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i 4. ST. BIRGITTA : HER LIFE IN SWEDEN. 127
After the birth of their eight children (five of whom lived
to grow up) Ulf and his wife visited the tomb of St. James
at Compostella. On their way back Ulf fell ill at Arras,
and Birgitta had a revelation of his recovery in a vision of
St. Denis, patron of France a vision which also spoke of a
new life and work for herself. Ulf came home, but only
to die (t 1344) in the Cistercian monastery of Alvastra. On
his death-bed he placed a ring on her finger as a reminder
that she was to pray continually for his soul. Their friends
were astonished to notice that in a few days she had given
up wearing it. She declared that she felt the ring to be a
clog binding her to the remembrance of earthly joys, and,
though she had loved Ulf with her whole soul, she now
intended to give her love wholly to God, and so she ended :
"
I will forget both the ring and my spouse
"
(S. R. S.&lt;
III., 2, 227). The first years after Ulf s death were spent
in quiet retirement at Alvastra and in intimate friendship
with the clergy there.
Shortly after it came her first distinct revelation. Our
Lord appeared to her and said :
"
Thou art my bride and
the channel between myself and mankind. Thou shalt
hear and behold spiritual things, and my spirit shall rest
on thee till
thy last day
"
(ibid. 193-4). Other revelations
followed in succession, and the words which Christ or St.
Mary or other of the saints spoke to her were written down
by her or taken down from her lips and translated into
Latin, and considered to be the very words of the speakers.
She was a seer and a prophetess rather than a mystic
enthusiast. She was throughout filled with a moral pur
pose like that of the Old Testament prophets, whose
language she often recalls to us. Of her seven hundred
revelations only three or four were corporal, or hallucina
tions of the senses (I.S.L.H., i.
70).
Her first amanuensis was an excellent man and a good
Latin scholar, Master Mathias, Canon of Linkoping, the
best theologian in Sweden, whose most famous work was
Concordancie super totam Bibliam, a commentary in three
folio volumes. He naturally did some editing, and cut out
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