ABSTRACT

Saint Birgitta and Saint Catherine both agitated for the crusade in dramatic revelations and letters: Birgitta spurred on King Magnus of Sweden to undertake a crusade against Novgorod in the 1340s and Catherine in the 1370s urged numerous European leaders to embark on a crusade to retake the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Both laid out various strategies and offered divine justification for the crusading enterprise, but neither of them was rewarded with a successful crusade. The attack on Novgorod was a failure and the Holy Land crusade never got off the ground. Yet, their crusade thinking shows how they attempted to infuse political life with a spiritual dimension.