The Bridgettines, or Birgittines, formally known as the Order of the Most Holy Saviour (Latin : Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris; abbreviated OSsS), is a monastic religious order of the Catholic Church founded by Saint Birgitta (Bridget of Sweden) in 1344 and approved by Pope Urban V in 1370. [1] [2] They follow the Rule of Saint Augustine. There are today several different branches of Bridgettines.
The first monastery of the order was founded in 1369 at the former royal castle of Vadstena. [3] St. Bridget's granddaughter, Lady Ingegerd Knutsdotter, was Abbess of Vadstena from 1385 to 1403. Upon her death on 14 September 1412, direct descent from St. Bridget became extinct. This opened the medieval concept of "Bridget's spiritual children", members of the order founded by her, to be her true heirs.
The order spread widely in Sweden and Norway, and played a remarkable part in promoting culture and literature in Scandinavia; to this is to be attributed the fact that the motherhouse at Vadstena, by Lake Vättern, was not suppressed till 1595 even though the Protestant Reformation had been widespread in Scandinavia. By 1515, with significant royal patronage, there were 27 houses, 13 of them in Scandinavia. Bridgettine houses soon spread into other lands, reaching an eventual total of 80.
In England, the Bridgettine monastery of Syon Abbey at Isleworth, Middlesex, was founded and royally endowed by King Henry V in 1415, and became one of the most fervent, most influential and materially best endowed religious communities in the country until its Dissolution under King Henry VIII. One of the monks of the community, Richard Reynolds, O.Ss.S., was among the first members of the English clergy to be executed as a traitor for his refusal to accept the Oath of Supremacy. He was canonized as a martyr by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
Syon Abbey was among the few religious houses restored during Queen Mary I's reign (1553–1558), when nearly twenty members of the old community were re-established there in 1557. Upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth I and the ensuing persecution of Catholics by the English Crown, the Bridgettine monastic community left England, first for the Low Countries, then, after many vicissitudes, to Rouen in France, and finally, in 1594, to Lisbon. [4]
One of the exiled community's recruits during Elizabeth's reign was Elizabeth Sander, known as a writer. [4] She returned to England in 1578 only to be imprisoned and then escaped in 1580. She was to escape from imprisonment in Winchester Castle before she surrendered. She eventually returned to her community in Lisbon, where she died. The community remained in Lisbon (where the last monk of the community died), recruiting new members from England, until 1861, when they returned to England.
Syon Abbey in Devon continued as the only English religious community that had existed without interruption since pre-Reformation times. In 2004 the surviving medieval books of the monastic library were entrusted for safekeeping to the University of Exeter. Among the texts preserved was the Showing of Love by Julian of Norwich and The Orcherd of Syon, which translated Catherine of Siena's Dialogue. Syon Abbey's Tudor gatepost in marble, on which parts of St Richard Reynolds' body were placed, was brought by the nuns into their exile, and then returned with them to England. This was later given to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Exeter.
Virtually all the Northern European Bridgettine monasteries (the bulk of the order) were destroyed during the Reformation.
As of 2013 there were 800 members. [5] The distinctive part of the Bridgettine veil for the professed sisters is the crown, called the "Crown of the Five Holy Wounds". It has five red marks, one at each joint, to recall the Five Wounds of Christ on the Cross. The monks wear a red cross with the image of a Eucharistic host at the center on the right breast of their cloak. The order has its own proper Rite for the Canonical Hours, called the Office of Our Lady. Most houses of the order support themselves by providing bed and breakfast hospitality to guests at standard industry rates.
The original medieval branch today consists of four independent monasteries:
Marina de Escobar founded a Spanish branch in the 1630s, consisting only of nuns, following a slightly modified version of the St Bridget's Rule. It currently consists of four independent monasteries in Spain, four in Mexico and one in Venezuela.
The largest branch of the Bridgettines today is the one founded by Saint Elizabeth Hesselblad, a nurse, on 8 September 1911, and consisting of religious sisters dedicated to providing hospitality for those in need of rest. It was fully approved by the Holy See on 7 July 1940, and currently consists of convents in Europe, Asia and North America.
The motherhouse of the order is located on the Piazza Farnese, Rome, Italy, the house where Birgitta had once lived (see Santa Brigida in Rome). On 28 October 2016, Fabia Kattakayam was selected as the order's new Abbess General. [9] [10] She is the first person of Indian descent to serve in this position. [11] As in all the houses of the order, this convent offers accommodation. Protestant services also are held in the crypt, as the sisters have ecumenical outreach as part of their charism. After the Reformation a printshop was set up to print Swedish-language Catholic works.
Controversy arose in 2002 over the treatment of the Indian sisters who form a large percentage of the order. This became public in 2002 when six Indian sisters from different houses of the order in Italy fled and approached the Benedictine Abbot of Subiaco. At the abbot's request, Bishop Silvio Cesare Bonicelli of Parma issued a special decree, permitting the fugitive sisters enter a monastery of Benedictine nuns. As a consequence, the abbot, was subsequently required to resign from office by the Holy See, a highly unusual event. [5]
Iver Heath, in Buckinghamshire, was the first foundation of the new branch of the Bridgettine Order in the UK and has been a house of prayer and provided hospitality since 1931. In 1999 Bridgettine sisters took up residence in a newly built convent at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham. [12]
The original Bridgettine Order was open to both men and women, and was dedicated to devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ. It was a "double order" each monastery having attached to it a small community of monks to act as chaplains, but under the government of the abbess.
St Bridget's Rule stipulated:
the number of choir nuns shall not exceed sixty, with four lay sisters; the priests shall be thirteen, according to the number of the thirteen apostles, of whom Paul the thirteenth was not the least in toil; then there must be four deacons, who also may be priests if they will, and they are the figure of the four principal Doctors, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory and Jerome, then eight lay brothers, who with their labors shall minister necessaries to the clerics, therefore counting three-score sisters, thirteen priests, four deacons, and the eight servitors, the number of persons will be the same as the thirteen Apostles and the seventy two-disciples.
The nuns were strictly enclosed, emphasizing scholarship and study, but the monks were also preachers and itinerant missionaries. The individual monasteries were each subject to the local bishop, and, in honor of the Virgin Mary, they were ruled by an abbess.
An innovative community of Brigittine monks is located in Amity, Oregon, at the Monastery of Our Lady of Consolation. Founded on 16 March 1976, by Brother Benedict Kirby, O.Ss.S., it is the only Brigittine monastery of men in the world and the first since the nineteenth century when they were dispersed, largely due to the European wars. The monks here do not ordinarily receive Holy Orders, following the original pattern of monasticism. The monastery has the canonical status of a priory sui juris (one which is autonomous) and is supported mainly through sales of their chocolate fudges and truffles. [13]
The Most Holy Saviour Fraternity was founded in Mexico on 14 September 2012, and was confirmed by the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the West, Mexico on 26 August 2013, in the city of San Luis Potosí.[ citation needed ]
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent. The term is often used interchangeably with religious sisters who do take simple vows but live an active vocation of prayer and charitable work.
Bridget of Sweden, OSsS, born Birgitta Birgersdotter and also known as Birgitta of Vadstena, was a Swedish Catholic mystic and the founder of the Bridgettines. Outside of Sweden, she was also known as the Princess of Nericia and was the mother of Catherine of Vadstena.
The dissolution of the monasteries, occasionally referred to as the suppression of the monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541, by which Henry VIII disbanded Catholic monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland; seized their wealth; disposed of their assets; and provided for their former personnel and functions.
Catherine of Sweden, Katarina av Vadstena, Catherine of Vadstena or Katarina Ulfsdotter was a Swedish noblewoman. She is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Her father was Ulf Gudmarsson, Lord of Ulvåsa, and her mother was Saint Bridget of Sweden.
Syon Abbey, also called simply Syon, was a dual monastery of men and women of the Bridgettine Order, although it only ever had abbesses during its existence. It was founded in 1415 and stood, until its demolition in the 16th century, on the left (northern) bank of the River Thames within the parish of Isleworth, in the county of Middlesex, on or near the site of the present Georgian mansion of Syon House, today in the London Borough of Hounslow. It was named after the biblical holy "City of David which is Zion", built on the eponymous Mount Zion.
A double monastery is a monastery combining separate communities of monks and of nuns, joined in one institution to share one church and other facilities. The practice is believed to have started in the East at the dawn of monasticism. It is considered more common in the monasticism of Eastern Christianity, where it is traceable to the 4th century. In the West the establishment of double monasteries became popular after Columbanus and sprang up in Gaul and in Anglo-Saxon England. Double monasteries were forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, though it took many years for the decree to be enforced. Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans. The 14th-century Bridgittines were purposely founded using this form of community.
A canoness is a member of a religious community of women, historically a stable community dedicated to the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours in a particular church. The name corresponds to a canon, the male equivalent, and both roles share a common historical origin. As with the canons, there are two types: canonesses regular, who follow the Rule of St Augustine, and secular canonesses, who follow no monastic rule of life.
The Abbey Pax Mariae, more commonly referred to as Vadstena Abbey, is situated on Lake Vättern in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Stockholm and is a monastery of nuns within the Bridgettine Order. It was active from 1346 until 1595 and has been active since 1963, regaining status as an autonomous abbey in 1991.
Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad, OSsS, was a Swedish Catholic religious sister who founded a new, active, branch of the Bridgettines known as the Bridgettine Sisters. Hesselblad is recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations due to her efforts in World War II saving the lives of Jews during the genocide of the Holocaust.
Mariager Abbey was a Bridgettine abbey founded in 1430 which became an important pilgrimage site, in the present town of Mariager in northern central Jutland, Denmark.
Maribo Abbey, established in 1416, was the first Bridgettine monastery in Denmark and became one of the most important Danish abbeys of the late Middle Ages. It was located in the present town of Maribo on the island of Lolland in southern Denmark. The monastery is in ruins, but the abbey church still remains in use as Maribo Cathedral.
Santa Brigida is a convent church dedicated to St Bridget of Sweden and the Swedish national church in Rome. It was also known as Santa Brigida a Campo de' Fiori since it was built on what was then part of Campo de' Fiori but is now the urbanistically distinct Piazza Farnese.
Ingegerd Knutsdotter was a Swedish nun and noble, the first official abbess of the Bridgettine Abbey of Vadstena in 1385/88–1403.
Katarina Bengtsdotter Gylta, in Latin: Catharina Benedicta, was a Swedish nun of the Bridgettine Order, Abbess of Vadstena Abbey in 1553–1564 and 1565–1593. She was the second last abbess in Sweden and Vadstena Abbey after the reformation.
Marienbrunn Abbey also called Fons Mariae and Triumphus Marie was a double convent for women and men of the order of the Bridgettines, situated in Gdańsk between 1391 and 1833. It was the first convent of the order founded outside of Sweden, and the second convent of the order altogether.
Karin Johansdotter, was a Swedish Roman Catholic nun of the Bridgettine Order. She was the last nun in Sweden after the Swedish Reformation.
Anna Germundsdotter or Girmundsdotter was a Swedish nun of the Bridgettine order and writer. She served as abbess of Vadstena Abbey from 1518 until 1529.
Elizabeth Sander was an English Bridgettine nun and writer. She joined the Syon Abbey nuns, who were in religious exile, and then returned to England where she was imprisoned and escaped in 1580. She then escaped from imprisonment in Winchester Castle before she surrendered to her jailors. She died in Lisbon in the only English community of nuns to survive unbroken after the dissolution of the monasteries.
Katherine Palmer was abbess of Syon Abbey during its peregrination in the Netherlands. She was responsible for preserving the only English religious community to continue unbroken through the Reformation.
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