Editor's note: We don't have Chapter Fifty-One. Chapter Fifty-Two is 47 paragraphs long! We will be publishing this 10 paragraphs (approximately, depending on content) and posting over the next 5 days (including today). We will link to the next ten paragraphs at the end of the page.
This is the second section of a revelation sent to the holy spouse of Christ, Saint Bridget, in which our
Lady Saint Mary reproached the pride of women in their stance, bearing, speech,
dress, and other behavior, with the example of three wretched women: of which one
was in Hell, another in Purgatory, and the third, alive.
After this, there appeared three women: that is to say, the mother, and the
daughter, and the niece, that is, that daughter's daughter. But the mother and the
granddaughter appeared dead, and the daughter appeared to be alive. The said dead
mother seemed to come creeping out of a foul and dark clay ditch; her heart was
drawn out of her body, her lips cut off, and her chin trembled; her teeth, shining,
white and long, ground and chattered together; her nostrils were all gnawn; her
eyes were put out, hanging down on her cheeks between sinews; her forehead was
hollow; and instead of her forehead there was a great and dark depth.
In her head the head pan failed and had fallen away, and the brain boiled up as
if it had been lead, and flowed out like black pitch. Her neck turned about like
wood that is turned in the instrument of a joiner, against which was set a blade of
the sharpest iron, cutting and shaving away without any comfort. Her breast was
open and full of worms long and short; and each of them wallowed hither and
thither upon each other. Her arms were like the hafts or handles of a grinding stone.
Her hands were like keys full of knots and long. The chines or vertebrae of her
back were all dissolved, each from the other; and one going up, another going
down, they never ceased moving. A long and large serpent came forth from the
nether part of her stomach to the other parts; and joining the head and tail together
as a round bow, went round about her bowels continually, like a wheel. Her hips
and her legs seemed like two rough staves of thorns full of most sharp prickles. Her
feet were like toads.
Then this dead mother spoke to her daughter who was alive saying: "Hear
you, altogether my tom and venomous daughter. Woe is me that I was ever your
mother. I am she who set you in the nest of pride, in which you, made hot, grew
until you came of age. And then it was pleasing to you that you had spent your time
in that nest. Therefore I say to you that as often as you turn your eyes to look at, or
see pride, which I taught you, so often cast you boiling venom in my eyes with
insufferable burning heat. As often as you speak words of pride which you learned
from me, so often swallow I most bitter drink. As often as your ears are filled with
the wind of pride which the waves of arrogance and pride excite and stir up in you,
that is to say, to hear praise of your own body and to desire praise from the world,
which you learned from me, so often comes to my ears a fearful and dreadful
sound, with blowing and burning wind.
Woe, therefore, to me, who am poor and wretched; poor because I have nor
feel anything of good, and wretched because I have abundance and plenty of evil.
But you, daughter, are like the tail of a cow which, going in foul clay, as often as
she moves her tail, as often does she befoul and sprinkles those near her. So you,
daughter, are like a cow; for you have no goodly wisdom, and you go after the
works and impulses of your body.
Therefore as often as you follow the works of my custom, that is to say, those
sins which I taught you, so often is my pain renewed, and the more grievously it
burns upon me. Therefore, my daughter, why are you proud of your generation and
parentage? For it would be honor and respect to you that the uncleanliness of my
bowels was your pillow, my shameful member was your birthing, and the
uncleanness of my blood was your clothing when you were born? Therefore, now,
my womb, in which you lay, is altogether eaten by worms.
But why, daughter, do I complain to you, when I ought more to complain
about myself? Because there are three things which torment me most grievously in
my heart. The first is that I, made by God for heavenly joy, misused my conscience
and have disposed myself to the sorrows of Hell. The second is that while God
made me fair as an angel, I deformed and misshaped myself so that I am more like
the devil than an angel of God. The third is that in the time given to me, I made a
very evil change. For I received a little thing, short and transitory, that is to say,
delight in sin, for which now I feel endless evil, that is, the pain of Hell".