SHE was daughter of Ulpho, prince of Nericia, in Sweden, and of St.
Bridget. The love of God seemed almost to prevent in her the use of her
reason. At seven years of age she was placed in the nunnery of Risburgh,
and educated in piety under the care of the holy abbess of that house.
Being very beautiful, she was, by her father, contracted in marriage to
Egard {645} a young nobleman of great virtue: but the virgin persuaded
him to join with her in making a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. By
her discourses he became desirous only of heavenly graces, and, to draw
them down upon his soul more abundantly, he readily acquiesced in the
proposal. The happy couple, having but one heart and one desire, by a
holy emulation excited each other to prayer, mortification, and works of
charity. After the death of her father, St. Catharine, out of devotion
to the passion of Christ, and to the relies of the martyrs, accompanied
her mother in her pilgrimages and practices of devotion and penance.
After her death at Rome, in 1373, Catherine returned to Sweden, and died
abbess of Vadzstena, or Vatzen,[1] on the 24th of March, in 1381.[2] For
the last twenty-five years of her life she every day purified her soul
by a sacramental confession of her sins. Her name stands in the Roman
Martyrology on the 22d of March. See her life written by Ulpho, a
Brigittine friar, thirty years after her death, with the remarks of
Henschenius.
Footnotes:
1. The great monastery of our Saviour at Wasten, or Vatzen, in the
diocese of Lincopen, was first founded by St. Bridget, in 1344; but
rebuilt in a more convenient situation in 1384, when the nuns and
friars were introduced with great solemnity by the bishop of
Lincopen. This is called its foundation in the exact chronicle of
Sweden, published by Benzelius, Monum. Suec. p. 94.
2. St. Catharine of Sweden compiled a pious book, entitled, Sielinna
Troest, that is, Consolation to the Soul, which fills one hundred
and sixty-five leaves in folio, in a MS., on vellum, mentioned by
Starnman, Sur l'Etat des Sciences en Suede, dans les temps recules.
The saint modestly says in her preface, that as a bee gathers honey
out of various flowers, and a physician makes choice of medicinal
roots for the composition of his remedies, and a virgin makes up a
garland out of a variety of flowers, so she has collected from the
holy scriptures and other good books, chosen rules and maxims of
virtue.