St. Birgitta has by some been considered as a reformer before Luther, but not quite correctly. Luther reformed the institutions; Birgitta aimed at reforming their upholders, and used against the pope and the priests a language almost as strong as Luther’s. Some of her ideas were not strictly in harmony with the Catholic dogmas; she insisted on a close personal union with God, without the mediation of priests or saints, fought for a universal knowledge of the Bible and the preaching of the Gospel in the popular vernaculars, and considered the sale of indulgences a mortal sin. Four hundred and seventy convents of her order, in which men and women were to collaborate for the instruction and spiritual guidance of the people, were after her death founded in the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Esthonia, Poland, Italy and the Netherlands, one existing in England up to the time of Elizabeth. The mother institution at Vadstena, in East Gothland, was of the greatest importance to the cultural development of Sweden and the North. One of the greatest libraries of the Middle Ages was reared, and the first book-printing establishment of Sweden founded there in 1490. Within its walls a considerable literary activity prevailed, the religious literature of the time being copied, or translated into Swedish, and many original works written. The Swedish language, used by the Birgittine school of writers, tried, by approaching Danish forms, to establish a common literary language in the North, the Norwegian having approached the Swedish during the time of the close relations between the courts of the two countries. These efforts, for a time furthered by political relations, were unfortunately soon to be abandoned forever. Birgitta was a great genius in fetters. Her rare gifts were kept back in their development through the idiosyncrasies of her period. She was of an indomitable, aristocratic spirit, always remaining the noblewoman to whom it was natural to speak the truth to the princes of State and Church, because she considered herself their equal through the best blood of the North, of which she had her share. This religious mystic was a true child of her aristocratic age, which gave to Sweden two parallel lines, sometimes identical, of great legislators and weak and indulgent princes. CHAPTER VI _Unionism versus Patriotism--Margaret, Engelbrekt and Charles Knutsson_