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134 III. THE ROMANIZED CHURCH (A.D. 11301389).
to Rome a journey from which she never returned. She
set out in the autumn of I34Q.
17
Her confessor, Mathias, was absent with the king as his
adviser on the Russian crusade, to which Birgitta had in
cited him. This was a foolish and fatal expedition, in
which Magnus treated the Russians as if
they were heathen,
and pressed Latin baptism and allegiance to the pope upon
them at the sword s point, only to suffer loss, to return to
his country loaded with debt, and to meet the great plague
of 1350. Mathias died shortly after his return.
Birgitta had, however, two other excellent friends and
companions, Petrus Olai, prior of the monastery of
Alvastra, and another priest of the same name, Magister
Petrus Olai, head of the Holy Ghost s Hospital at
Skeninge. The latter was her confessor in place of Master
Mathias, though he was much inferior to Mathias as a
theologian and a scholar.
I have already indicated the objects of her journey and
ambition, especially her personal desire to found a new re
ligious order, from which should grow the regeneration of
mankind. She desired to be the equal of the great men
whose foundations had given them such renown and re
putation for saintliness as to dim the glories of conquerors
and statesmen. Magnus Ericsson had already fallen in
with her plan, and gave great gifts and grants to it, includ
ing the estate of Vadstena, which was well situated far the
central position she wished her order to occupy. It was
placed half way down the eastern side of Lake Vettern,
behind the Omberg, and was. naturally visited by all
travellers passing from one province of Gothland to the
other. But, before this plan could be executed, it was
necessary to obtain the sanction of the pope.
17
See Rev. book v., ch. 12, near the end of the book, which
shows the difficulties she had to contend with in Sweden. Mrs.
Partridge s Life of St. Bridget makes her arrive in Rome in the
spring of 1347 (p. 88), and be a witness of Rienzi s election to
the tribunate in May (April?) of that year (pp. 96-7); but this
does not seem to agree with the other evidence of the date of her
journey.
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