Birgittine Acts of Memory Remembering St Birgitta of Sweden

List of Figures
List of Musical Examples
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

1. Acts of Memory and Trans*gression
DAVID CARRILLO-RANGEL

2. Sung memories: Remembering St Birgitta and Katherina with Music
KARIN LAGERGREN

3. Birgittine Sites of Memory: Memorial Services as Expressions of Lived Religion in Testamentary Bequests to St Birgitta’s Monasteries in the 15th-Century Baltic Sea Region
ANNA-STINA HÄGGLUND

4. The Community of the Living and the Dead at Syon Abbey: Evidence from Three Necrologies, c.1415-1650
VIRGINIA BAINBRIDGE

5. Revisiting Birgitta of Sweden’s and Catherine of Siena’s Relationships with Queen Giovanna of Naples
PÄIVI SALMESVUORI

6. Birgittine Animation: Dolls, Play, and Ludic Life in the Convent
HANS HENRIK LOHFERT JØRGENSEN

7. Birgitta in the Lives of the Birgittine fratres: The Moriale of John of Syon
NICK SWARBIRCK

8. Carved Survivals. Medieval Wood Sculptures Depicting Saint Birgitta En Route
ELINA RÄSÄNEN

9. God's Ambassadress and the English House of Syon, 1897-1947: Cultural Memory-Making
CARMEN M. MANGION

10. Holy Bottoms and Heavy Balloons: King Magnus, Historical Constructs, and the Spectacular Discipline of Queer History in Birgitta’s Revelations
DAVID CARRILLO-RANGEL

Index

Biography

David Carrillo-Rangel (e/em/eir) is a researcher and PhD Fellow at the University of Bergen, working on medieval materiality, queer theory, and digital culture. Eir doctoral project examines visionary discourse and authority in Birgitta of Sweden. E has published on medieval spirituality, queer studies, and co-edited Sensual and Sensory Experiences in the Middle Ages and Touching: Devotional Practices and Visionary Experience in the Late Middle Ages.

‘Intellectual movements: if you are interested in history, this must-read book will draw you into, and out of it. It offers a kaleidoscope of figures, acts, identities, and it imagines potential hostesses for identification in a revolutionary spirit. To the first heading in the introduction: “A forest of theories” we can add “a forest of artworks” of different media, times, and styles, and “a forest of approaches”. The book presents acts of memory and/as transgression, in what the editor calls “a ruptural act of memory, as trans*gression, as movement across…”. Everything moves, which leads up to a new elaboration and definition of both the idea of history and of “queer”. The richness of this “queer” approach moves beyond any historical study and object I have ever read or seen. The central figure, Birgitta of Sweden, was and is religious, political, and her memory enforces the possibility of change. History is not fixable. Memory is material, affective and performative ; reaching outwards and bringing present and past together. Centred on one figure, this book revolutionizes history in the richest plurality I have ever encountered. Both “history” and “queer” are in a constant, profound, multi-tentacled drive.’

- Mieke Bal, Co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.