Our history
St Bridget of Sweden and Blessed Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad
The Bridgittine Order, or to give it its formal name: Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris (O.Ss.S), the Order of the most Holy Saviour, owes its existence to the great 14thcentury Swedish woman and mystic Saint Bridget, whose Feast Day is 23 July, declared co-patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul II in 1999 in recognition of the oustanding relevance of her life message to the people of Europe and beyond today. St Bridget, born in Sweden at Finsta on 14 June 1303, is widely known for her revelations, her devout life of prayer and self-denial and for the monastic order she founded. She had been married and then widowed, and was the mother of St. Catherine of Sweden who became the first Abbess of the Order that was established in Vadstena in Sweden in 1369, where today the mortal remains of St Bridget lie in the ancient Abbey church. St Bridget spent the last twenty four years of her life in Rome and died at the House in Piazza Farnese which today is the Mother House of the new Bridgettine Order under the current Abbess General Mother Tekla Famiglietti , and where the mortal remains of the foundress of the new Order, Blessed Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad, 'the second Bridget', now lie.
Blessed Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad was born on the 4 June 1870 in Fåglavik (Sweden), to Lutheran parents. Elisabeth Hesselblad worked for several years as a nurse in a hospital in New York. Thanks to the help and guidance of the Jesuit, Father Hagan, she felt an ardent desire to deepen her knowledge of the Catholic faith, and was received into the Church on 15 August 1902. The following year she travelled to Rome where she came upon the house of Saint Bridget. After gaining the encouragement and support of Pope Saint Pius X, she founded the Order of the Most Holy Saviour on 8 September 1911. Mother Elisabeth during her life time was regarded by the famous Cardinal Merry del Val, Cardinal Secretary of State under Pope St Pius X, as "The most extraordinary woman in Rome".
History in the UK: the Old and the New
The history of the Bridgettine Order in the UK is at one and the same time old and new. New, because with the founding of the new branch by Blessed Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad on 8 September 1911, England, and recently Wales, has seen since 1931 the establishment of three houses of Bridgettine Sisters - first at Iver Heath, then Maryvale and, in 2008, Holywell. Old, because even today the ancient Order still exists in England at Syon Abbey as the older 'sister' of the new branch, with an unbroken lineage dating to the early 1400's.
It was always Blessed Elisabeth's desire to revive the spirt of the ancient Order with her new foundations, bringing the spirit of Saint Bridget of Sweden to engage apostolically with the modern world. As part of this task Blessed Elisabeth spent time in the UK, visiting and staying at Syon Abbey, in Devon, founded first near London in 1415, from where she also received a copy of the original Rule and Constitutions of the ancient Order. She stayed there twice, learning from and being inspired by her sister nuns and especially by the Lady Abbess who gave her blessing to Elisabeth to follow God's calling to whatever He willed her to do for the Bridgetine Order.
The first trace of the Order in the UK can in fact be shown to be from a little earlier than 1415. It is known that Henry, Lord FitzHugh, Constable of England and Chamberlain to King Henry V, had visited the monastery of Vadstena in Sweden in 1406. He had travelled to Sweden to accompany the daughter of King Henry IV, Phillipa, who was betrothed to the King of Sweden, Eric XIII of Pomerania. Whilst in Sweden he was sufficiently impressed by what he had seen at Vadstena to volunteer to help with a similar foundation in England. He promised a gift of a manor at Cherry Hinton, Cambridge. Although the foundation did not occur here, two Bridgittine brothers (for the monastery also had a 'double' section for males) came to England in 1408 to prepare for the eventual Syon foundation a few years later in 1415.
Syon Abbey
'The Monastery of St. Saviour and St. Bridget of Syon' was a royal foundation, and the only Bridgettine Abbey to be established in England before the Reformation. It was originally built by King Henry V in 1415 on a site in Twickenham opposite his own royal palace at Shene (Richmond), but rebuilt at Isleworth on the banks of the River Thames on the site of an earlier Celestine monastery, first coming into use as a monastery in 1431. Today a newer house on the site, called Syon House, belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. In 2003 excavations were carried out and it was discovered that the abbey church may have been considerably bigger than even Westminster Abbey and would have been an amazing sight from the river. It was a monastery that combined strict observance and practices, modelled on the rule of Saint Augustine and as adapted by Saint Bridget. It was also a centre of learning, the library having contained about 1,400 texts. The foundation consisted of two communities to form a 'double' monastery, in one sixty sisters, in the other thirteen priests, four deacons and eight lay brothers. The monastery flourished until its dissolution by King Henry VIII in 1539. Four years earlier, on 4 May 1535, the 'confessor general' of the Abbey, St. Richard Reynolds, "the Angel of Syon", was brutally executed at Tyburn for not accepting the King's supremacy over the Church in England in place of the Holy Father in Rome. A plaque commemorating him is found today on the wall of one of Syon House's outbuildings. The body of this Bridgettine martyr and canonised saint was placed on the abbey gateway, of which the metre-high carved pinnacle still survives today. This, and the iron cross that once stood on top of the abbey church, are now in the possession of the few remaining enclosed nuns that derive from this first old community who were exiled in the 16thcentury.
The nuns returned to England in 1861 and have lived at South Brent in Devon since 1925. Prior to 1861 the exiled community were established in Lisbon, and before that in Flanders and Rouen. Today the nuns, under Mother Abbess Anne-Maria are the only religious community in the UK which has continuously existed from before the Reformation.
The Catholic church at Isleworth, barely a few hundred metres away from the old Syon Abbey, is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows and St Bridget of Sweden. Happily, devotion to Saint Bridget, the Mother of the whole Bridgettine Order, old and new, is found today where it first flourished almost 600 years ago.
Iver Heath
The Bridgetinne presence, by the providence of God, has now been reasserted with the opening of three houses of the new Order, the first being at Iver Heath, just outside London, in Buckinghamshire.
Iver Heath was established as a convent in 1931when a group of five sisters were sent to England from the house of St Bridget in Rome to a property offered to the Order by a lifelong friend of Mother Elisabeth Hesseblad. The house was a small Tudor style building to which extensions, in particular a substantial chapel, were added over the years. Our chapel now also serves the needs of the local parish.
Maryvale and Holywell
Two other foundations have occurred subsequent to Iver Heath, that at Maryvale in Birmingham in 1999, and most recently, in Holywell, by the medieval Welsh shrine of St Winefride Well, in 2008.
The convent at Maryvale is in the grounds of the former Oscott College, established in 1794, the first Seminary to open in England after the Reformation and one-time home of The Oratory of St. Philip of Neri founded by Cardinal John Henry Newman. The area also has had constant Catholic presence since the Middle Ages. The chapel of the College, now called the Maryvale Institute, is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and is often visited as a shrine. The college is an international Catholic distance-learning college for catechesis, theology, philosophy and religious education and the Sisters form the spiritual heart of the Institute, with their constant contemplative prayer and liturgical worship, as well as providing warm hospitality.
The convent at Holywell provides hospitality and accomodation for pilgrims to the medieval place of pilgrimage, St. Winifride's Well, Holywell. The Sister's took over and remodelled two properties with their own histories' the old hospice known as St Winefrid's Pilgrims Rest and the adjoining Ave Maria Hall (which was in ruins). The former is know the new Guest House known as St Winefride`s House, the latter is the Convent proper. Both were opened in 2008.
St Winefride`s Well is the most famous 'healing' well in Britain, which in its time was not unlike Lourdes today, and is the only such shrine to survive the Reformation as a place of public pilgrimage throughout Penal times.