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132 III. THE ROMANIZED CHURCH (A.D. 11301389).
himself. The consciousness of this never leaves our Birgitta,
and keeps her soul from that inclination of German mysticism,
to lose itself in the divine formless nothing."
And not only does Birgitta, in distinction from other
mystics, preserve this sense of the persistence of her own
personality, but she has a particular perception of beauty,
as an attribute of God. This, says Hammerich, is peculiar
to her among such writers (p. 209). It appears emphatic
ally in her descriptions of our Saviour, and of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. She assigned to the latter a very high place
in the dispensation of God s grace and believed (with the
Franciscans, not the Dominicans) in her immaculate con
ception. One of the most strikingly beautiful of her re
velations is the vision of her son Karl s judgment in which
the Virgin Mother appeared to reinforce his own mother s
prayers in the struggle for his soul between good and evil
powers (Rev. vii. 13, Partridge s Life of St. B., pp. 231-7).
This, in one form or another, was her special consolation
on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To any mother who reads
these revelations it will probably appear the most wonder
ful of all.
But the personal and spiritual elements are by no
means the only ones. Her revelations often extended
to practical matters and those of political importance. It
was in a considerable measure due to her that the
king, Magnus Ericsson, prosecuted his design of a war
against the Russians in 1348. In the strife which fol
lowed between king and nobles she naturally took the part
of the latter, and she even uttered revelations which advised
the king s deposition. One of these, which gives us a
darker picture of the king s character than any other his
torical document known to us, declares that God would
drive the king and his whole house from the throne, and set
on it a native Swede, who should guide the land in accord
ance with the will of God (Rev. extrav., 80). By this she
is supposed to have meant her own son, Karl Ulfsson, a
man of pleasant and attractive manners, but apparently
quite unfit for any great position.
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