SOURCE: "A Note on the Spirituality of St. Bridget of Sweden," in Analecta Cartusiana, edited by Dr. James Hogg, Institut Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, 1982, pp. 157-66.

In the following essay, Ellis focuses on St. Birgitta's spirituality and the metaphorical nature of its exposition in her Liber celestis.

The present paper aims to describe the principal features of the spirituality of St. Bridget of Sweden, as revealed by her biographers and presented in the work which they collaborated with her in producing, the Liber Celestis)¹ Any discussion of Christian spirituality, it seems to me, rests upon assumptions like the following: (i) Christianity, the unity of man with God in and through Christ, by means of a single and perfect act, is as yet imperfectly realised, (ii) This partial realisation, which we call Christianity, is represented at any one time by the total Christian tradition then available, in relation...