Mystiek > Over mystiek > Geschiedenis > Christelijk

Appendix (20)

Middeleeuwen: Bridget van Zweden en Catherina van Siëa

Already before the completion of Julian's revelations two other women of genius, the royal prophetess and founder St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) and St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), had lived and died. St. Bridget, or Birgitta, a mystic and visionary of the Hildegardian type, believed herself called to end the exile of the Papacy and bring peace to the Church. Four months after her death, St. Catherine - then aged 26 - took up her unfinished work. The true successor of Dante as a revealer of Reality, and next to St. Francis the greatest of Italian mystics, Catherine exhibits the Unitive Life in its richest, most perfect form. She was a great active and a great ecstatic: at once politician, teacher, and contemplative, holding a steady balance between the inner and the outer life. Well named "the mother of thousands of souls," with little education she yet contrived, in a short career dogged by persistent ill-health, to change the course of history, rejuvenate religion, and compose, in her "Divine Dialogue," one of the jewels of Italian religious literature.