Bridgettines

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bridgettines trace their existence to Birgitta of Sweden, who founded the order in 1344 and saw it approved by Pope Urban V in 1370. Formally called the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, it follows the Rule of Saint Augustine as its foundation. Several distinct branches carry the Bridgettine name today, each shaped by a different history. How did a religious order founded in medieval Sweden survive the Reformation's assault on convents and monasteries? What forced its communities into exile, and what eventually brought some of them home? And how did one rule, written for a single motherhouse, splinter into the separate branches that exist under that name now?

• 2. Origins and Expansion

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  Vadstena, on the shore of Lake Vättern in Sweden, became home to the order's first monastery in 1369, inside a former royal castle. Bridget herself died on the 23rd of July 1373, and the Church canonized her on the 7th of October 1391. Her daughter, Catherine of Vadstena, was canonized later still, on the 16th of August 1482. St Bridget's granddaughter, Lady Ingegerd Knutsdotter, served as Abbess of Vadstena, 1385-1403. Her death on the 14th of September 1412 ended the direct bloodline running from the founder. From that point, the order's own members were understood as Bridget's true spiritual heirs.

  The order spread through Sweden and Norway, shaping culture and literature across Scandinavia. Vadstena itself avoided suppression until 1595, long after the Protestant Reformation had already reached the region. By 1515, helped by royal patronage, the order had grown to 27 houses, 13 of them in Scandinavia. Houses continued to appear elsewhere, and the order's history eventually counted 80 in total. One of those foreign foundations took root in Middlesex, England, in a house whose fate would prove far harsher than Vadstena's own.

• 3. Syon Abbey's Long Exile

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  King Henry V founded and endowed the Bridgettine monastery of Syon Abbey at Isleworth, Middlesex, in 1415. It grew into one of the most fervent and best-endowed religious communities in the country. That status lasted until King Henry VIII dissolved it. Richard Reynolds, a monk of the community, refused to accept the Oath of Supremacy. He was executed as a traitor, one of the first English clergy to die for that refusal, on the 4th of May 1535. Pope Paul VI later canonized him as a martyr, on the 25th of October 1970, under the title 'Angel of Syon.'

  Queen Mary I's reign, 1553-1558, restored a handful of religious houses across England. Nearly twenty members of Syon's old community re-established themselves there in 1557. Everything changed again with the accession of Queen Elizabeth I. Her persecution of Catholics drove the Bridgettine community out of England entirely. The nuns and monks fled first to the Low Countries, then to Rouen in France. In 1594, after years of upheaval, they finally settled in Lisbon.

  One recruit gained during Elizabeth's reign was Elizabeth Sander, known for her writing. She returned to England in 1578, only to be imprisoned there. Sander escaped in 1580, breaking free from Winchester Castle before she ultimately surrendered. She made her way back to the community in Lisbon and died there. Recruits kept joining the Lisbon community from England, and the last of its monks also died in that city. The community itself did not return to England until 1861.

  Syon Abbey, relocated to Devon, became the only English religious community to survive continuously since before the Reformation. In 2004, the monastery's surviving medieval library was entrusted to the University of Exeter for safekeeping. Among the rescued texts were Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love and The Orcherd of Syon, a translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue. A marble Tudor gatepost had once held parts of Richard Reynolds' body. The nuns carried it with them through exile and brought it back to England again. It was later given to the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Exeter. Almost every other Bridgettine monastery in Northern Europe, the bulk of the order, had been destroyed during the Reformation.

• 4. The Order Today

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  By 2013, the Bridgettines counted 800 members across their various branches. Professed sisters wear a distinctive veil topped with a crown called the Crown of the Five Holy Wounds. Five red marks on that crown, one at each joint, recall the Five Wounds of Christ on the Cross. The monks wear a red cross bearing the image of a Eucharistic host, worn on the right breast of their cloak. The order keeps its own proper Rite for the Canonical Hours, called the Office of Our Lady. Most Bridgettine houses today support themselves by offering bed and breakfast hospitality to guests at standard industry rates.

  Four independent monasteries make up the original Medieval branch. Maria Refugie Abbey stands in Uden, in the Netherlands, and Pax Mariae Abbey remains in Vadstena, Sweden itself. Syon Abbey in Isleworth, England, was abandoned in 2011, and Birgittakloster in Altomünster, Germany, followed in 2017.

  Marina de Escobar founded a separate Spanish branch in the 1630s, made up only of nuns following a modified version of St Bridget's Rule. Escobar herself lived from the 8th of February 1554 to the 19th of June 1633 and is recognized as a Servant of God. Her branch today runs four monasteries in Spain, four more in Mexico, and one in Venezuela.

  A nurse named Elizabeth Hesselblad founded the largest Bridgettine branch today, on the 8th of September 1911. Hesselblad lived from the 4th of June 1870 to the 24th of April 1957. During the Second World War, her efforts earned her recognition as Righteous Among the Nations. The Church canonized her on the 5th of June 2016. Her sisters dedicate themselves to hospitality for those needing rest, and the Holy See fully approved the branch on the 7th of July 1940. Convents of this branch now stand across Europe, Asia, and North America. Its motherhouse sits on the Piazza Farnese in Rome, in the very house where Birgitta once lived. On the 28th of October 2016, Fabia Kattakayam became the order's new Abbess General there, the first person of Indian descent to hold that position. Like every Bridgettine house, this Rome convent also offers accommodation to guests. Protestant services are held in its crypt as part of the sisters' ecumenical outreach. After the Reformation, the order set up a printshop to publish Swedish-language Catholic works.

  Iver Heath, in Buckinghamshire, became the first foundation of this newer UK branch, running as a house of prayer and hospitality since 1931. In 1999, Bridgettine sisters moved into a newly built convent at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham.

• 5. A 2002 Reckoning

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  Six Indian sisters from different Bridgettine houses in Italy fled their communities in 2002. They approached the Benedictine Abbot of Subiaco for help, and their treatment inside the order became a public controversy. Indian sisters made up a large share of the Bridgettines' membership at the time.

  At the abbot's request, Bishop Silvio Cesare Bonicelli of Parma issued a special decree. It allowed the fugitive sisters to enter a monastery of Benedictine nuns instead. As a consequence, the Holy See required the abbot to resign from his office, a highly unusual event for the Church.

• 6. The Double Order

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  St Bridget's Rule capped the number of choir nuns at sixty, plus four lay sisters. Thirteen priests stood for the number of the apostles, among whom Paul, counted as the thirteenth, was said to be not the least in toil. Four deacons came next, who could also be priests, representing the four principal Doctors of the Church: Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, and Jerome. Eight lay brothers rounded out the community, laboring to provide necessities for the clerics. Altogether, the sixty sisters, thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight servitors matched the same total as the thirteen Apostles and the seventy-two disciples combined. This whole structure formed what was known as a double order, pairing nuns with a small community of monks serving as chaplains. The order was open to both men and women alike, all devoted to the Passion of Jesus Christ. Even so, the monks answered to the authority of an abbess, honoring the Virgin Mary. Every individual monastery remained subject to its own local bishop.

  Inside the monastery walls, the nuns lived under strict enclosure, devoted to scholarship and study. The monks, by contrast, worked as preachers and itinerant missionaries out in the world. A very different version of monastic life, run by monks alone, would take shape centuries later on the other side of the Atlantic.

• 7. Holy Blood, Holy Names

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  Marie-Liévine Lacroix and Marie-Augustine Erraux both died on the 23rd of October 1794, executed as martyrs of the French Revolution in Orange. Both women were professed religious of the Ursulines, yet the Bridgettine family counts them among its own. The Church beatified them together on the 13th of June 1920.

  Florence Kate Flanagan, a professed member of the Bridgettine Sisters, lived from the 17th of July 1892 to the 19th of March 1941. She was declared Venerable on the 23rd of March 2023. Madaleina Catherine Beauchamp Hambrough was known in religion as Maria Riccarda of the Most Precious Blood. She lived from the 10th of September 1887 to the 26th of June 1966. She was declared Venerable more recently still, on the 27th of January 2025.

  Ermenegilda Moccia joined the Bridgettine Sisters and lived from the 1st of August 1898 to the 22nd of April 1922. The Church declared her a Servant of God on the 16th of December 2009, one more name added to a list still being written today.

• 8. Oregon's Silent Brothers

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  Brother Benedict Kirby founded a community of Brigittine monks in Amity, Oregon, on the 16th of March 1976. Their home, the Monastery of Our Lady of Consolation, is the only Brigittine monastery of men anywhere in the world. No community of Brigittine monks had existed since the nineteenth century, when European wars scattered the last of them. The Oregon monks do not ordinarily receive Holy Orders, following the original pattern of monasticism. Their monastery holds the canonical status of a priory sui juris, meaning it governs itself. The brothers support themselves mainly by selling chocolate fudges and truffles.