Influence of Birgitta of Sweden (2023)

Falkeid, Unn, and Anna Wainwright, eds. The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics, and Reform in Renaissance Italy. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 242. Brill, 2023.

“Saint Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373), one of the most famous visionary women of the late Middle Ages, lived in Rome for the last 23 years of her life. Much of her extensive literary work was penned there. Her Celestial Revelations circulated widely from the late 14th century to the 17th century, copied in Italian scriptoria, translated into vernacular, and printed in several Latin and Italian editions. In the same centuries, an extraordinary number of women writers across the peninsula were publishing their work. What echoes might we find of the foreign widow’s prophetic voice in their texts? This volume offers innovative investigations, written by an interdisciplinary group of experts, of the profound impact of Birgitta of Sweden in Renaissance Italy.

Contributors include: Brian Richardson, Jane Tylus, Isabella Gagliardi, Clara Stella, Marco Faini, Jessica Goethals, Anna Wainwright, Eleonora Cappuccilli, Eleonora Carinci, Virginia Cox, Unn Falkeid, and Silvia Nocentini.

Unn Falkeid, Ph.D (2006) is Professor of the History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. She has published extensively on medieval and early modern literature, including The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena (2017).

Anna Wainwright, Ph. D. (2017) is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She has published on gender and religion in the Italian Renaissance, and is co-editor of the volume Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020).”

Description from the publisher’s website.