During the Renaissance, many Italians would have known of St. Birgitta, but they would have had diverse perceptions of her and of her legacy. Tuscans could have seen devotional images of her, painted around the early 15th century, in churches such as Santa Maria Novella in Florence and San Domenico in Pisa.1 This chapter concerns the perceptions that were derived from writings of two kinds: on the one hand, those composed by Birgitta herself and, on the other hand, those ascribed to her but in fact composed after her death. There is a connection between these two sets of works, in the sense that false attributions were made on the strength of her personal reputation and of the reputation of her authentic works. However, works by Birgitta and those that merely masqueraded as hers were different in nature and were circulated in different ways.
The Circulation of Authentic Works
Direct access to Birgitta’s authentic writings in late medieval and Renaissance Italy centred on circles of her followers in a few cities. At the end of the 14th century and at the start of the 15th, copies of her Revelations and other works in Latin were made from the redactions put together by her confessor, Alfonso Pecha of Jaén. Hans Aili estimates, perhaps rather generously, that between 30 and 50 manuscripts of the Revelations were written in the late 1370s and 1380s, on the assumption that individual copies were made for all members of the two commissions appointed to examine Birgitta’s canonization.2 Carl-Gustaf Undhagen, in his critical edition of the first book of the Revelations, lists seven manuscripts of Italian provenance that date from the late 14th or the 15th century.3 In any case, copies would have been available only to devotees of the saint in certain centres. One of these was Naples, where the three earliest extant manuscripts of the original corpus of the Revelations were produced around 1377–91. Another strong focus of interest was Florence. The notary Lapo Mazzei wrote to Francesco Datini, the merchant of Prato, on 13 November 1395 that he was reading Birgitta’s Rule of her order, that he had read accounts of her miracles and that he knew the subject matter of the Revelations, of which he was hoping to obtain a copy, perhaps from the bishop of Florence, Onofrio Visdomini:
Hundreds of her miracles are found written by disciples and her confessor, in the first year, and I have read them all […]. And although I have not yet been able to obtain the great book that she leaves to the world, called the Book of Revelations that Christ made to her and dictated to her word for word, nevertheless, as far as I have read in the Rule she leaves to her monks and nuns, the sum and effect of Our Lord’s intention in these times, that is, in our age, is this: that He sees his Church destroyed and sees that He can no longer bear not to provide for the salvation of Christians. […] I have been with the Bishop, who I was told has managed to obtain that book of the secret Revelations of God.4
Yet in 1402 the newly founded convent of Santa Maria e Santa Brigida al Paradiso on the outskirts of Florence, the first Birgittine house in Italy, did not own a copy of the Revelations, and the Spanish brother Luca Jacobi, who became confessor general of the convent in 1418, had to ask for another brother to bring one from the order’s mother house in Vadstena.5 Birgitta was said to have spent a month in Genoa in 1349 while on her pilgrimage to Rome,6 and there was early interest in her works in the Ligurian city: a section of the Revelations, containing the revelations directed to popes concerning the transfer of the papacy from Avignon to Rome and the reform of the Church, was copied in Genoa in 1401–02 in a monastic congregation recently established by Alfonso of Jaén.7 Silvia Nocentini points out that, around 1400, Birgitta’s works were known among Dominican Observant preachers such as Tommaso Caffarini in Venice, but that “this was a circulation restricted to specific and elite circles of readers.”8
The diffusion of Birgitta’s texts to those who could not read texts in Latin with ease, including of course the great majority of women, would have depended on the availability of translations into the vernacular. At the very end of the Trecento, a complete translation of all Birgitta’s major works was made in Siena, commissioned or perhaps carried out by the notary Cristofano Guidini, and it is now in Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, MSS I. V. 25/26.9 However, most manuscripts of the Revelations in the vernacular contained not the work in its entirety but extracts of varying extent. An early 15th-century example is a Florentine manuscript, British Library, Add. 38022, whose title begins: “Cominciano cierti capitogli tratti del libro della be[a]ta Brigida.” It includes 113 chapters from Books I–IV, VI, and VII, out of 321 chapters in the complete text. It is noted that “nothing is dealt with here from the fifth,” the Liber questionum.10 Throughout the Quattrocento and until at least 1571, Florence remained a major centre for copying translations of works by or concerning the saint, thanks largely to the clergy of the Paradiso. In this double convent, both monks and especially nuns copied books of, or extracts from, the Revelations, accounts of the saint’s life and her miracles, and prayers revealed to her.11 Substantial parts of the Revelations were transcribed in the 15th century by a monk of the convent called Antonio. He included 115 chapters, from the same six books as the British Library manuscript; his selection was thus very similar in size, but it differed in its contents.12
The colophons of several manuscripts from the Paradiso suggest that they were intended to be used within this community in the long term, but that they could occasionally be lent, given or even sold to those outside the convent. Suor Cleofe Lenzi, who died in 1546, wrote in a copy of the Revelations, I and II, dated 10 August 1494: “I pray that whoever reads this may keep it diligently, and whoever borrows it may return it.”13 Birgitta’s Sermo angelicus in the vernacular appears in a spiritual miscellany transcribed in 1414 by an anonymous nun of the convent, and the manuscript was owned by Lionardo di Giovanni Carnesecchi at the end of the Quattrocento.14 At least one manuscript from the Paradiso was sold: a copy of the life and miracles of St. Birgitta, in the hand of suor Raffaella Bardi (who died in 1527), has the ownership note: “This book belongs to Bartolomeo di Leonardo di Piero di Tomaso Masi, coppersmith, Florentine citizen, who bought [it] on 22 October 1515.”15 An anonymous nun in the second Italian Birgittine convent, Scala Coeli of Genoa, copied and probably translated almost all the writings of St. Birgitta in 1624–26, primarily for her sisters and possibly for others, as her note “To the gentle reader” suggests: “This work has been translated in this way only to encourage all our sisters, and others if perhaps they read it, to greater devotion.”16 There is thus evidence that copies of translations of Birgitta’s works that were made in the two Italian convents of her order either were or may have been diffused beyond the convent walls to a limited extent. Some scribal circulation took place outside convents. For instance, a parchment copy of a translation of Book VIII of the Revelations, including the Epistola solitarii ad reges and the Liber celestis imperatoris ad reges, transcribed in a humanistic cursive script and finely decorated, must have been produced professionally in Florence in the second half of the 15th century.17
Short texts by Birgitta were also circulated in manuscript. A single prayer by the saint was sent to Margherita Datini in 1395 with instructions that it was to be taught to other women.18 Extracts from the saint’s Revelations and her Regola del Salvatore were included during the 15th century in Florentine miscellanies, including those made in the convent of the Paradiso, as we have seen.19 An “epithoma” of the Revelations was included in a compilation put together near the end of this century by the Augustinian friar Adamo di Montaldo, and it is significant that he juxtaposed it with a prophetic text with political resonance, the Vaticinium Sibillae Erithreae.20
The art of printing initially made little contribution to the circulation of Birgitta’s works in Italy. While the entire text of the Revelations in Latin was printed in Germany, at Lübeck, in 1492, there was no complete Italian edition until that published in 1557 by the press set up by the Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus and operated by Italian printers in the saint’s house in Rome.21 Only two editions from Italy printed before the 1550s offered extracts from the Revelations. They both focused on admonishments about contemporary sinfulness, but these do not predict political conflict and they are not obscure in tone. One was a work composed in the first half of the 15th century by Johannes Tortsch, the Onus mundi, id est prophetia de malo futuro ipsi mundo superventuro (The world’s burden, that is, prophecy of the evil that will befall this world), which was printed in Rome by Eucharius Silber in 1485.22 Among passages that Tortsch cites from the Revelations are statements that Christ will abandon evil Christians in favour of devout heathens (I:57); that Christ will not spare the unjust (IV:37); that the pope must reform the ways of the clergy (IV:49); that Christ is like a bee that seeks flowers with the sweetest scent (VI:44); and that Christ urges his enemies to return to Him (VII:30). Tortsch’s concluding chapters, 23–26, set Birgitta alongside figures such as the Sibyl and Joachim of Fiore. The other edition, entitled Incomenciano certi capitoli trati in volgare de li libri di sancta Brigida da Dio allei revelati, also included reprimands on sinfulness drawn from the Revelations, and it was related to the compilation copied by Antonio of Santa Brigida al Paradiso, mentioned above. Printing was carried out in a peripheral centre, Mondovì, in 1518 by Giuseppe Berruerio for Stefano Allegro, who was from Savona but had a bookshop in Genoa, and was no doubt keen to exploit the connection of Birgitta with the latter city.23 The main reason for the sporadic nature of the printing of the saint’s works before 1557 must have been economic. The Birgittines were a small order that had only two convents in Italy, in Florence and Genoa, each with a maximum number of 60 nuns and a smaller number of males who were to assist the nuns.24 Even if one took account of devotion to the saint on the part of laypeople, the sponsorship of printing would have entailed a severe financial risk.
There are passing references to Birgitta in the Tractatus quidam de Turcis, a compilation of prophecies put together by Dominicans. Although she is named as a prophet alongside legendary figures such as Merlin and the Sibyl, the authors were aware of the defence of the Revelations made in 1435 by the Dominican Juan de Torquemada, since they write: “The fifth presage is drawn from the revelations of St. Birgitta, which are also approved and are held to be very authentic in the Church, as is seen in the book that the late Cardinal of St. Sixtus, Torquemada, put together against those who were attacking the said revelations.”25
The Circulation of Spurious Works
Alongside this somewhat restricted Italian circulation of Birgitta’s own works, in Latin and in vernacular translation, the saint was frequently credited as the author of other texts, in order to give them greater prestige. Anne Jacobson Schutte lists 18 editions under Bridget of Sweden in her bibliography of Italian vernacular religious books printed up to 1550, but only one of these contains authentic texts, the Capitoli of 1518 mentioned earlier.26 The first set of texts wrongly attributed to Birgitta consists of fifteen prayers on the Passion of Christ, known as the “Fifteen Oes” because they all begin with the words “O Jesu.”27 Undhagen has suggested that they might be derived from certain passages of Birgitta’s Revelations, but there are no precise links.28 Although these are complex texts, they were widespread among all social classes in many European countries. Eamon Duffy is confident that they were composed far from Sweden or Italy: “They are English in origin, probably composed either in the devotional world of the Yorkshire hermitages associated with figures like Richard Rolle and his disciples, or in the circle of the English Brigittines.”29 There are plentiful Italian manuscript copies of all or some of the prayers in the original Latin or in the vernacular.30 They can be found together with parts of the Revelations, as in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS D 89 sup., fols. 57r–59r, and BMV, MS Lat. III 117, fols. 72v–74r. Transcription of these prayers continued until at least the end of the 16th century: Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, MS A 963, fols. 66–74, copied in 1596, contains all fifteen, following a “Leggenda e vita” and the “Miracholi” of Birgitta.31 The prayers were printed several times on their own from around 1495 onwards in Rome, and they were included in the Divi Bernardi abbatis Meditationes devotissimae ad humanae conditionis cognitionem, alias liber de anima, ac alia quaedam eiusdem, et aliorum pia opuscula, of which at least five Venetian editions were printed between 1535 and 1553 in small formats, sixteens or twenty-fours.32 The censorship of printed editions is studied in Marco Faini’s chapter in this volume.
Vernacular prophecies of the future constitute the second type of spurious text that could be linked with the name of St. Birgitta in the 15th and 16th centuries. The saint herself does not claim to foretell specific events; rather, God reveals insights to her, and she proclaims them for the sake of human salvation. From time to time, her revelations predict God’s judgement on those who do not obey His will, as we have seen already with reference to Tortsch’s Onus mundi. Other examples are her warning about God’s vengeance on those citizens of Rome who do not repent (Rev. IV:10) and her foretelling of punishment for the kingdom of Cyprus, again unless its inhabitants mend their ways (Rev. VII:19.24). It is only after Birgitta’s death, in the context of her canonization process, that her supporters start to describe her explicitly in terms such as “true prophetess of God” and to compare her with prophets.33 A perception of Birgitta as a diviner of the future persists in the biography published by the priest Guglielmo Burlamacchi at the end of the 17th century. His chapter entitled “On her spirit of prophecy” describes her as a “true prophetess,” comparable with Deborah and Elijah in the Old Testament. Burlamacchi attributes to the saint predictions of events that are not in fact specified in the revelations that he cites, such as a plague in Rome (Rev. IV:22, God will punish sinners), the Western Schism (Rev. IV:48, a warning that a king’s days may be cut short), the downfall of the Greek empire (Rev. VII:19, the reprimand to the people of Cyprus mentioned above), and even the institution of the Jesuit order (Rev. II:6 and 22).34
Around the start of the Quattrocento, pseudo-Birgittine prophecies, often cryptic in nature, began to appear in manuscripts and then in printed editions, sometimes together with similar texts, sometimes together with historical works. One of the most widely circulated prophecies regularly attributed to Birgitta is a frottola that begins, in one version:
Rise up, proud lion, at my great cry, for I have taken up the sword to make a path with it for my words. I am moved now by the time and the season of your great pride, which has taken so long to ripen. You will note my words, not few in number, at your great peril, which will turn scarlet in your breast.
In 103 strophes and a congedo of two hendecasyllables, the poet addresses the lion and predicts dire events in the form of an allegory that involves a cast of characters such as a beautiful lady, a bridled horse, a bird from Montefeltro, and a gryphon. The text evidently originated in Florence, and the lion must represent the Marzocco, emblem of that city. According to the colophon of one 15th-century copy, this was a vernacularization composed by Iacopo Del Pecora, also known as Iacopo da Montepulciano, when he was imprisoned for political reasons in Florence between 1390 and 1407 and turned to writing verse: “Here ends the prophecy of St. Birgitta that tells of what is to happen from 1460 to 1470, turned into vernacular verse by Iacopo da Montepulciano while he was in the prisons of the comune of Firenze.”36 In any event, “Destati, o fier lion” was circulated swiftly and widely. An early copy appears in a miscellany dating probably from the first decade of the 15th century.37 The poem was added after 1472 in a manuscript owned by the Davanzati family of Tuscany.38 Suor Cleofe of Santa Brigida al Paradiso transcribed it in 1495 after a translation of the Revelations, Books III and IV.39 It was copied in the late Quattrocento in a manuscript owned in modern times by Leo S. Olschki.40 It was added to Pescia, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS XXIII VI 11 11, fols. 150r–60r, in the late 15th century, among other prophetic texts that followed a translation of Leonardo Bruni’s Commentarii primi belli Punici and other short works.41 The composition spread beyond Tuscany. An anonymous Venetian transcribed it among many other prophetic texts around the second decade of the 16th century in Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 3898, fols. 112v–21r;42 perhaps he would have understood the poem as referring to the lion of St. Mark. In 1590, the abbé Jean Picard included it in his manuscript collection of Italian Prophéties et prédictions.43 Its opening words must have inspired an anonymous sonnet, found in a 16th-century manuscript anthology of verse, that begins “Destati, o fer lione, che sta’ tu a fare?” (“Rise up, proud lion, why do you delay?”).44 The poem was also printed as a Prophetia di sancta Brigida in at least three editions from Florence and Rome towards the end of the 15th century. Two of them establish a link with the historic St. Birgitta through a woodcut, on their title page, that depicts a saint identified as “S. Brigida. Roma,” praying before the crucified Christ.45 Yet, as Roberto Rusconi has pointed out, there is a gulf between this prophecy and the previsions contained in most books of the Revelations, “whose point of departure is constituted by a dark portrait of the conditions of society and of the Church.”46
The first item in an edition entitled Prophetia de Santa Brigida con alcune altre Prophetie, printed in Venice by Francesco Bindoni around 1525, is a poem in ottava rima beginning “Ave Iesu Christo figliol di Maria.” It is preceded here by a woodcut of a saint kneeling before the crucified Christ (different from that
found in editions of “Destati, o fier lion”). Rusconi judges the first of the two versions of this prophecy to have been composed around 1411 by a supporter of the Avignon papacy.47 When it appears in manuscripts, it is attributed only once to Birgitta. For example, a miscellany put together in Perugia, found in BAV, MS Lat. 4834, fols. 30v–38v, presents it as a prophecy of Joachim of Fiore, and the text has several variants in respect of Bindoni’s version. The poem, cited here from the latter source, begins with an invocation to Christ:
Hail Jesus Christ, son of Mary, who hung for us on the cross, I turn to you so that you can teach me how to talk with monstrous speech, so that all can understand my words, so that they may be less driven to sin, because the world awaits great torment, the end is nigh.
The author goes on, in stanza 11, to predict slaughter in a city that is again identified through the Marzocco, and glosses in the Vatican copy (fol. 32r) confirm that this is “Fiorença:”
Here fierce arms will be put to the test and there will be red-blooded killing; hear loud weeping and cries, for the great Marzocco will have to roar, blood will flow to the river’s mouth from their relentless wounding, and the Arno’s water will turn scarlet and here many families will be sad.
A collection of prophecies made by Luca di Antonio Bernardi, a Latin teacher of San Gimignano, was probably begun in 1442 with a transcription of this prophecy, taken “from the copy of a friar of Monte Oliveto,” that is, from a Benedictine monk.48 Either this poem or “Destati, o fier lion” might have been the text found in the “profetie di santa Brigida” that were printed in the Florentine convent of San Iacopo a Ripoli before 25 January 1479, in an edition of which no copy survives.49
Pseudo-Birgittine prophecies were copied in states other than Tuscany. At the start of his Notabilia temporum, Angelo de Tummulillis, a notary born near Cassino, transcribed in 1419 at the court of Naples a “Prophetia beate Brigide” in Latin prose, beginning “O desolata civitas” and referring to the Western Schism that began in 1378: “O forsaken city, that not only will have destroyed by force but will yourself be forsaken. For your deeds cursed and damned you and moreover that cursed division will befall you through the agency of crime.”50 This was included in a collection made in the 1460s by a Benedictine monk from a Venetian patrician family, Andrea Garzoni, that forms part of BMV, MS Lat. III 177 (2176).51 There is a copy on parchment in BMV, MS Lat. III 229 (2791), fols. 15v–16v.52 “O desolata civitas” is attributed to Birgitta in BAV, MS Lat. 3816, fol. 62r, and in the two editions entitled Abbas Ioachim magnus propheta that appeared in Venice, the first printed by Lazzaro de’ Soardi on 5 April 1516 (promoted by the Augustinian friar Silvestro Meucci) and the second printed some months later by Bernardino Benagli.53 In the manuscript from Pescia mentioned earlier, “O desolata civitas” follows “Destati, o fier leone” on fols. 160v–61r, but in this instance there is no reference to Birgitta and the text is described as “A certain prophecy corrupted by scribes” (“Prophetia quaedam scriptorum vitio depravata”). Another prophecy claimed as a work of Birgitta, a poem in settenari beginning “Verà il gran mastino | come lupo rapace” (“The great mastiff will come like a ravenous wolf”), is associated with Venice. It was added to two Venetian collections mentioned earlier: to BMV, MS Lat. III 177 on 10 January 1466 (fols. 48r–49v), and to MS 3898 of the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, under the heading “Prophetie dive Brigide,” with variants noted alongside the text (fols. 58r–61r).54 The latter manuscript also mentions “el dicto de S. Bricita” (fol. 71v) and gives extracts from prophecies purportedly by Birgitta in Latin prose (fols. 78v–79r).
Venetian interest in the prophetic figure of Birgitta is evidenced further in two sources just mentioned, BMV MS Lat. III 177 and the editions of Joachim of Fiore printed around 1516.55 The manuscript reveals that, in the mid-1450s, the Venetian patrician Domenico Morosini gave to the Dominican friar Rusticiano da Brescia a copy of the Liber de magnis tribulationibus attributed to Telesforo da Cosenza and asked him to summarize and arrange the prophecies that it contained. The friar explained in a prologue to the Liber, addressed to Morosini, that he had added some predictions of Vincent Ferrer and Birgitta. The Liber was included, with an updated version of Rusticiano’s prologue, in the editions of 1516, where the passage concerning Birgitta reads:
you urged me to gather in brief and put in order whatever seemed worthy, the book that a certain hermit Theolosphorus collected nearly seventy years ago from the predictions of new prophets, because he also names Joachim, Merlin, Cyril, Dandalus, and the old Sibyls who prophesied around two hundred years before. I added, in suitable places, a very small number of predictions by our St. Vincent and Birgitta, removing obscure ones from those that were clear. I gathered these and prophesied nothing out of my own head.56
A translation of this letter then appeared in an edition entitled Profetie certissime stupende et admirabili, dell’Antichristo, et innumerabili mali al mondo (se presto non si emenderà) preparati, et donde hanno da venire, et dove hanno da cominciare, printed in Venice by Vincenzo Valgrisi around 1540.57
A prophecy in Latin prose on Church reform was consistently associated with Birgitta from the second half of the 15th century onwards. In BAV, MS Lat. 5119, fol. 102v, it is entitled “Brigide sancte Prophetia” and begins “Ecclesia reformabitur” (“The Church will be reformed”).58 In 1494, suor Cleofe of the convent of the Paradiso recorded its presence in the church of an Augustinian convent in Venice:
In the church of Santa Giustina in Venice in a convent of nuns on the right-hand side St. Birgitta was painted long ago. On one side are friars and sisters and on the other the pope with a figure just like the Turk, to whom these two verses are addressed: The church will be renewed and will become obedient to God, as in the time of Peter my vicar. The door of faith will be opened to the people and they will be ruled in Christian virtues. Amen.59
The text was copied in 1539 by the Augustinian friar Cornelio da Vicenza in Verona, Biblioteca Civica, MS 780, following the Chronicon Veronense of Paride da Cerea (fol. 56v).60 In a printed edition of 1542, this prophecy follows a letter by Anzolo Pegolotto, Venetian chancellor of the Sindaci di Levante, that claims that the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, walled up by the Turks in the previous year, has been opened. The title page reads: Una littera la quale narra come novamente è aperta la Porta Aurea de Hierusalem, con la dechiaratione come fu serrata, et etiam narra del sito di essa città de Hierusalem, et de tutte le città che sono circum circa. Et de una Prophetia di santa Brigida, la quale è nella Chiesa di Santa Iustina in Venetia (“A letter that tells how the Golden Gate of Jerusalem has just been opened, with the account of how it was closed, and also it tells of the site of the said city of Jerusalem and of all the surrounding cities. And of a prophecy of St. Birgitta that is in the church of Santa Giustina in Venice”). This text, at least, could have an indirect source in one of Birgitta’s Revelations, in which Christ appeals to Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome and to renew the church: “Start to reform the church that I purchased with my own blood in order that it may be reformed and led back spiritually to its pristine state of holiness, for nowadays more veneration is shown to a brothel than to my Holy Church.”61
Pseudo-Birgitta was an important presence in the renowned Pronosticatio of the German astrologer Johann Lichtenberger, which studied the influences of a conjunction of planets in November 1484. This work appeared in Germany in around 1488 in two editions, with texts respectively in Latin and in German. Lichtenberger cites Birgitta as one of his sources alongside the Sibyl, Daniel, Joachim of Fiore, and others.62 Both the Latin text and a vernacular version proved very popular south of the Alps: copies survive of fourteen editions printed in northern Italy between about 1490–92 and 1532.63 Birgitta is depicted in woodcuts in the printed editions, and she and the Sibyl are singled out for mention on some title pages, such as that of Venetian edition printed by Paolo Danza in 1511: Pronosticatione overo judicio vulgare, raro e più non udito, lo quale expone, et dechiara prima alcune prophetie de sancta Brigida e dela Sybilla, et de molti altri sancti homini, e de molti sapienti astrologhi. In a concluding note, a soldier called Sebastiano explains that he had bought a copy of the prognostication around eighteen years previously from a boy on the Rialto, and he was now financing this edition.64 One of the prophecies attributed to Birgitta in Lichtenberg’s Pronosticatio foresees the destruction of the Church by the Germans. The passage begins: “Whence Birgitta in the book of Revelations [says]: Under the great eagle who will foster fire in its breast, the church will be trodden down and laid waste.”65 A translation of “Sub aquila grandi” was included in the Profetie cavate d’uno opuscolo stampato già trent’anni passati, printed around the 1530s, which extracted sections from Lichtenberger’s Pronosticatio without naming the author; in this context the imperial Eagle was evidently seen as responsible for the Sack of Rome in 1527.66 A pro-Germanic “Birgittine” prophecy begins “Rex pudicus facie” (“The king of modest face”): here the “Rex impudicus facie” prophesied in Daniel 8. 23 is transformed so that, in the words of Marjorie Reeves, “the wicked tyrant becomes the godly chastiser” who will also reform the Church. Lichtenberger says this text is “sung” by Birgitta.67 He attributes to “the revelation” of Birgitta a prophecy according to which the Lily (representing France) will come out of the West, unite with the great Eagle, and move against a Lion in the East.68
Giovanni Battista Nazari of Brescia refers to the Revelations in his Discorso della futura et sperata vittoria contra il Turcho, estratto da i sacri profeti et da altre profetie, prodigii, et pronostici, et di nuovo dato in luce, printed in two editions of 1570 (Modena: Paolo Gadaldini and brothers, and Venice: Sigismondo Bordogna) – very good timing, because 1571 saw the Christians’ success at the Battle of Lepanto. Nazari’s detailed discussion of prophecies includes a section “On the aforesaid victory, according to various prophecies of St. Birgitta and others” (“Della sudetta vittoria, secondo varie profetie di S. Brigida, et altri”), that makes frequent reference to prophets such as the Sibyls and Joachim of Fiore together with this reference to Birgitta:
Coming then to talking of the hoped-for victory, I say it is at hand since, when God speaks to his only-begotten son (as in the Revelations of St. Birgitta, 3:33), he says, in truth, because it is not right that you should be without a bride and that you should take only one who is very chaste, therefore I shall send my friends, that is, Christians with my Vicar, and they will take for you a new bride, fair in appearance, honourable in conduct, and desirable, and they will lead her into your bedroom (that is, the Church).69
However, Rev. III.33, in which the Son of God shows the bride (Birgitta) “through the example of two men how he judges by the interior and not by the exterior,” does not correspond with Nazari’s summary.70
Ottavia Niccoli has illustrated some of the ways in which pseudo-Birgittine prophecies were read in the early Cinquecento among persons of whom some might have been only moderately well educated. An entry made by Tommaso di Silvestro, a canon of the cathedral of Orvieto, in his diary in 1504 reminds us that, for the prophecies in verse, we must also take account of sung performance:
Jaco de Colavabbo, a man seventy-five years old, a witty man, died today, Monday 1 January 1504. He was at home after dinner by the fireside. He was singing to himself the prophecy of St. Birgitta with great festivity and cheerfulness. He was taken ill suddenly. He was struck by apoplexy and died as a result.71
While Jaco enjoyed his singing, others scrutinized these prophecies anxiously in the context of current warfare. The chapter by Jessica Goethals and Anna Wainwright in this volume shows in detail how pseudo-Birgittine prophecies were read in the context of the warfare between Italian states and European powers. They note, for instance, that Marin Sanudo recorded in his diary on 14 June 1509, a month after the battle of Agnadello, that a man was arrested and tortured for selling prophecies of St. Birgitta around the city of Venice. Her predictions are mentioned just before those of Merlin in the Hystorie nove: dove se contiene la venuta de lo imperatore per incoronarsi: et de le grande cose che hano ad essere: et come stava Milano con il campo di Spagna dentro et quello di Francia fuora cum la sua grande et infinita possanza ([Turin: Giovanni Angelo and Bernardino Silva, 1524?]). This short poem in terza rima describes the conflict between the Imperial and French forces in Lombardy around 1524, and it glorifies Charles V: “This is that divine and sacred Charlemagne that Birgitta predicted in her writings, who would extinguish the Gallican fury.”72 On 19 May 1527, a few days after the Sack of Rome carried out by Imperial troops, Tommasino Lancellotti, a Modenese notary, recorded in his chronicle: “And on the said day, today, I, Tommasino, have seen a prophecy of St. Birgitta belonging to Antonio Rococciola that tells of the deaths in Rome, so that it is now said they were made by the pope who is to be persecuted as he now is by foreign troops.”73
Perceptions of Birgitta in Other Works
References to Birgitta in other writings of the Italian Renaissance show that she evoked divergent views. For some, she was an austere widow of great holiness. She is cited as an example of moral rigour in one of the tales of Agnolo Firenzuola’s I ragionamenti, completed by 1525, when the narrator describes the persona adopted by a devious widow:
There was at that very time in Florence a young widow, beautiful and fair and of a most pleasing manner who […] freely gave her love to those youths who were not only handsome but wealthy; and so, when she had become a widow and before, she had plucked the wings of more than a couple of them, while however showing herself, to anyone who did not know her very closely, as a new St. Birgitta.74
Giovan Giorgio Trissino recounts in his epic poem La Italia liberata da Gotthi how in the 6th century Elpidia, princess of Taranto, was allowed by Belisarius to become a hermit, changing her name to Rigida and then to Brigida, so that she prefigures the Swedish saint:
And then she did not leave the temple until she had been walled into that hole, where she lived afterwards for more than twenty years, and she changed her baptismal name and was called Rigida, on account of the hard and rigid life she chose. And this name, too, was partly changed, and she was then called Brigida the Holy.75
However, the figure of Birgitta could also be viewed with wariness, even though she had been canonized, because of the prophecies that were falsely attributed to her and set her alongside mythical figures such as the Sibyl or Merlin.76 Girolamo Savonarola felt that he needed to defend himself in his Compendium revelationum against the accusation that he had used her Revelations as a source of prophecies:
The Tempter said: I have heard that you have the Revelations of St. Birgitta and of Abbot Joachim and of many others with which you foretell these future things. I answered: I promise you, father, that I take no pleasure in readings such as these, nor have I ever read the Revelations of St. Birgitta, and little of Abbot Joachim, and almost nothing, especially about prophecies and future matters.77
When the Franciscan friar Giorgio Benigni Salviati was urged to make use of prophetic texts in a letter of 1502 from a follower of Savonarola, Ubertino Risaliti, he implied that he was not in the habit of reading texts such as prophecies attributed to Birgitta: “I am not very familiar with the prophecy of St. Birgitta that is commonly found, but I shall look at it for your sake.”78 In his Sei giornate, Pietro Aretino makes one of his characters tell of how she inveigled nuns with her knowledge of what was going on in public and private life and her ability even to interpret the prophecies of Birgitta and a fictitious friar:
In two days’ time I had infatuated all the nuns with my talk. I told them all the world’s most recent intrigues; and at times acting crazy, at times wise, blessed was the nun who could butter me up most. I told them what people thought of Milan, and who would become Duke; I told them which faction, the imperial or the French, the Pope supported; I preached the grandeur of the Venetians, and how rich and wise they are. Then I went into detail about this woman and that man, telling them about their lovers, and who was pregnant and who wasn’t bearing children, and who the men were who treated their wives well or badly. I even explained to them the inner meaning of the prophecies of Saint Bridget and Fra Giacopone da Pietrapana.79
There was no complete dichotomy between the circulation in Italy of authentic works by Birgitta and that of spurious prayers and prophecies attributed to her. Some of her writings warned of possible divine punishment, and these aspects could be foregrounded by her followers, as in the extracts from the Revelations printed in 1485 and 1518. Suor Cleofe Lenzi copied part of the Revelations alongside prophecies that were falsely claimed as Birgitta’s. However, the two traditions remained distinct for the most part, and above all they were different in nature. Access to the authentic works of Birgitta depended on manuscript more than on print, but it was evidently sufficient to foster admiration for her as a holy widow to whom God gave revelations. On the other hand, the texts of pseudo-Birgitta were transmitted widely among all social classes, and prophecies set in verse may well have reached the illiterate through performance in song. It seems likely that both the content of these spurious prophecies and the manner of their circulation influenced the unfavourable perceptions of Birgitta implied by figures as different as Savonarola and Aretino.
Ann Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art: The Convent of San Domenico of Pisa (Aldershot: 2008), 81–94; Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “The Images of Saint Birgitta of Sweden in Santa Maria Novella in Florence,” Renaissance Studies 18 (2004): 509–26; Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “Reshaping Birgitta of Sweden in Tuscan Art and Sermons,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Maria H. Oen (Leiden: 2019), 223–46. See also the chapters in this volume by Jessica Goethals and Anna Wainwright and by Virginia Cox.
Abbreviations used in this essay: BAV = Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; BMV = Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana; BNCF = Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale; BRF = Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana; ISTC = Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, https://data.cerl.org/istc/.
Hans Aili, “The Manuscripts of Revelaciones S. Birgittae,” in Santa Brigida, Napoli, l’Italia: atti del Convegno di studi italo-svedese (Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 10–11 maggio 2006), ed. Olle Ferm, Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese, and Marcello Rotili (Naples: 2009), 153–60 (155–57). On early manuscripts of the Liber celestis revelationum, see also Maria H. Oen, “The Iconography of Liber celestis revelacionum,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, ed. Oen, 186–222; F. Thomas Luongo, “Inspiration and Imagination: Visionary Authorship in the Early Manuscripts of the Revelations of Birgitta of Sweden,” Speculum 93, no. 4 (October 2018): 1102–50.
Rev. 1: 148–70.
“Truovansi scritti da’ discepoli e dal confessore suo, di lei, nel primo anno, centinaia di miracoli, i quali tutti ho letti […]. E come ch’io non abbia ancor potuto avere il suo grande libro, ch’ella lascia al mondo, che si chiama Libro delle Revelazioni, che Cristo le fece, e dettolle di parola a parola; pure, per quanto ho letto nella Regola ch’ella lascia a’ suoi monaci e monache, la somma e l’effetto della ’ntenzione del Nostro Signore in questi tempi d’oggi, cioè nella nostra etade, è questa: ch’egli vede guasta la sua Chiesa, e vede che e’ non può più sostenere che non provegga alla salute de’ cristiani. […] Io sono stato col Vescovo, che mi fu detto ha tanto fatto, ch’egli ha quel libro delle Rivelazioni segrete di Dio.” Cited in Roberto Rusconi, L’attesa della fine: crisi della società, profezia ed Apocalisse in Italia al tempo del grande Scisma d’Occidente (1378–1417) (Rome: 1979), 114–15. See also Silvia Nocentini, “The Transmission of Birgittine and Catherinian Works within the Mystical Tradition: Exchanges, Cross-Readings, Connections,” in Sanctity and Female Authorship: Birgitta of Sweden & Catherine of Siena, ed. Maria H. Oen and Unn Falkeid (London: 2020), 93–112 (100).
Hans Cnattingius, Studies in the Order of St. Bridget of Sweden, I: The Crisis in the 1420’s (Stockholm: 1963), 38.
Margherita Giordano Lokrantz, “Intorno al viaggio italiano di Birgitta di Svezia: il soggiorno milanese (autunno 1349),” in Vestigia: studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, ed. Rino Avesani and others, 2 vols (Rome: 1984), 1: 387–98 (398).
Rusconi, L’attesa della fine, 119.
Nocentini, “The Transmission,” 99–100. See also the essay by Jane Tylus in this volume.
Domenico Pezzini, “The Italian Reception of Birgittine Writings,” in The Translation of Religious Texts in the Middle Ages: Tracts and Rules, Hymns and Saints’ Lives (Bern: 2008), 139–65 (143); id., “Il primo volgarizzamento italiano delle Rivelazioni e degli altri scritti di S. Brigida: il codice I.V.25/26 della Biblioteca degli Intronati di Siena (1399),” in Santa Brigida, Napoli, ed. Ferm, Perriccioli Saggese, and Rotili, 61–73 (63). Pezzini suggests that the Sienese original may be the source of manuscripts containing parts of the Revelations, such as BNCF, MSS II II 393 and II_130: “The Italian Reception,” 164. See also Carl Nordenfalk, “Saint Bridget of Sweden as Represented in Illuminated Manuscripts,” in De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, 2 vols (New York: 1961), 1: 371–93 (382), 2: 122–27. On Guidini and this translation, see also Nocentini, “The Transmission,” 101–05, Cristofano Guidini, Cantari sulla ‘Legenda aurea’ e altri, ed. Attilio Cicchella and Thomas Persico (Rome: 2022), 8–9, and the essay by Jane Tylus in this volume.
“[D]el quinto qui non si tratta alcuna cosa,” fol. 96r.
On copying in this convent, see especially Rosanna Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero del Paradiso di Firenze (Florence: 2007). See also Brian Richardson, Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: 2020), 105–08, and the essay by Isabella Gagliardi in this volume.
Pezzini, “The Italian Reception,” 145, 153–59, and “The Prophetic Voice in St. Birgitta’s Revelations: An Analysis of Incominciano certi capitoli, a Late Fifteenth-Century Italian Compilation (MS Florence, Bibl. Naz. Centrale MS II, II, 391),” in The Translation of Religious Texts, 167–95, 387–91. On Antonio and this manuscript, see also Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 35, 70–71, Pl. 18.
“Priegho che chi llo leggie con diligentia lo tengha, e cchi ll’acatta sì llo renda.” BNCF, MS II_130, fol. 154v. Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 69–70.
“Fu iscritto nel mille 14,” that is, 1414. BRF, MS 1345, fols. 90r–114v. Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 152–53, no. 70.II and fig. 70. See also Teresa De Robertis and Rosella Miriello, I manoscritti datati della Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze, 3 vols (Florence: 1997–2006), 2: 35–36, no. 65; Nocentini, “The Transmission,” 95.
“Questo libretto si è di Bartolomeo di Leonardo di Piero di Tomaso Masi chalderaio, cipttadino fiorentino, il quale chonperò a dì XXII d’octtobre 1515.” BNCF, MS Magl. XXXVIII 15, fol. 1v. Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 136.
“Al Benigno Lettore. Questa opera, così tradotta è stata solo, per eccitar a maggior Divotione, tutte le Sorelle nostre, et altri, se forse la leggeranno.” New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS Z111 0141, fol. 4r. See Hugh Feiss, “The Many Lives and Languages of St. Birgitta of Sweden and her Order,” Studia monastica 35 (1993): 313–29.
Oslo, Nasjonalbiblioteket, MS fol. 1992, https://www.nb.no/items/URN:NBN:no-nb_digimanus_214694.
Nocentini, “The Transmission,” 95.
For examples, see Maria H. Oen, “Introduction: Birgitta Birgersdotter and the Liber celestis revelacionum,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, ed. Oen, 1–24 (20). One of the manuscripts mentioned here, BRF, MS 1939, was written mostly between 1443 and 1446: see De Robertis and Miriello, I manoscritti datati della Biblioteca Riccardiana, 3: 62. Another miscellany of works by Birgitta, BAV, MS Chig. L. IV 126, is recorded in Paul O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 6 vols (Leiden and London: 1963–92), 2: 487.
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 11549. See Kristeller, Iter italicum, 4: 570a; Christian Jostmann, “Sibilla Erithea Babilonica:” Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert (Hanover: 2006), 467; Cécile Caby, “La pessima et periculosa lingua de l’Augustin Adam de Montaldo: étude d’un recueil de prédictions dans l’Italie de la fin du XVe siècle,” in Expériences religieuses et chemins de perfection dans l’Occident médiéval: études offertes à André Vauchez par ses élèves, ed. Dominique Rigaux, Daniel Russo, and Catherine Vincent (Paris: 2012), 233–54 (239, n. 13).
Valentino Romani, “Per la storia dell’editoria italiana del Cinquecento: edizioni romane ‘in aedibus S. Brigidae’ (1553–1557),” Rara volumina 1998, no. 1, 23–36. Another edition of the Revelationes appeared in 1606, ed. Consalvo Duranti (Rome: Stefano Paolini for Giulio Burchioni).
ISTC ib00675000. See Ulrich Montag, Das Werk der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden in oberdeutscher Überlieferung: Texte und Untersuchungen (Munich: 1968), 151–96, 251–335; Pavlina Rychterová, “The Revelations of St. Birgitta in the Holy Roman Empire,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, ed. Oen, 247–68 (259–60, 266–67).
Nicolò Giuliani, Notizie sulla tipografia ligure sino a tutto il secolo XVI (Genoa: 1869), 278; Marina Bersano Begey and Giuseppe Dondi, Le cinquecentine piemontesi, 3 vols (Turin: 1966), 2: no. 1050; Pezzini, “The Prophetic Voice.”
Tore Nyberg, “Paradiso Copying Activity (15th Century Florence) and Hugh of Balma,” in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, ed. James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 130, vol. 3 (Salzburg: 1995): 87–95 (87); Cnattingius, Studies, 15.
“Quintum presagium habetur ex revelationibus sancte Brigitte que etiam approbate et plurimum autentice habentur in ecclesia, quod patet ex libro quem felicis recordationis Cardinalis sancti Sixti de Turrecremata confecit contra impungnantes prefatas revelationes.” Tractatus quidam de Turcis ([Rome: Johannes Schurener, de Bopardia, about 1474–75]), fols. [a]10v-[b]1r (ISTC it00501000). On the Tractatus, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: 1969), 335–37. On Torquemada’s defence, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore: 2001), 45–46.
Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465–1550: A Finding List (Geneva: 1983), 106–08.
Claes Gejrot, “The Fifteen Oes,” in The Translation of the Works of St. Birgitta, ed. Morris and O’Mara, 213–38.
Rev. 1: 154, n. 5.
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven: 2005), 249.
Two manuscripts containing translations of these prayers are Ravenna, Biblioteca Classense, MS 16, and Cremona, Biblioteca Statale, MS 47, which has six prayers only. See Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, founded by Giuseppe Mazzatinti, 116 vols (Florence: 1890–2013), 4: 150, and 70: 39; Pezzini, “The Italian Reception”, 161–62.
Kristeller, Iter italicum, 5: 9b.
Giovanni Padovano and Venturino Ruffinelli, 1535; Bernardino Stagnino, 1537; Luigi Torti, 1538; Bernardino Bindoni, 1543; al segno della Speranza, 1553.
Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: 2001), 35, 40–41, 153 (“vera prophetissa Dei”), 174–76.
Guglielmo Burlamacchi, Vita della serafica madre e gloriosissima vedova S. Brigida di Svetia principessa di Nericia (Naples: 1692), III.18, “Del suo spirito di profetia,” 506–14. “Profetessa veridica,” 506.
Prophetia di sancta Brigida ([Rome: Johann Besicken and Martinus de Amsterdam, 1500]), fol. [a]2r. On this text, see Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton: 1970), 56–57; Rusconi, L’attesa della fine, 115–16; Michele Lodone, “Santa Brigida in Toscana: volgarizzamenti e riscritture profetiche,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 73 (2019): 69–84 (80–83).
“Finita la profetia di sancta Brigida la quale tratta di quello à da venire dal 1460 infino al 1470, ridotta in volgare in versi da Iacopo da Montepulciano mentre era nelle carcere del comune di Firenze.” BNCF, MS II IX 125 (Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, 12: 13). On Del Pecora, see Liana Cellerino, “Del Pecora, Iacopo (Iacopo da Montepulciano),” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 38 (Rome: 1990): 219–20.
Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS Càmpori App. 37
BRF, MS 1251, fols. 100r–02v. See De Robertis and Miriello, I manoscritti datati della Biblioteca Riccardiana, 2: 25, no. 41.
BNCF, MS Pal. 77, fols. 177v–80v. See Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 144–45.
E. Vajna De Pava, “Di un codice della Collez. del Comm. Leo S. Olschki contenente la ‘Sfera’ del Dati e altre opere italiane dei secoli XIV e XV e di un codice Laurenziano contenente la ‘Sfera’ di Andalò di Negro,” La Bibliofilìa 7 (1906): 343–55 (350). This article notes the presence of the prophecy in several other manuscripts of the BRF and the Fondo Magliabechiano of the BNCF. It is cited from Magl. XXV 349 in Niccolò Rodolico, La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (1378–1382) (Bologna: 1905), 78–79. Other manuscript copies include: BNCF, MSS II I 249, fols. 210r–11v; II II 203, pp. 355–70; II II 349, fol. 241v, after another “Profezia di s. Brigida,” “Fieno del gran tumulto tutti ispersi;” II X 57, fols. 55r–64r; Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacci, MS 252, fols. 15–20 (Inventari dei manoscritti, 8: 77–78; 9: 56–58; 9: 101; 12: 47; 2: 233–34); Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 16021, in a collection dated c.1470 (Jostmann, “Sibilla Erithea Babilonica”, 479–80).
I manoscritti medievali della provincia di Pistoia (Florence: 1998), 130.
Auguste Molinier, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Mazarine, 4 vols (Paris: 1885–98), 3: 229–31; Roberto Rusconi, Profezia e profeti alla fine del Medioevo (Rome: 1999), 192–96.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS ital. 627, fols. 25r–44r. See Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 198.
BNCF, MS Magl. VII, 727, fol. 94 (Inventari dei manoscritti, 13: 159).
[Florence: Bartolommeo di Libri, c.1486], ISTC ib00685500, where line 3 reads “per franchare qui la strada;” [Rome: n.pr., about 1500?], ISTC ib00686000; [Rome: Johann Besicken and Martinus de Amsterdam, 1500], ISTC ib00686500. The last two have the woodcut. I am grateful to Zoe Hill of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, for information on this library’s copy of ib00686000.
“[I]l cui punto di partenza è costituito da un cupo ritratto delle condizioni della società e della Chiesa.” Rusconi, L’attesa della fine, 116.
Rusconi, L’attesa della fine, 158–63. See also Lodone, “Santa Brigida in Toscana,” 83–84.
“[D]a la copia d’uno frate de Monte Oliveto.” BNCF, MS Magl. VII 1081, fol. 6v; see Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 163–65.
Melissa Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli 1476–1484: Commentary and Transcription (Florence: 1999), 165, 294, 308.
“O desolata civitas, que non solum viribus destrueris set te tu ipsa desolaberis. tua namque operatio te maledixit et dampnat, et praeterea cadet in te ipsa maledicta divisio crimine mediante.” Angelo de Tummulillis da Sant’Elia, Notabilia temporum, ed. Costantino Corvisieri (Livorno: 1890), 4–5. See Rusconi, L’attesa della fine, 120.
“O desolata civitas” appears on fol. 16r: Reeves, The Influence, 538.
Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 2: 237a; Jostmann, “Sibilla Erithea Babilonica”, 484.
Reeves, The Influence, 339, n. 2, and 538. On the editions, see Dennis E. Rhodes, Annali tipografici di Lazzaro de’ Soardi (Florence: 1978), 76–77, nos 111 and 112; Bernard McGinn, “Circoli gioachimiti veneziani (1450–1530),” Cristianesimo nella storia 7 (1986): 19–39 (29–31).
Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 205, n. 51.
Raymond Creytens, “Les ‘Consilia’ de S. Antonin de Florence O.P.,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 37 (1967): 263–342 (284–90); Reeves, The Influence, 173, 262–64, 343–45, 538–39; McGinn, “Circoli gioachimiti”; Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 169–70, 190.
“[H]ortatus es ut in brevi decerperem ordinaremque que digna viderentur, quem librum quidam Theolosphorus heremita collegit ante annos ferme 70 ex vaticiniis novorum prophetarum, quod et nominat Joachim, Merlinum, Cirillum, Dandalum veteresque sibillas qui circiter 200 ante prophetarunt. Addidi sane paucissima, locis opportunis, predicta a sancto Vincentio nostro et Brigida, obscura vero eiciens ex hiis que clara erant, ista decerpsi et nihil ex proprio capite vaticinatus” (fol. B1r).
Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 176–77. On the printer, see Dennis E. Rhodes, Silent Printers: Anonymous Printing at Venice in the Sixteenth Century (London: 1995), 272. The passage in question reads: “tu mi hai pregato ch’io abbreviassi et ordinassi detto libro, il quale settanta anni fa Thelesforo Romita Cosentino ha raccolto delle profetie di Ioachino, Merlino, Cirillo, Dandolo, et delle Sibille, le quali molti anni avanti hanno profetato. Io ho aggionto in qualche luoco di santo Vincenzo, et di santa Brigida quasi del nostro tempo, senza mettere del mio, over del superfluo” (fol. D2r).
Jostmann, “Sibilla Erithea Babilonica”, 447.
“Nella chiesa di sancta Iustina in Vinegia inn uno monasterio di monache a mano ritta è dipinta sancta Brigida già grandissimo tempo, dall’uno lato à frati et suore e dall’altro Il papa, con una fighura, che è tutto il turcho, verso i quali si diriççano questi due versi: Rennovabitur ecclesia, et fiet obediens Deo, sicut tempore Petri vicarii mei. Aperietur gentibus porta fidei, e dominabuntur cristianis in virtutibus. Amen.” BNCF, MS II_130, fol. 154v. See Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero, 70, no. 11. Only the façade of the church remains today.
Il “Chronicon Veronense” di Paride da Cerea e dei suoi continuatori, ed. Renzo Vaccari, 4 vols (Legnago: 2014), 2.1: 39.
Rev. IV:142.15, in The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, trans. Denis Searby, ed. Bridget Morris, 4 vols (Oxford: 2006–2012), 2: 255. “Incipe renovare ecclesiam meam, quam ego acquisivi meo proprio sanguine, ut renovetur et spiritualiter reducatur ad pristinum statum suum sanctum, quia iam nunc magis veneratur lupanar quam sancta mea Ecclesia.”
Reeves, The Influence, 347–51; Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: 1990), 3; Jonathan Green, Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450–1550 (Ann Arbor: 2012), 39–55; Giancarlo Petrella, La “Pronosticatio” di Johannes Lichtenberger: un testo profetico nell’Italia del Rinascimento, con edizione anastatica di Johannes Lichtenberger, Pronosticatione in vulgare, Milano, Giovanni Antonio di Farre, 18 luglio 1500 (Udine: 2010), 26–27. Birgitta is included, along with Vincent Ferrer and others, in a list of prophets in the Imminente flagello de Italia (n. p., [between 1515 and 1520]): Niccoli, Prophecy and People, 93.
Domenico Fava, “La fortuna del pronostico di Giovanni Lichtenberger in Italia nel Quattrocento e nel Cinquecento,” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1930, 126–48; Petrella, La “Pronosticatio”, 85–101; Giancarlo Petrella, L’impresa tipografica di Battista Farfengo a Brescia (Florence: 2018), 155–57. A version in London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, MS 425, put together in Ferrara in 1504, is discussed in Michela Del Savio, “‘Molte altre anchora profetie abiano veduto’: alcuni testi profetici ‘intrusi’ nell’unica copia manoscritta conosciuta della Pronosticazione del Lichtenberger,” Laboratoire italien 21 (2018), https://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/2007.
Petrella, La “Pronosticatio”, 19–20, 65–67, 93–94.
“Inde B[r]igida libro Revelationum Sub aquila grandi que ignem fovebit in pectore conculcabitur ecclesia et vastabitur:” cited from Lichtenberger, Prognosticatio ([Heidelberg: Printer of the Vocabularius, after 1 April 1488]), fol. B2v. See Reeves, The Influence, 338–39; Petrella, La “Pronosticatio”, 124. Jean Lemaire de Belges referred to the Pronosticatio when he mentioned “Sub aquila grandi:” see his Traicté de la différence des schismes et des conciles de l’Église, ed. Jennifer Britnell (Geneva: 1997), 227, and Jennifer Britnell, “Jean Lemaire de Belges and Prophecy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 144–66 (153–54).
Niccoli, Prophecy and People, 176–77.
Lichtenberger, Prognosticatio, fol. B4r; Petrella, La “Pronosticatio”, 128. See Reeves, The Influence, 339.
Lichtenberger, Prognosticatio, fol. C6v; Petrella, La “Pronosticatio”, 148. See Reeves, The Influence, 339–40. Birgitta is mentioned in the Mirabilis liber, a pro-French prophetic compilation, but I have excluded it from this survey because the “Rome” edition of 1524 was probably printed in Lyon. See Jennifer Britnell and Derek Stubbs, “The Mirabilis liber, its Compilation and Influence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 126–49 (143, 146).
“Venendo poi al dir della sperata vittoria dico quella esser propinqua, percioché parlando il Sig. Iddio a Christo suo unigenito figliuolo (come nelle Revel. di S. brigida lib. 3 cap. 33) dice, in verità, perché non sta bene che tu sia senza sposa, et non haver quella se non castissima, però io manderò gl’amici miei cioè Christiani col Vicario mio, i quali pigliaranno a te nova sposa venusta d’aspetto, de costumi honesta, et desiderabile, et la conduranno nella camera tua (cioè Chiesa)” (fol. B1r in the Modenese edition).
The Revelations of St. Birgitta, 1: 323–34.
“Jaco de Colavabbo, homo de septantacinque anni, homo facetio, morì ogie che fu lunidì, a dì primo de Jannaro et dell’anno 1504. Stava in casa de pò pranso ad canto al fuoco. Cantava da sè stesso la prophetia de Sancta Brigida con grande festa et allegrezza. Gle se fece male cussì in un subito. Gle caschò la jocciola et morì de facto.” Ephemerides Urbevetanae dal Codice Vaticano Urbinate 1745 (aa. 1482–1514), ed. Luigi Fumi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, n.s., vol. 15, part 5, vol. 2 (Bologna: 1922), 241. See Niccoli, Prophecy and People, 18; Ottavia Niccoli, “Manoscritti, oralità, stampe popolari: viaggi dei testi profetici nell’Italia del Rinascimento,” Italian Studies 66 (2011): 177–92 (183).
“Questo hè quel divo e sacro Carlo Mano | Qual Brigida predisse in le sue carte | Che extinguerebe il furore galichano.” Bersano Begey and Dondi, Le cinquecentine piemontesi, II, no. 723.
“E a dì ditto questo dì ho visto mi Thomasin una prefetia de S.ta Brigida che ha M.ro Antonio Rocozolo che nara della mortalità de Roma, del modo che al presente se dice essere fate del Papa che ha a essere perseguitato como è al presente de zente estranee.” Tommasino de’ Bianchi detto de’ Lancellotti, Cronaca modenese, ed. Carlo Borghi and others, 12 vols (Parma: 1862–84), 2: 224. See Niccoli, “Profezie in piazza,” 500; Niccoli, Prophecy and People, 3–4, 173, 176; Niccoli, “Manoscritti, oralità, stampe popolari,” 190–91. On the years 1525–30, see also Juan Carlos D’Amico, “De Pavie à Bologne: la prophétie comme arme de la politique impériale pendant les guerres d’Italie,” in La Prophétie comme arme de guerre des pouvoirs, XVe–XVIIe siècles, ed. Augustin Redondo (Paris: 2000), 51–61.
“[E’] gli era a punto in quel tempo dentro da Firenze una vedova giovane, bella e vaga e di piacevolissima maniera la quale […] facilmente donava l’amor suo a quei giovani i quali non solo erano begli della persona ma ricchi della borsa; e così, poi che era rimasa vedova e innanzi ne aveva tose l’ale a più d’un paio, mostrandosi però a chi non la conosceva molto per lo minuto una santa Brigida novella.” Agnolo Firenzuola, I ragionamenti, 2.6, in Opere, ed. Delmo Maestri (Turin: UTET, 1977), 202–03.
“Et ella alhor non se n’uscì del tempio, | fin che non fu murata entr’a quel buco, | ove visse dapoi più di vent’anni, | e cangiò il nome suo ch’ebbe al battesmo, | e fu nomata Rigida, per quella | vita sì dura, e rigida che elesse. | E questo nome ancor cangiossi in parte, | e fu poi detta Brigida la Santa.” Giovan Giorgio Trissino, La Italia liberata da Gotthi (Rome: Valerio and Luigi Dorico, 1547; Venice: Tolomeo Ianicolo, 1548), 23.71–78, fols. kkk6v–kkk7r, spelling modernized.
The authority of Birgitta’s Revelations was also questioned by some in the 1430s at the Council of Basel: see Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden, 221–23, and Anna Fredriksson, “Challenging and Championing St. Birgitta’s Revelations at the Councils of Constance and Basel,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, ed. Oen, 103–31.
“Dixe il Tentatore: Io ho inteso che tu hai le revelatione di sancta Brigida et dello Abbate Ioachino et di molti altri con le quale tu vai prenuntiando queste cose future. Risposi: Io vi promecto padre che di queste tale lectione io non mi dilecto: nè ho lecto mai le revelatione di Sancta Brigida, et poco dello Abbate Ioachino, et quasi nulla, maxime di prophetie et cose future.” Girolamo Savonarola, Compendium revelationum (Florence: Francesco Bonaccorsi, 18 August 1495), fol. c3r.
“La prophetia de Sancta Brigida que vulgariter reperitur non ho troppo gram pratica, pure la vedrò per vostro amore.” Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana, MS 402, cited in Rusconi, Profezia e profeti, 179.
Pietro Aretino, Aretino’s Dialogues, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (London: 1972), 346–47, with a slight modification. “In due dì imbertonai tutte le moniche de la mia ciancia: io gli contava le più nuove trame del mondo; e facendo ora la matta e ora la savia, beata chi mi poteva più accarezzare. Io gli diceva quello che si pensava di Milano, e chi ne sarebbe duca; le certificava se il papa era imperiale o francioso; gli predicava la grandezza dei Veniziani, e come son savi e come son ricchi; poi gli entrava ne la tale e nel tale, contandogli i loro amici, e gli diceva chi era pregna e chi non faceva figliuoli, e qual fosse colui che trattava bene e male la moglie; e gli spianava fino a le profezie di santa Brigida e di fra Giacopone da Pietrapana.” Pietro Aretino, Sei giornate, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Bari: 1969), 318.