Catherine Jagiellon, Her Mother's Daughter

Catherine Jagiellon, queen of Sweden (born 1 November 1526)

I have already posted about two of Catherine Jagiellon's sisters, Isabella, queen of Hungary, and Anna, queen of Poland. (A fourth sister, Sophia, would become duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg.) 

A miniature of Catherine Jagiellon,
painted in 1563 by Cranach the Younger

Born in Krakow, Catherine was the fifth child (and fourth daughter) of Sigismund I, king of Poland, and his wife, Bona Sforza. 

In 1562, Catherine was married to John Vasa, duke of Finland, thus becoming duchess of Finland. According to some sources, they eloped; at the very least, they seem not to have married with the kind of permission expected for royal marriages. It did not help that John Vasa was Protestant, Catherine, Catholic. John's half-brother, King Erik XIV of Sweden, declared war on John the next year, captured the couple, and imprisoned them in Sweden. 

Although offered the opportunity of returning to Poland, Catherine remained with her husband, giving birth to two children while being held in Gripsholm Castle. Her daughter, Isabella, was born in 1564 but died in 1566. Sigismund, born in 1566, would later become king of both Poland (1587-1632) and Sweden (1592-99). 

In 1567, John and Catherine were released from their imprisonment. An unpopular Eric (who, among other things, was thinking about separating Catherine from John and sending her off to Russia and a disappointed suitor, Ivan IV "the Terrible") was deposed, and John Vasa, duke of Finland, became John III, king of Sweden.

Catherine's Catholicism was always viewed with some suspicion in Protestant Sweden, particularly after her husband attempted a religious reformation, the "Red Book," that would blend both faith traditions and reintroduce some Catholic customs, including the use of Latin in church ceremonies, into the Swedish church, and he allowed Catholic convents to once again receive novices. Catherine's children--Sigismund and a daughter, Anna Vasa, born in 1568--were raised in the Catholic faith, Sigismund sent to a Jesuit institution in the Polish city of Bransberg. (After her mother's death, Anna would convert to the Lutheran faith.)

As an interesting link to an institution we've discussed before, Catherine supported the now-declining Vadstena Abbey, founded by Birgitta of Sweden and once the home of Birgitta's daughter, Catherine of Vadstena, who had been its abbess and who had had St. Birgitta's remains moved from Rome to the abbey.

The king and queen of Sweden would also spend considerable effort trying to gain Catherine's Sforza inheritance, which she should have received after her mother's death. They were not successful.

Catherine Jagiellon, queen of Sweden, died on 16 September 1583. Her son, Sigismund, would become king of Sweden in 1592, but he would be deposed after only seven years of rule at least in part because of suspicions about his Catholic upbringing.

Update, April 2022: For the HistoryExtra podcast episode "The Jagiellonians, the Dynasty that Shaped Central Europe," click here. 

Birgitta of Sweden: Celestial Revelations

Birgitta of Sweden (died 23 July 1373)

The life of Birgitta Birgersdotter changed radically in 1344. Before that date, she lived a pious but conventional life as daughter, wife, and mother. After 1344, her life was utterly unconventional.

A late fifteenth-century depiction of
St. Birgitta of Sweden

Born about the year 1303, Birgitta was the daughter of Birger Persson, a wealthy landowner and member of a prominent family, who was also a governor and provincial judge in Uppland, a province on the eastern coast of Sweden. Her mother was Birger Perssons's second wife, Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, who had equally illustrious connections, both to the Swedish monarchy, and to Birger Magnusson of Bjälbo, the founder of the city of Stockholm.

Birgitta would later claim that she had begun experiencing mystical visions when she was seven and that she had wished to join a religious order. But her father did not want his daughter to enter a convent, and after the death of Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, about the year 1314, Birger Persson decided to arrange a politically advantageous marriage for his daughter. So in 1316, Birgitta was married to Ulf Gudmarsson, lord of Närke, and she would spend much, though not all, of their twenty-eight-year marriage at his castle at Ulvâsa in Östergötland.

Birgitta happily discovered her husband was as dedicated to his faith as she was. Over the course of the next three decades, Birgitta would live the life of a wife and mother--although one who was also devout and dedicated to performing works of charity. Despite some accounts of her life that focus on her avoidance of "marital pleasure," Birgitta gave birth to eight children, four sons and four daughters. She was also called to court of King Magnus Eriksson after his 1335 marriage to Blanche of Namur. 

Birgitta would enter the second phase of her life in 1344, after her husband's death. Now in her forties, a widow, and freed from childbearing and childrearing, she could devote herself to the religious life that had been denied her earlier. 

She became a practicing ascetic, like many of the religious women we have already seen, denying herself food and subjecting herself to a variety of penitential acts. Her visionary experiences returned; after her death, her confessor recorded some six hundred of her revelations in Latin as Revelationes coelestes ("celestial revelations").  

Not content to join an established religious order, Birgitta founded her own religious community, probably in the year 1346. Originally known as the Order of St. Saviour, it later became known as the the Brigittines, an order that included joint communities of both monks and nuns. Its chief monastery was at Vadstena, in Östergötland, a gift from Magnus of Sweden. 

A detail from a prayer book, c. 1500,
St. Birgitta of Sweden

In 1349, seeking approval for her new order, Birgitta traveled to Rome, accompanied by one of her sons and her daughter, Catherine, about whom I posted earlier this year. Although the order would not receive papal approval until August 1370, Birgitta decided to remain in Rome (though she did undertake occasional pilgrimages, including one to the Holy Land in 1372). She died in Rome on 23 July 1373.

After Birgitta's death, her daughter Catherine returned to Sweden with her mother's body. Birgitta was buried in the monastery she had founded in Vadstena. Catherine continued her mother's work in the monastery and with the Briggitine order, though she ultimately returned to Rome to work for Birgitta's canonization, which took place on 7 October 1391. (While in Rome, Catherine developed a close relationship with a woman we have met before, Catherine of Siena.) 

And as a further note: St. Birgitta of Sweden's daughter, Catherine, was herself canonized, in 1484, as St. Catherine of Sweden. Like her mother, Catherine had been married, but her husband died while she was in Rome with her mother. Birgitta's granddaughter Ingegerd, the child of Birgitta's daughter Margareta, became the first official abbess of Vadstena Abbey in 1388. (Unfortunately, she was accused of forgery, embezzlement, and breaking her vows of chastity and removed as abbess in 1403. Oops. But she remained a member of the community until her death in 1412, and in the end her sins were forgiven.)

For a short biography, I'll link you here to the online Encyclopedia Britannica entry. A longer biography, available here, via the Encyclopedia of World Biograhy, is also quite good. There are many editions of her Revelations and prayers available, but I like Classics of Western Spirituality text, Birgitta of Sweden: Life and Selected Writings.

Catherine of Vadstena, Her Mother's Daughter

Catherine of Sweden (died 24 March 1381)

Catherine of Sweden (or Catherine Ulfsdotter) was the daughter of Ulf Gudmarsson, lord of Ulvåsa, and Birgitta Birgersdotter of Finsta--who would become St. Birgitta of Sweden. 

A sculpture of Catherine of Sweden,
Trönö church, Hälsingland

Born in 1332, Catherine would, like her mother, marry before she entered into the religious life. And, also like her mother, Catherine would be recognized as a saint.

At the age of seven, Catherine was sent to be educated at the convent of Riseburg, where she received spiritual training. Although the girl preferred her convent life, when she was about twelve or thirteen, her father arranged her marriage to Egard Lydersson von Kyren, a German noble. 

Unlike her mother, however, who had eight children, Catherine convinced her husband to enter into a chaste marriage, and both took vows of perpetual virginity. After a few short years of marriage, Catherine traveled with her mother to Rome in 1349 to visit relics of holy martyrs and to gain recognition for the new religious order that Birgitta, now widowed, hoped to establish. Shortly after their arrival, Catherine learned of the death of her husband.

She remained in Rome with her mother, assisting her in her charitable work and accompanying her mother on several pilgrimages, including a trip to the Holy Land. After Birgitta's death in 1373, Catherine returned to Sweden and became the abbess of the Brigittine convent at Vadstena abbey, a convent that had been founded by her mother.

As abbess, Catherine insured that the established conformed to the Rule established by her mother. She also returned to Rome, working toward her mother's canonization, and while in Rome, she became a friend of another famed religious figure, Catherine of Siena (whom we will meet next month).

Birgitta had originally been buried in Rome, but Catherine received permission to have her mother's remains moved and reburied at Vadstena. Catherine of Sweden served as abbess of Vadstena until her death on 24 March 1381.

The convent at Vadstena

Catherine was never formally canonized, but in 1484, a century after her death, Pope Innocent VIII gave permission for her to be venerated as a saint. (Although Catherine died on 24 March, her feast day is assigned to 22 March.)

Catherine is also known to have written a devotional work, Själens tröst (Consolation of the Soul), but no copies are know to have survived (despite what Wikipedia may say).

Update, 30 January 2018: Nikos Steves writes to say that he has posted a link to this entry on St. Catherine on the podcast page for his history of of the Virgin Mary, Constant Procession . . . If you'd like to hear his podcast on St. Catherine, please click here.