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model in the suffragist struggle where religious arguments were the more striking.
Moreover, the German historical tradition makes it impact felt, with its mythographical
tendencies. If we include hagiographies from the previous century in our comparison,
then the differences take on different shades of meaning. Here I see a considerably
greater discrepancy between sentiments within the different religious denominations
than between biographers of different denominations. Since it should be permissible to
choose the subject of a biography according to a common religious conviction without
attracting the stamp of hagiography, I have tried to stratify a range of criteria that
differentiate biography from hagiography.
The oscillations of the figure of Birgitta between the Catholic and the Protestant
poles can be seen throughout the 20th century as a vaguely distinguishable line that
follows the ecumenical trend. From tense caution and a struggle over what
interpretation should prevail in the early part of the century there begins to emerge a
picture of Birgitta in the Swedish church, theology and culture so that by the beginning
of the 21st century she is referred to as a saint of the Swedish church. Birgitta’s postmortem
pilgrim’s journey starts as a collective object in Protestant self-understanding
vis-à-vis Catholicism and ends up as a unitary ecumenical image. The journey has
necessitated distortions. All Birgitta’s ecstatic remarks have been toned down. Only in
the 21st century when she has been become domesticated is the remarkable in her
ecstatic visions once more been emphasised. Earlier the visions were regarded primarily
as theological invention. I assume, hypothetically, that it is Birgitta’s denominational
and ecumenically coloured personality that has made her the subject of so many
biographies. There has not been the same interest in Emmanuel Swedenborg, for
example. He remains outside both the high-cultural space and the church gate.
Conclusions
A biography is not just a description of someone’s life in the form of a strictly personal
and historical discipline or a free combination of research, psychological experience and
literary narrative technique. Biography is a litmus paper of history, revealing political
preferences and denominational convictions, contemporary debate, gender dispositions
and academic ideologies. The choice of theoretical point de départ, explanatory model and
questions within the cultural and social sciences to which biography can reasonably be
assigned never occurs in a temporal vacuum. Declarations and preferences that simply
express ideological and theoretical tenets can be formal imprints of more or less purely
political and moral preferences. Biography is a puzzle made of heterogeneous pieces:
episodes, descriptions, a number of locations and clichés and varying viewpoints.
In addition to those components mentioned here there is also a category that is
difficult to understand but which I consider to be an integral part of biography: the
personality and temperament of the biographer as detectable in the rhythm of the
language, syntax, disposition or in different shifts of approach. It is to this category, so
difficult to analyse, that I assign the differing attitudes of the biographers. There are
those biographers who analyse the object of their biography and biographers who
encounter the subject of their biography. Birgitta’s women biographers commune with a
subject. Her male describers, with the exception of Birger Bergh, see an object. Other
exceptions, other than biographies, include Richard Steffen’s biographical essay and
Lars Bergqvist’s deconstruction of theological and philosophical elements in Birgitta’s
cultural sphere.