There are truly many of this kind, whose revelations survive. Such are the revelations of St. Angela, daughter of the king of Bohemia, a virgin of the order of Carmelites, who wrote a book of revelations four hundred years ago. Such are those of Blessed Bridget, the Swedish virgin, of whom many books of revelations survive. Those who attribute these to Blessed Brigid, the Scottish virgin, are deceived, unless perhaps that woman also published revelations, which I do not think. This virgin lived eighteen years, but that Blessed Bridget, a widow, died after the year 1370.
Much older even than this woman was St. Gertrude, daughter of Pepin, duke of Brabant, who also collected her revelations in the year 664. St. Hildegard flourished in Germany in the year 1180; hers and others’ survive. At the same time St. Elizabeth of Schonau flourished. Roger, an English Cistercian, a learned and pious man, comprised her revelations in two books. Dalaeus, in his Catalogue of British Writers, wished no saint to be immune from the poisonous malediction of his foul mouth. I have never read anything more scurrilous, mendacious, or more blasphemous than that book. I wonder that no English Catholic has yet torn the mask from that buffoon and most criminal apostate.
More recent than these, in the time of Gregory XI, around the year 1360, at the time when St. Bridget was living, was St. Catherine of Siena, herself also illustrious for revelations. Therefore concerning the revelations of these women, especially those of Blessed Bridget, which she wrote and had in great number, some are uncertain as to how much value should be placed on them.
[margin: Simeon Metaphrastes, Le Loyer, and others on St. Angela and holy women; St. Bridget/Brigid; St. Gertrude; St. Hildegard; St. Elizabeth of Schonau; Roger the Cistercian; Dalaeus; St. Catherine of Siena]
Henry of Hesse and Sybillanus, both Catholics and both religious men, but, to say what is true, somewhat audacious, hold that the revelations of St. Bridget and similar women ought not be held as indubitably true, nor accepted as if they had been published by the Holy Spirit. If they understood this about the certainty of Catholic faith and its truth, and likewise about things published by the Holy Spirit at such a distance that one must believe they were published by the Holy Spirit, they would certainly be speaking the truth. But I think no one even a little prudent ever held such a thing. Their arguments, since they tend much farther, indicate that they meant something very different: namely, that they were speaking about human or moral certainty, and about the dictate of the Holy Spirit in divine revelations in the ordinary way. This indeed detracts too much from the authority and reputation of the holy brides of Christ.
Thus they argue. First, because the things they predicted could have been predicted from some other source, for example from diligence, by the light of faith alone and with the support of doctrine. Second, because they could have been born from an illusion of demons, with God deservedly permitting this, because, even without fault, they presumed to do things unlawful for women, such as preaching and teaching. Third, because they could have proceeded from phantasy too much weakened and from a certain error of the mind. Fourth, because in their sayings certain things occur that are less consonant with reason and truth according to the common opinion of theologians. Fifth, because their prophetic doctrine seems superfluous and not very necessary for the Church.
These considerations do not deter or move me away from the reverence owed to holy women and to their sayings. I do not indeed defend those revelations as assertions of Catholic faith, but I defend them as worthy of reverence, venerable, and uttered by minds illumined by heavenly light. So long as they are approved by the Church as pious, I contend that they cannot be rejected except rashly.
To the first argument I answer that very many things are contained in these revelations which, since they were predicted so many years beforehand, could only have been revealed by God. To the second, that various bishops and supreme pontiffs permitted that extraordinary mode of teaching and exhorting in the saints; therefore they usurped nothing improper, and there was no cause why Christ would allow his brides to be deceived and mocked so foully by the adulterer of souls, the Devil. To the third I answer that no sign of delirium or aberration from a sound mind was ever detected in them. Therefore this conjecture must be judged no less full of vanity and malice than the preceding ones. To the fourth, we deny that anything is found in their revelations that openly conflicts with the sincerity of Catholic faith or cannot stand with it. If perhaps something conflicts with the more common opinion of the scholastics, it should not therefore be immediately condemned as erroneous, since, understood piously and prudently, it is supported by its own approved authors and by reasons that are not absurd. Otherwise the Roman pontiffs, as Eugenius III in the case of Hildegard and Boniface IX in the case of Bridget, after the mature counsel and examination of doctors and cardinals had been applied, would not have permitted books of revelations to be published among the people for the usefulness of the Church.
To the fifth I say that God is accustomed often to permit, indeed also to do, certain things which do not seem to us very necessary for the Church, either so that they may be signs to us of his greater munificence, or so that he may more richly honor his servants and friends. Besides, who has been the counselor of God, or who has so penetrated the abyss of his mind that he may pronounce something done by him superfluously?
[margin: Henry of Hesse; Sybillanus, Decades of Pilgrim Questions, question 3; Eugenius III on Hildegard; Boniface IX on Bridget; Romans 11:34]
Giovanni Francesco Pico brings forward another, more troublesome argument, and one that must indeed be removed first of all. He says that the revelations of these holy women are contradictory, and therefore that one of them is necessarily convicted of falsity. For St. Catherine of Siena, he says, handed down as revealed to her that the Mother of God was conceived with original sin. Blessed Bridget, on the contrary, says that Mary existed free from the sprinkling of that stain from the beginning of her conception.
I answer that I do not admit such a contradiction. I acknowledge the revelation of St. Bridget and believe what she asserted. As to the alleged revelation of St. Catherine of Siena, some answer that she was deceived and held a false revelation as true. But this is said with too little honor toward the saint. Others hold that a revelation of this sort was fabricated after the death of St. Catherine, from a perverse and obstinate zeal, by defenders of that opinion, to weaken faith in contrary revelations. The similarity of the attempts made at Bern among the Swiss confirms this attempt, before that city turned aside to heresy, namely in the year 1509, as a little historical book published by public authority about that affair testifies, from which other chronographers handed it down.
Why, they ask, when a thing of this kind is once discovered to have been done in the same genre, should it not be believed to have been done at other times also, when many indications concur for the truth of the opposite side? Nor would the crime of falsehood be charged to the whole order, but to a few individuals.
To me it seems more probable that this was neither falsely fabricated by the order, nor handed down by St. Catherine as a revelation. Not by the order, because since it is most holy, it would not have admitted such a crime in itself. Not handed down by the saint as a revelation, because neither Francis Raymond nor any of the other confessors or familiars of Blessed Catherine, who most diligently collected all the revelations of St. Catherine and sent them, collected, to posterity, made any mention of this revelation. Nor is that revelation found in the books of Blessed Catherine.
Here two things are objected. First, the statement of Cajetan, who affirms this from St. Antoninus. Second, a certain passage from her little works. To the first I answer that St. Antoninus writes only this: if someone objects this revelation of St. Bridget, one should know that other saints, famous for miracles, had a contrary revelation. But Antoninus does not confirm his statement by the testimony of any author, as he usually does. Nor even when he himself treated the life of Blessed Catherine did he make any mention of this revelation among the others, as neither did the confessors of that blessed woman, as has been said. Therefore I do not make much of this statement of Antoninus, which he used at that time for solving the argument, because another solution of John of Naples, which he reports there, deservedly seemed to him too shameless.
[margin: Peter Le Loyer, On Specters, book 4; Ambrosius Catharinus, of Catherine’s order, book 3 in defense of the Immaculate Conception, near the beginning; Francisco Suarez on the Third Part, question 27, disputation 3, section 5; the addition to Eusebius’s Chronicle and the first addition to Nauclerus on the Bern episode of 1509; chapter semel malus, De regulis iuris; Antoninus, Summa Theologiae; Cajetan; John of Naples]
To the second I answer that I would wish the place to be adduced from her writings. For I do not find it, unless perhaps they gather it from those words that are attached at the end of Oration 16, where it reads thus: “You know, Lord, that this is the truth.” John Dekers, once my colleague at Louvain and now at Graz in the profession of theology, showed me this passage when I had long looked for it in vain. Concerning this word there can be a not unjust suspicion that it was added by those who wished the things said in the preceding oration to be held as a prophetic revelation, and who wished to refute the saying of Blessed Bridget that was similar to the contrary saying. For certain things had preceded concerning the Mother of God conceived in original sin.
This creates suspicion: that without these words the whole oration is complete; and that if Blessed Catherine had wished to add these words, there would have been no need for her to place that “I added,” which seems to have been prefixed to these words immediately by the scribe. Add also that no other of her orations is ended in this way. Therefore either she did not add this; or if she did add it, she did not add it as something revealed to her by God, but as her opinion, which she, with most of her order, thought to be wholly true and certain, induced only by human reasons and persuasions.
That holy woman could err in this matter, since she was discussing a theological question while natural, not divine, light went before her; for that is human. Certainly no prudent theologian will doubt that the argumentation she uses in that place is fallacious. For she takes the extremes and passes over the middle time of the conception itself, as if you should conclude that neither before this time nor after this time was something or will something be, and should infer from this that it is not now at this time.
There were once certain doctors who judged that, once it is posited that the Blessed Virgin sinned in Adam and needed the redemption of Christ the Lord, it follows that she could not have been sanctified in the very moment of conception. But those who examined the matter better taught the contrary by many arguments. From their sayings, since it is clearly gathered that God could have done this not only absolutely and simply, but also while that hypothesis stands, I do not understand how it was revealed by God that God could not infuse the soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary except into putrid matter. For thus the flesh infected with original sin is there called.
Does this statement not conflict with the decision of Sixtus IV, Pius V, and the Council of Trent? For if God could not do this, then it is not lawful to believe that it was done. If God knew this because it was the truth, and revealed it to Blessed Catherine, certainly he implicitly revealed to her that those who think the contrary err in faith. How then does the Church permit it to be believed as pious and probable that she was in fact conceived without original sin? If this can be believed probably, certainly God cannot have revealed that this could not be done by him.
Far be it, therefore, that we should believe a divine revelation is contained in that oration. Far be it that we should believe that Blessed Catherine, the most humble, most holy, and most circumspect bride of God, wished to confirm by such grave testimony of God things said in so obstinate and insufficiently solid a way, or to impose them as a divine oracle.
There is therefore no conflict of revelations here, where one revelation of St. Bridget is found, which not only she herself asserted in several places, so that you may see her constancy, but which other saints also confirmed. One serious theologian, Martinus, who belonged to neither order, neither Dominican nor Franciscan, recounted three revelations of different persons, and adds that these were weighty and confirmed by miracles.
As to the other revelations concerning other matters that seem contrary to one another at first sight: if someone examines them in the same way and carefully compares the circumstances, he will without great difficulty discover that either they can be reconciled, or that one of them proceeded not from revelation but from a particular opinion of a person thinking that it was most true, or only from vehement imagination.
[margin: John Dekers on the sixteenth oration attributed to Catherine; Antoninus, Summa Theologica, part 1, title 8, chapter 2; Hales, part 3, question 9, member 2; Richard of Middleton on book 3, distinction 3, article 1; Capreolus, Ferrariensis, and others; Bonaventure, book 3, part 1, article 1, question 1; Antoninus at the cited chapter; Paludanus on book 3, question 2, article 1; Cajetan, opusculum On the Conception, chapter 3; Suarez and Valencia on question 27; St. Bridget’s revelations, book 1, chapter 9, and book 6, chapters 49 and 55; Martinus on miracles confirming revelations]