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biographies of Birgitta. But many of the biographers succeed in striking a balance
between the two lines: Westman, Fogelklou, Stolpe, Sundén and Bergh - even if their
execution is jerky in some cases and firmer and more certain in others.
The analysed biographies
Early 20th-century biographies of Birgitta are strongly influenced by the contemporary
German tradition of biography writing. The scholar Helmut Scheuer regards the
function of biography as being to compensate a politically and socially frustrated middle
class and persuade it, despite everything, to look upon itself as better than others. With
the so-called George circle at the beginning of the 20th century one came close to
mythography. The subjects of biography were the performers of great deeds and
prophets.
National romanticism, the search for one’s own roots in the Middle Ages, the
turning of the prophetess into a hero and the fear of the contemporary “Catholic peril”
colour the biographies of Birgitta by Lydia Wahlström, Knut B. Westman and Emilia
Fogelklou. For them it was a question of making Birgitta into a national heroine
without describing her as the forerunner of Luther. Genuinely Swedish characteristics
in the saint were emphasised and the rest attributed to Catholic superstition and
authoritative belief. The balancing act is intricate; the author tries to fix Birgitta in her
own identity - but not the Catholic mediaeval Birgitta. We might talk of a “covert
Protestantisation” of the Swedish saint. The picture given of the Middle Ages in these
biographies is predominantly negative. Wahlström stresses the “patriotic, educating
Birgitta”, Westman “the prophet of revelation mysticism” and Fogelklou sees in Birgitta
“the soul mother and prophet”. The visionary and mystical are subordinated to ethical
vocation and factuality. Birgitta has to be adapted to Swedish fine culture and the
writers’ own theology.
“Uppsala theology” overturned this image of Birgitta. Söderblom’s view of her as
a prophet and his identification of two lines of tradition in Christianity, the revelationmystical
and the infinity-mystical, constituted a breakthrough. Both Westman and
Fogelklou see Birgitta as the evangelical pious type where vocation and the ethical life
are given priority over what can be seen in the typically Catholic and mediaeval dreamy
enjoyment of God. In the background lies Protestant and history-critical German
theology with Albert Ritschl and Adolf Harnack in the van. The new discipline of
comparative religion with William James and Henri Delacroix pervades both these
biographies. The contemporary debate about the equality of the sexes, woman’s right to
be a persona publica and the question of universal suffrage is strongly reflected in
Fogelklou. Her biography is a gateway for the women’s rights movement. Wahlström’s
biography, too, is a contribution to this debate. Fogelklou’s biography demonstrates a
megalomaniacal image of woman but it involves a “paradigm shift” when the door is
opened to intimate individualisation and literary concept in biography writing.
The stamp of time in the biographies by Lydia Wahlström, Sven Stolpe, Hjalmar
Sundén and Birger Bergh follows the political trends of the day and contemporary
debate. They span the spectrum from the self-evident nature of Christianity as a state
religion, questions of democracy, the debate about equality and a proud patriotism in
the first biography to the vociferous communication with psychoanalysis, ideologically
based questions of values such as Christianity and dominant western ideology together
with sexuality, puberty and feminism. Finally, we come to the biographical dialogue