In the later Middle Ages there was a vivid activity of preaching at the Abbey of Vadstena. Apart ... more In the later Middle Ages there was a vivid activity of preaching at the Abbey of Vadstena. Apart from the ordinary Sunday preaching at High Mass, or in connection to it, there were a number of feasts due to the saints. At heart of the medieval pastoral theology was The Way of Salvation and the conundrum was how to make people understand how to correct their living in order to get into Heaven as quickly as possible after the moment of death. St. Bridget had set up a specific regulation for the Birgittine friars to follow concerning preaching. At their disposal they had one of the best libraries in the world at the time and it grew during the whole period of existence until the Reformation put both the Abbey and its library to an end. Nearly 13 000 sermons, now disposed at the University Library of Uppsala, contain a vast quantity of information. This essay intends to show some of it. The specific subject of the sermons in question is S:t Henrik, the patron saint of Finland, and this ...
The genre of Swedish versified offices from the Middle Ages has been utterly unnoticed, despite t... more The genre of Swedish versified offices from the Middle Ages has been utterly unnoticed, despite the great value it bears to research in a number of fields. This is a critical text edition and a musicological edition of the anonymously written Swedish versified office 'Stabat Virgo dolorosa', for the feast 'Compassio Marie'. It is thought to have been composed around 1400 in or in close connection to Vadstena Abbey. The edition uses nine text witnesses, two of them also including the music. Three of them are manuscripts from the Vadstena Abbey Library, now in the University Library of Uppsala, namely C 435, C 23 and C 21. The other six are the six diocese breviaries from the ecclesiastical province of Uppsala. The edition is made with C 435 and C 23 as base texts. Whereas the Divine Office in general, with mostly standard texts from the Bible, the Church Fathers and hagiography, gives less information, the poetry of the versified offices tells us more about the use of Latin in medieval Sweden, the music composed to fit the words, the interaction between words and music, the poets inner thought and his use of words and emotions to mirror the standard texts also included. This edition has been done to facilitate research on medieval Latin, poetry, liturgy, spirituality, Gregorian chant and emotions. The interdisciplinarity of the edition widens the opportunities to reach further into the imaginary and emotional world of the medieval mind. In the Introduction the context of the edition is briefly described in the fields of liturgy, theology and musicology. Explanatory comments are given in the endnotes of the edition.
In Rev IV: 137, Christ told St. Birgitta that pilgrims to Vadstena could receive the same plenary... more In Rev IV: 137, Christ told St. Birgitta that pilgrims to Vadstena could receive the same plenary indulgence as the one granted to the church San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The privilege was highly disputed, but in Vadstena the pilgrims crowded anyway on the feast of St. Peter in Chains on August 1, a feast where the deliverance from the captivity of sin was pivotal. This study is based on extant sermons from Vadstena Abbey for the feast of S. Petrus ad vincula. It draws the conclusion that the reason why the brethren so eagerly wanted people to come, was their concern for the salvific path of the layman. It uses the concept of the 'via perfectionis', the monastic principle for advancement towards Heaven, to describe the brethren's adjusted educational program for lay people, whose purpose was to transmit knowledge of how to progress through the 'vallis lacrimarum' and reach Heaven after death. The pilgrims were instructed about the importance of knowing one's own faults, repenting and confessing them. This was the very prerequisite for receiving the indulgence, although the disputes about the privilege forced the brethren to be silent about it. However, in this silence the echoes of the plenary indulgence could be heard at many points in their teaching. For most people, some time in Purgatory was unavoidable, but with help from St. Peter, through the penance system, and the Virgin Mary, through her advocacy and intercession, the pilgrim could shorten the punishment in Purgatory considerably, or even eliminate it. The underlying substrate of the sermons' spirituality reveals the necessity of the pilgrim's ability to see. As much as, or more than, images in words and pictures frightened the pilgrim in order to turn him away from Hell, the preachers endeavoured to make him see with his inner eye the place he was heading towards, to make him try even harder to strive for the goal he saw. The mortal sin of 'acedia' was then extremely important to thwart, because it destroyed the willingness to strive. The preachers, though they frightened the listener, never left him in that fear. Instead they always gave him a hopeful assurance that he would in fact be able to reach the end of the 'via perfectionis' where it flows into Heaven, even if it required that he worked hard with himself. In the sermons, they presented to him the know-how to succeed.
After the monastery of Vadstena, Sweden, had been closed down and shattered in the stormy winds o... more After the monastery of Vadstena, Sweden, had been closed down and shattered in the stormy winds of the Reformation, its remaining legacy of nearly all Swedish medieval sermons written in Latin has been preserved at the University Library of Uppsala, drawing only little attention to itself. Being so utterly unnoticed, it is of greatest importance to facilitate the scientific study of these texts. Since reading the shorthand of the Vadstena cursive takes a lot of hard work to learn, transcribing the material into modern writing makes the texts more easily available for research. The main purpose of this essay is to provide an edition of one of these sermons, written during the first part of the fifteenth century. Together with the edition a short introduction is given into the world of the Vadstena library, the preaching of the brethren and the scribal conditions. The instructions given by the foundress of the monastery, St. Bridget, and a short description of Acho Iohannis, the Vadstena preacher who wrote and performed this actual sermon, are also presented. The work concludes with a translation into Swedish, which is also provided with references, readable for those who do not know Latin.
Living in the Middle Ages was living drawn into the ever ongoing drama of Salvation. At stake was... more Living in the Middle Ages was living drawn into the ever ongoing drama of Salvation. At stake was the great conundrum of how to live one´s life in order to reach eternal life in Heaven. Having reached the final days of life the ritual of proper dying, the Ars moriendi, proposed to the dying person a number of questions that ought to be answered with a Yes. For this purpose an educational system developed where every person was taught about the foundations of Christian belief, the Credo, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. Furthermore it was necessary to know about sin, since the sacrament of confession had to be comprehensive in order to give full absolution.Teaching about sin and virtue and how to develop into a better person was transmitted by the Church through preaching and confession. Gregory the Great had written about the seven capital sins, derived from the root of pride. In the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor made a scheme of categories of seven, where he pointed out several steps of progress from capital sin towards beatitude. From the state of sin a person should use first the relevant prayer from the seven prayers of the Pater Noster. Then he should take the next step to one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, then one of the capital virtues and after that reach the state of beatitude and be able to enter into Paradise. This scheme of Hugh had an immense influence on medieval thinking and was followed by many others in edifying literature. Due to the words of Gregory the Great, capital sin and virtue were regarded as the cause of other sins or virtues. Sin and virtue were states of mind, habiti, and every person had to work oneself away from sin and build the habitus of virtue in heart and mind. In the Later Middle Ages the philosophical school of nominalism became influential and the power of will was emphasized. Through education every person should be able to choose the right way of life by means of free will. In this essay, questions are asked about how this education was handled in the preaching of the Vadstena brethren. I have chosen three sermons for the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta, the foundress of the Abbey. My purpose has been to analyze each of them considering the situation of their delivery, their purpose and the strategy used by the preachers to achieve their purpose. I have sought their ethical emphasis in order to see what appears to have been most important to teach. Further, I have asked why the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta was considered a day when moral teaching should be preached and searched an answer in the possibility of a greater concourse of pilgrims. As a result I have found that, though the material is far too small to say anything in general, the brethren seem to have been aware of scholastic thinking about sin and virtue, though they do not use any scheme of edifying steps for the soul. Perhaps the reason for that is the excellent pedagogical instrument provided by St. Birgitta herself in her Revelations.
This book contains the proceedings from the Fourth International Birgitta Conference, held in Aug... more This book contains the proceedings from the Fourth International Birgitta Conference, held in August 2021 in Stockholm and Vadstena. The theme for the conference, Birgittine Circles, focuses on Birgittine networks and the importance of individuals, places, and objects associated with the Birgittine Order. The concept of circles also applies to ideas, physical objects, travels, and exchange between different orders. The ten contributions collected in the present volume range from Birg itta's influence on late medieval culture in England, the spread of the Birgittine Order around the Baltic Sea and its importance in places as widely separated as Norrland and Spain, predecessors and successors such as Margery Kempe, and Birgittine spirituality linked to objects and texts.
In the later Middle Ages there was a vivid activity of preaching at the Abbey of Vadstena. Apart ... more In the later Middle Ages there was a vivid activity of preaching at the Abbey of Vadstena. Apart from the ordinary Sunday preaching at High Mass, or in connection to it, there were a number of feasts due to the saints. At heart of the medieval pastoral theology was The Way of Salvation and the conundrum was how to make people understand how to correct their living in order to get into Heaven as quickly as possible after the moment of death. St. Bridget had set up a specific regulation for the Birgittine friars to follow concerning preaching. At their disposal they had one of the best libraries in the world at the time and it grew during the whole period of existence until the Reformation put both the Abbey and its library to an end. Nearly 13 000 sermons, now disposed at the University Library of Uppsala, contain a vast quantity of information. This essay intends to show some of it. The specific subject of the sermons in question is S:t Henrik, the patron saint of Finland, and this ...
The genre of Swedish versified offices from the Middle Ages has been utterly unnoticed, despite t... more The genre of Swedish versified offices from the Middle Ages has been utterly unnoticed, despite the great value it bears to research in a number of fields. This is a critical text edition and a musicological edition of the anonymously written Swedish versified office 'Stabat Virgo dolorosa', for the feast 'Compassio Marie'. It is thought to have been composed around 1400 in or in close connection to Vadstena Abbey. The edition uses nine text witnesses, two of them also including the music. Three of them are manuscripts from the Vadstena Abbey Library, now in the University Library of Uppsala, namely C 435, C 23 and C 21. The other six are the six diocese breviaries from the ecclesiastical province of Uppsala. The edition is made with C 435 and C 23 as base texts. Whereas the Divine Office in general, with mostly standard texts from the Bible, the Church Fathers and hagiography, gives less information, the poetry of the versified offices tells us more about the use of Latin in medieval Sweden, the music composed to fit the words, the interaction between words and music, the poets inner thought and his use of words and emotions to mirror the standard texts also included. This edition has been done to facilitate research on medieval Latin, poetry, liturgy, spirituality, Gregorian chant and emotions. The interdisciplinarity of the edition widens the opportunities to reach further into the imaginary and emotional world of the medieval mind. In the Introduction the context of the edition is briefly described in the fields of liturgy, theology and musicology. Explanatory comments are given in the endnotes of the edition.
In Rev IV: 137, Christ told St. Birgitta that pilgrims to Vadstena could receive the same plenary... more In Rev IV: 137, Christ told St. Birgitta that pilgrims to Vadstena could receive the same plenary indulgence as the one granted to the church San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The privilege was highly disputed, but in Vadstena the pilgrims crowded anyway on the feast of St. Peter in Chains on August 1, a feast where the deliverance from the captivity of sin was pivotal. This study is based on extant sermons from Vadstena Abbey for the feast of S. Petrus ad vincula. It draws the conclusion that the reason why the brethren so eagerly wanted people to come, was their concern for the salvific path of the layman. It uses the concept of the 'via perfectionis', the monastic principle for advancement towards Heaven, to describe the brethren's adjusted educational program for lay people, whose purpose was to transmit knowledge of how to progress through the 'vallis lacrimarum' and reach Heaven after death. The pilgrims were instructed about the importance of knowing one's own faults, repenting and confessing them. This was the very prerequisite for receiving the indulgence, although the disputes about the privilege forced the brethren to be silent about it. However, in this silence the echoes of the plenary indulgence could be heard at many points in their teaching. For most people, some time in Purgatory was unavoidable, but with help from St. Peter, through the penance system, and the Virgin Mary, through her advocacy and intercession, the pilgrim could shorten the punishment in Purgatory considerably, or even eliminate it. The underlying substrate of the sermons' spirituality reveals the necessity of the pilgrim's ability to see. As much as, or more than, images in words and pictures frightened the pilgrim in order to turn him away from Hell, the preachers endeavoured to make him see with his inner eye the place he was heading towards, to make him try even harder to strive for the goal he saw. The mortal sin of 'acedia' was then extremely important to thwart, because it destroyed the willingness to strive. The preachers, though they frightened the listener, never left him in that fear. Instead they always gave him a hopeful assurance that he would in fact be able to reach the end of the 'via perfectionis' where it flows into Heaven, even if it required that he worked hard with himself. In the sermons, they presented to him the know-how to succeed.
After the monastery of Vadstena, Sweden, had been closed down and shattered in the stormy winds o... more After the monastery of Vadstena, Sweden, had been closed down and shattered in the stormy winds of the Reformation, its remaining legacy of nearly all Swedish medieval sermons written in Latin has been preserved at the University Library of Uppsala, drawing only little attention to itself. Being so utterly unnoticed, it is of greatest importance to facilitate the scientific study of these texts. Since reading the shorthand of the Vadstena cursive takes a lot of hard work to learn, transcribing the material into modern writing makes the texts more easily available for research. The main purpose of this essay is to provide an edition of one of these sermons, written during the first part of the fifteenth century. Together with the edition a short introduction is given into the world of the Vadstena library, the preaching of the brethren and the scribal conditions. The instructions given by the foundress of the monastery, St. Bridget, and a short description of Acho Iohannis, the Vadstena preacher who wrote and performed this actual sermon, are also presented. The work concludes with a translation into Swedish, which is also provided with references, readable for those who do not know Latin.
Living in the Middle Ages was living drawn into the ever ongoing drama of Salvation. At stake was... more Living in the Middle Ages was living drawn into the ever ongoing drama of Salvation. At stake was the great conundrum of how to live one´s life in order to reach eternal life in Heaven. Having reached the final days of life the ritual of proper dying, the Ars moriendi, proposed to the dying person a number of questions that ought to be answered with a Yes. For this purpose an educational system developed where every person was taught about the foundations of Christian belief, the Credo, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. Furthermore it was necessary to know about sin, since the sacrament of confession had to be comprehensive in order to give full absolution.Teaching about sin and virtue and how to develop into a better person was transmitted by the Church through preaching and confession. Gregory the Great had written about the seven capital sins, derived from the root of pride. In the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor made a scheme of categories of seven, where he pointed out several steps of progress from capital sin towards beatitude. From the state of sin a person should use first the relevant prayer from the seven prayers of the Pater Noster. Then he should take the next step to one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, then one of the capital virtues and after that reach the state of beatitude and be able to enter into Paradise. This scheme of Hugh had an immense influence on medieval thinking and was followed by many others in edifying literature. Due to the words of Gregory the Great, capital sin and virtue were regarded as the cause of other sins or virtues. Sin and virtue were states of mind, habiti, and every person had to work oneself away from sin and build the habitus of virtue in heart and mind. In the Later Middle Ages the philosophical school of nominalism became influential and the power of will was emphasized. Through education every person should be able to choose the right way of life by means of free will. In this essay, questions are asked about how this education was handled in the preaching of the Vadstena brethren. I have chosen three sermons for the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta, the foundress of the Abbey. My purpose has been to analyze each of them considering the situation of their delivery, their purpose and the strategy used by the preachers to achieve their purpose. I have sought their ethical emphasis in order to see what appears to have been most important to teach. Further, I have asked why the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta was considered a day when moral teaching should be preached and searched an answer in the possibility of a greater concourse of pilgrims. As a result I have found that, though the material is far too small to say anything in general, the brethren seem to have been aware of scholastic thinking about sin and virtue, though they do not use any scheme of edifying steps for the soul. Perhaps the reason for that is the excellent pedagogical instrument provided by St. Birgitta herself in her Revelations.
This book contains the proceedings from the Fourth International Birgitta Conference, held in Aug... more This book contains the proceedings from the Fourth International Birgitta Conference, held in August 2021 in Stockholm and Vadstena. The theme for the conference, Birgittine Circles, focuses on Birgittine networks and the importance of individuals, places, and objects associated with the Birgittine Order. The concept of circles also applies to ideas, physical objects, travels, and exchange between different orders. The ten contributions collected in the present volume range from Birg itta's influence on late medieval culture in England, the spread of the Birgittine Order around the Baltic Sea and its importance in places as widely separated as Norrland and Spain, predecessors and successors such as Margery Kempe, and Birgittine spirituality linked to objects and texts.
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This is a critical text edition and a musicological edition of the anonymously written Swedish versified office 'Stabat Virgo dolorosa', for the feast 'Compassio Marie'. It is thought to have been composed around 1400 in or in close connection to Vadstena Abbey. The edition uses nine text witnesses, two of them also including the music. Three of them are manuscripts from the Vadstena Abbey Library, now in the University Library of Uppsala, namely C 435, C 23 and C 21. The other six are the six diocese breviaries from the ecclesiastical province of Uppsala. The edition is made with C 435 and C 23 as base texts.
Whereas the Divine Office in general, with mostly standard texts from the Bible, the Church Fathers and hagiography, gives less information, the poetry of the versified offices tells us more about the use of Latin in medieval Sweden, the music composed to fit the words, the interaction between words and music, the poets inner thought and his use of words and emotions to mirror the standard texts also included.
This edition has been done to facilitate research on medieval Latin, poetry, liturgy, spirituality, Gregorian chant and emotions. The interdisciplinarity of the edition widens the opportunities to reach further into the imaginary and emotional world of the medieval mind.
In the Introduction the context of the edition is briefly described in the fields of liturgy, theology and musicology. Explanatory comments are given in the endnotes of the edition.
This study is based on extant sermons from Vadstena Abbey for the feast of S. Petrus ad vincula. It draws the conclusion that the reason why the brethren so eagerly wanted people to come, was their concern for the salvific path of the layman. It uses the concept of the 'via perfectionis', the monastic principle for advancement towards Heaven, to describe the brethren's adjusted educational program for lay people, whose purpose was to transmit knowledge of how to progress through the 'vallis lacrimarum' and reach Heaven after death.
The pilgrims were instructed about the importance of knowing one's own faults, repenting and confessing them. This was the very prerequisite for receiving the indulgence, although the disputes about the privilege forced the brethren to be silent about it. However, in this silence the echoes of the plenary indulgence could be heard at many points in their teaching.
For most people, some time in Purgatory was unavoidable, but with help from St. Peter, through the penance system, and the Virgin Mary, through her advocacy and intercession, the pilgrim could shorten the punishment in Purgatory considerably, or even eliminate it.
The underlying substrate of the sermons' spirituality reveals the necessity of the pilgrim's ability to see. As much as, or more than, images in words and pictures frightened the pilgrim in order to turn him away from Hell, the preachers endeavoured to make him see with his inner eye the place he was heading towards, to make him try even harder to strive for the goal he saw. The mortal sin of 'acedia' was then extremely important to thwart, because it destroyed the willingness to strive.
The preachers, though they frightened the listener, never left him in that fear. Instead they always gave him a hopeful assurance that he would in fact be able to reach the end of the 'via perfectionis' where it flows into Heaven, even if it required that he worked hard with himself. In the sermons, they presented to him the know-how to succeed.
Being so utterly unnoticed, it is of greatest importance to facilitate the scientific study of these texts. Since reading the shorthand of the Vadstena cursive takes a lot of hard work to learn, transcribing the material into modern writing makes the texts more easily available for research.
The main purpose of this essay is to provide an edition of one of these sermons, written during the first part of the fifteenth century.
Together with the edition a short introduction is given into the world of the Vadstena library, the preaching of the brethren and the scribal conditions. The instructions given by the foundress of the monastery, St. Bridget, and a short description of Acho Iohannis, the Vadstena preacher who wrote and performed this actual sermon, are also presented.
The work concludes with a translation into Swedish, which is also provided with references, readable for those who do not know Latin.
For this purpose an educational system developed where every person was taught about the foundations of Christian belief, the Credo, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. Furthermore it was necessary to know about sin, since the sacrament of confession had to be comprehensive in order to give full absolution.Teaching about sin and virtue and how to develop into a better person was transmitted by the Church through preaching and confession.
Gregory the Great had written about the seven capital sins, derived from the root of pride. In the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor made a scheme of categories of seven, where he pointed out several steps of progress from capital sin towards beatitude. From the state of sin a person should use first the relevant prayer from the seven prayers of the Pater Noster. Then he should take the next step to one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, then one of the capital virtues and after that reach the state of beatitude and be able to enter into Paradise.
This scheme of Hugh had an immense influence on medieval thinking and was followed by many others in edifying literature. Due to the words of Gregory the Great, capital sin and virtue were regarded as the cause of other sins or virtues. Sin and virtue were states of mind, habiti, and every person had to work oneself away from sin and build the habitus of virtue in heart and mind. In the Later Middle Ages the philosophical school of nominalism became influential and the power of will was emphasized. Through education every person should be able to choose the right way of life by means of free will.
In this essay, questions are asked about how this education was handled in the preaching of the Vadstena brethren. I have chosen three sermons for the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta, the foundress of the Abbey. My purpose has been to analyze each of them considering the situation of their delivery, their purpose and the strategy used by the preachers to achieve their purpose. I have sought their ethical emphasis in order to see what appears to have been most important to teach. Further, I have asked why the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta was considered a day when moral teaching should be preached and searched an answer in the possibility of a greater concourse of pilgrims. As a result I have found that, though the material is far too small to say anything in general, the brethren seem to have been aware of scholastic thinking about sin and virtue, though they do not use any scheme of edifying steps for the soul. Perhaps the reason for that is the excellent pedagogical instrument provided by St. Birgitta herself in her Revelations.
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This is a critical text edition and a musicological edition of the anonymously written Swedish versified office 'Stabat Virgo dolorosa', for the feast 'Compassio Marie'. It is thought to have been composed around 1400 in or in close connection to Vadstena Abbey. The edition uses nine text witnesses, two of them also including the music. Three of them are manuscripts from the Vadstena Abbey Library, now in the University Library of Uppsala, namely C 435, C 23 and C 21. The other six are the six diocese breviaries from the ecclesiastical province of Uppsala. The edition is made with C 435 and C 23 as base texts.
Whereas the Divine Office in general, with mostly standard texts from the Bible, the Church Fathers and hagiography, gives less information, the poetry of the versified offices tells us more about the use of Latin in medieval Sweden, the music composed to fit the words, the interaction between words and music, the poets inner thought and his use of words and emotions to mirror the standard texts also included.
This edition has been done to facilitate research on medieval Latin, poetry, liturgy, spirituality, Gregorian chant and emotions. The interdisciplinarity of the edition widens the opportunities to reach further into the imaginary and emotional world of the medieval mind.
In the Introduction the context of the edition is briefly described in the fields of liturgy, theology and musicology. Explanatory comments are given in the endnotes of the edition.
This study is based on extant sermons from Vadstena Abbey for the feast of S. Petrus ad vincula. It draws the conclusion that the reason why the brethren so eagerly wanted people to come, was their concern for the salvific path of the layman. It uses the concept of the 'via perfectionis', the monastic principle for advancement towards Heaven, to describe the brethren's adjusted educational program for lay people, whose purpose was to transmit knowledge of how to progress through the 'vallis lacrimarum' and reach Heaven after death.
The pilgrims were instructed about the importance of knowing one's own faults, repenting and confessing them. This was the very prerequisite for receiving the indulgence, although the disputes about the privilege forced the brethren to be silent about it. However, in this silence the echoes of the plenary indulgence could be heard at many points in their teaching.
For most people, some time in Purgatory was unavoidable, but with help from St. Peter, through the penance system, and the Virgin Mary, through her advocacy and intercession, the pilgrim could shorten the punishment in Purgatory considerably, or even eliminate it.
The underlying substrate of the sermons' spirituality reveals the necessity of the pilgrim's ability to see. As much as, or more than, images in words and pictures frightened the pilgrim in order to turn him away from Hell, the preachers endeavoured to make him see with his inner eye the place he was heading towards, to make him try even harder to strive for the goal he saw. The mortal sin of 'acedia' was then extremely important to thwart, because it destroyed the willingness to strive.
The preachers, though they frightened the listener, never left him in that fear. Instead they always gave him a hopeful assurance that he would in fact be able to reach the end of the 'via perfectionis' where it flows into Heaven, even if it required that he worked hard with himself. In the sermons, they presented to him the know-how to succeed.
Being so utterly unnoticed, it is of greatest importance to facilitate the scientific study of these texts. Since reading the shorthand of the Vadstena cursive takes a lot of hard work to learn, transcribing the material into modern writing makes the texts more easily available for research.
The main purpose of this essay is to provide an edition of one of these sermons, written during the first part of the fifteenth century.
Together with the edition a short introduction is given into the world of the Vadstena library, the preaching of the brethren and the scribal conditions. The instructions given by the foundress of the monastery, St. Bridget, and a short description of Acho Iohannis, the Vadstena preacher who wrote and performed this actual sermon, are also presented.
The work concludes with a translation into Swedish, which is also provided with references, readable for those who do not know Latin.
For this purpose an educational system developed where every person was taught about the foundations of Christian belief, the Credo, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. Furthermore it was necessary to know about sin, since the sacrament of confession had to be comprehensive in order to give full absolution.Teaching about sin and virtue and how to develop into a better person was transmitted by the Church through preaching and confession.
Gregory the Great had written about the seven capital sins, derived from the root of pride. In the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor made a scheme of categories of seven, where he pointed out several steps of progress from capital sin towards beatitude. From the state of sin a person should use first the relevant prayer from the seven prayers of the Pater Noster. Then he should take the next step to one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, then one of the capital virtues and after that reach the state of beatitude and be able to enter into Paradise.
This scheme of Hugh had an immense influence on medieval thinking and was followed by many others in edifying literature. Due to the words of Gregory the Great, capital sin and virtue were regarded as the cause of other sins or virtues. Sin and virtue were states of mind, habiti, and every person had to work oneself away from sin and build the habitus of virtue in heart and mind. In the Later Middle Ages the philosophical school of nominalism became influential and the power of will was emphasized. Through education every person should be able to choose the right way of life by means of free will.
In this essay, questions are asked about how this education was handled in the preaching of the Vadstena brethren. I have chosen three sermons for the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta, the foundress of the Abbey. My purpose has been to analyze each of them considering the situation of their delivery, their purpose and the strategy used by the preachers to achieve their purpose. I have sought their ethical emphasis in order to see what appears to have been most important to teach. Further, I have asked why the Canonization Day of St. Birgitta was considered a day when moral teaching should be preached and searched an answer in the possibility of a greater concourse of pilgrims. As a result I have found that, though the material is far too small to say anything in general, the brethren seem to have been aware of scholastic thinking about sin and virtue, though they do not use any scheme of edifying steps for the soul. Perhaps the reason for that is the excellent pedagogical instrument provided by St. Birgitta herself in her Revelations.