Sermo Angelicus
Benedicta tu, Virgo Maria, inter omnes mulieres, et benedictus fructus ventris tui.
Our renderingBlessed are you, Virgin Mary, among all women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
What it is
The Sermo Angelicus consists of 21 lessons — three for each day of the week — said by Birgitta to have been dictated by an angel and addressed to the Virgin Mary's role in salvation history. These lessons formed the lections for the Matins of the Birgittine sisters' distinctive office at Vadstena and all daughter-houses. The text was composed in Rome c.1353–1354 and became the theological heart of the Birgittine liturgy endowed by the Folkunga royal house. The Museum of the Bible holds an illuminated Birgittine manuscript containing the Sermo Angelicus as part of the sisters' office book.
Why it still matters
As meditations on Mary's unique role in redemption, the seven daily lessons of the Sermo Angelicus offer a structured Marian lectio divina easily adapted for weekly private prayer.
Kept alongside
Cantus Sororum (Birgittine Office of Our Lady)
Ordo Cantus Sororum Ordinis Sancti Salvatoris
The Cantus Sororum is the distinctive divine office of the Birgittine sisters, constructed by Birgitta and Petrus of Skänninge as a weekly Marian office cycle based on lessons from Birgitta's Sermo Angelicus. It is the only known medieval liturgical repertory composed specifically for performance by women. The mother-house at Vadstena Abbey — founded and endowed by the Folkunga King Magnus Eriksson in 1346 — was the original home of this office, and approximately 22 notated manuscripts survive from Vadstena and daughter-houses. The Birgittine Database (birgittine.org) catalogs 3,600 entries from these manuscripts covering c.1500–1881.
Revelationes Caelestes (Liber Caelestis)
Revelationes Caelestes
The collected celestial visions of St. Birgitta of Sweden, recorded between 1344 and her death in 1373, comprising some 700 revelations in seven books covering penance, Marian devotion, political admonition to King Magnus Eriksson (the Folkunga king who endowed Vadstena in 1346), and meditations on the Passion. King Magnus Eriksson of the Folkunga dynasty gave the royal demesne of Vadstena to Birgitta's new order in 1346, making him direct patron of the text's monastic home. The Revelationes circulated in Old Swedish at Vadstena Abbey from the 1380s and were central to the devotional life of all who supported the Birgittine order. The first printed edition appeared in Lübeck in 1492, consolidating the text's pan-European spread.
Den svenska psalmboken 1695 (The Carolina Psalter)
Den svenska psalmboken
The first official hymnal of the Church of Sweden, known as the Carolina Psalter after King Charles XI (Carolina = Charles), published in 1695. Jesper Swedberg — court chaplain to Charles XI — was its driving force, and the psalter was accepted by the king. Containing around 482 hymns in Swedish along with a few in Latin, it found its way into nearly every Swedish home and remained the state church's official hymnal until 1819 (and in Finland until 1886). Swedberg later served as bishop of Skara and father of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. The 1697 koralbok (music edition) accompanied it.