against him, as if they were all one person. “O people of Cyprus, my adversary,” Christ said in the revelation, “listen and attend carefully to what I say to you.” Christ reminded 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 put them “among my enemies”. That way, by their hard work and their battles, they could win “a more precious crown” in heaven.

But now, Christ said, the people did whatever they wanted. He told them they “have spat me out of your mouth like a foul and tasteless thing.” They had shut the devil inside their hearts and driven Christ out like a thief.

“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.”

The offer came straight after the threat. “But know for certain,” Christ said in the words she announced, “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.” Friends of Christ on the island had asked for the warning “by their labours and tearful prayers”.

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

In 1374 AD, Famagusta was captured by the Genoese, the people of the city of Genoa. Later, St. Bridget’s messages to kings and rulers were gathered into one book. The heading over the Cyprus revelation said the king and the prince had been told to announce it at once. It went on: “and because they did not, before long they were terribly destroyed by the Genoese.”