Vadstena Abbey

The monastery of Vadstena and the corresponding Gothic monastery church is located in the town of Vadstena in the Swedish province of Östergötland. The monastery was secularized in 1595, a double monastery of the Saviour Order.

History

In the town of Vadstena in 1346, the foundation stone was laid for a monastery, which was planned by the St. Bridget's Convent and the mother should be for the Order that she founded. 1384, eleven years after the death of St. Bridget, the monastery was inaugurated. It became a spiritual center and because of donations to the largest landowners in Sweden. The monastery survived the Reformation to in 1595.

1369 began with the construction of the monastery church. According to the instructions of the Holy Birgitta the church should be built easily and without jewelry. 1374 was their daughter, St. Catherine of Sweden, in the succession Birgitta new abbess of the monastery.

The church is a three-nave Gothic building from blue-gray limestone - hence the name Blåkyrkan ( Blue Church ). The choir of nuns lay to the east, while the choir of the monks lay in the West. The church was consecrated in 1430, but it took another decade until it was finished for good. For restorations in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially the roof structure was changed.

The church was as Sepulcher very popular and a large number of medieval grave slabs are preserved. Among the interred there is the Danish-Swedish Queen Philippa of England (1394-1430), a great benefactress of the Convention; it is also immortalized on one of the church windows.

Today Birgit Tinen live again in Vadstena, but not in a historical building, but in a new building with its own Catholic church near the historic monastery grounds.

Varia

The story of St. Brigitta's sanctuary, Konrad Caraway (1848-1936), published in the second volume of his series of Sunday Silence ( Herder Verlag, Freiburg, 1906), revolves around the monastery of Vadstena.