EARLIER this week I premiered my latest research paper, Anachronism: Mysteries of the Millennial Kingdom. Amassing evidence from hundreds and thousands of paintings, I have presented my hypothesis, that MK residents were having visionary time travel experiences of Biblical events with help of the resurrected saints. It was while researching and writing that paper that I formatted Revelations of Saint Bridget of Sweden as a companion piece. This is intended for those of you who like to do your homework and read the books referenced in the footnotes.
At age seven, Saint Bridget had her first vision of the crucified Iesus in all the suffering and sorrow of his Passion. She was married at thirteen to a knight, Sir Ulf Gudmarsson, giving him eight children. As the Princess of Sweden, Bridget’s visions became more frequent and intense, inciting her to found her very own mystical order. Written between the 1340s and 1370s, Revelations concludes her visionary pilgrimage to the Holy Land with her children. What she discovered there has forever changed the way we imagine the birth and death of Christ in artwork.
“When I was at the crib of Bethlehem, I beheld a most beautiful Virgin with child, in a white mantle and tunic, evidently soon about to be delivered. She stood with uplifted hands, and eyes fixed on heaven, rapt as it were, in an ecstasy of contemplation, inebriated with the divine sweetness. And while she thus stood in prayer, I beheld her child move in her womb, and at once in a moment, and in the twinkling of an eye, she brought forth her Son, from whom such ineffable light and splendor radiated, that the sun could not be compared to it; nor did the torch which the old man had set, in any manner give light, because that divine splendor had totally annihilated the material splendor of the torch, and so sudden and momentary was that mode of bearing, that I could not perceive or discern how, or in what part she brought forth.”
Saint Bridget of Sweden