After the death of her husband, by whom she had borne eight children, Swedish noblewoman Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303–1373) found her vocation as a prophet and went on pilgrimage to Rome. Eventually, she traveled much of Europe and the Holy Land, but it was arguably in Italy, where she spent the last twenty-three years of her life, that Saint Birgitta of Sweden (canonized 1391) had the greatest impact. Anyone familiar with popular devotional literature in Italy from the late Trecento through the Catholic Reformation and beyond cannot fail to be aware of the magnitude of the influence of “Santa Brigida,” as she is known there. An omnipresent figure, the Swedish saint was praised by such notables as Vittoria Colonna, Pico della Mirandola, Tommaso Campanella, Guillaume Postel, and Juan de Torquemada, as well as excoriated by the likes of Martin Luther, Jean Gerson, and Savonarola. So familiar was she that Birgitta was invoked for comic effect in the writings of Pietro Aretino and Agnolo Firenzuola. Thus, it is odd that “there is not a great deal of scholarship that explores Birgitta’s influence in Italy” (24). This collection undertakes to address the lacuna through ten interdisciplinary chapters by international scholars with backgrounds in Italian Renaissance literature, history of the book, and material culture. The stated focus of this groundbreaking volume is twofold: to shed light on the impact of the holy woman’s life and writings within the political and religious context of the peninsula over the course of the 14th through 17th centuries, as well as to explore the Birgittine phenomenon against the backdrop of Italian women’s increased cultural participation during this period – over two hundred books by women were published in Italy during the sixteenth century alone. “What role,” the editors ask, “did Birgitta of Sweden play in this revolutionary rise of women intellectuals in Italy, both secular and religious?” (2).

Isabella Gagliardi and Clara Stella each examine aspects of how Florentine visionary Domenica Narducci da Paradiso (1474–1554) was inspired by Birgitta’s ideas, having spent years as a tertiary at the monastery of that name. The Paradiso in Pian di Ripoli, located just outside Florence – the first Birgittine monastery founded in Italy, the second anywhere in Europe – was established in 1394, soon after Birgitta’s order was approved. In “Prophetic Theology: The Santa Brigida da Paradiso in Florence,” Gagliardi describes the activities in the convent’s vibrant female scriptorium where the nuns were largely responsible for disseminating their founder’s writings. In “A Lineage of Apocalyptic Queens: The Portrayal of Birgitta of Sweden in Domenica Narducci’s Sermon to Caterina Cibo (1533),” Stella shows how Domenica’s ideas were inflected by Birgittine Mariology, which emphasizes “Mary’s active role in salvation and stresses the profound wisdom of her mind” (120). Hence, although under the sway of Savonarola, in contrast to the friar’s traditional praise of Mary’s silence and submissiveness, Domenica instead underscores the Virgin’s power and agency. Likewise, in “Discourses on the Virgin Mary: Birgitta of Sweden and Chiara Matraini,” Eleonora Carinci detects a possible Birgittine influence in the works of secular author Chiara Matraini (1515–1604), who celebrated the strength of Christ’s mother and joined in the “‘de-silencing’ of Mary” (224).

Additionally, women were emboldened to engage in religious and political discourse through the example of Birgitta’s extraordinarily active life itself. Like her younger contemporary, Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Birgitta was outspoken about the need for clerical reform and actively advocated for peace; her prophesies were filled with dire threats should such admonitions go unheeded. Inevitably, her fame bred imitators, and Birgitta’s many authentic writings were soon overtaken by countless spurious works, some of which were copied by the very nuns entrusted with promoting her legacy (Brian Richardson “Birgitta and Pseudo-Birgitta: Textual Circulation and Perceptions of the Saint”). In “Ventriloquizing Birgitta: The Saint’s Prophetic Voice During the Italian Wars,” Jessica Goethals and Anna Wainwright demonstrate the ways in which the Swedish mystic’s visions were adapted from the historical context of the 14th century in which they had originally been written and applied to the political conditions in Italy two hundred years later. Appropriation of Birgitta’s writings for political ends is similarly the subject of Unn Falkeid’s “‘The Most Illustrious and Divine of All the Sibyls.’ Saint Birgitta in the Prophetic Visions of Tommaso Campanella and Queen Cristina of Sweden.” Falkeid demonstrates how Campanella, the dissident Dominican friar (1568–1639) curiously twisted Birgitta’s views on the papacy, and Christina of Sweden (1626–1689), having abdicated her throne, associated herself with the saint’s prophecies of “the coming of a royal figure from the far north” to aid the pope (305).

Beyond elite circles, Birgitta’s influence persisted throughout popular culture as well. One of the most intriguing chapters is Marco Faini’s “The Fifteen Prayers Attributed to Birgitta and Their Circulation in Early Modern Italy: Private Devotion, Heterodoxy, and Censorship.” So deeply embedded had she become in the public’s imagination that centuries after her death, innumerable cheap prints and broadsheets of prayers continued to spring up under Brigida’s name. Beyond spiritual rewards, these prayers promised various miraculous benefits if recited aloud. Faini reveals the irrepressible nature of popular devotion; the talismanic powers ascribed to them continued, so that “in the second half of the 16th century and until the 20th century, the Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index fought a long battle against ‘superstitious’ prayers” such as these (143).

Unsurprisingly for a volume of this kind, there is a certain amount of repetition between the articles; for example, the image of Maderno’s statue of the saint appears twice. Scattered throughout are various images in the form of woodcuts, engravings, sculptures, and paintings that reinforce individual authors’ theses. A coordinated overview of artistic representations of Birgittine themes, exploring iconography and style, would have been welcome as rounding out this interdisciplinary volume; however, this is the merest quibble. This is a collection that is much greater than the sum of its many thought-provoking parts, which will undoubtedly inspire greater study of this fascinating personality.