Bridget of Sweden arrived in Rome during the Jubilee year of 1350, leaving behind Scandinavian nobility to live in voluntary poverty while petitioning Pope Urban V to return the papacy from Avignon. Her interior life centered entirely on Christ’s physical sufferings, recorded across eight volumes of Revelationes. In the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at San Paolo fuori le Mura, Bridget received the visionary locution regarding the wounds of Jesus Christ.
Tradition recounts that Jesus informed the saint that He received 5,480 blows during His arrest, trial, scourging, and execution on Golgotha. If a person recited fifteen Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys daily alongside fifteen specific Passion prayers for an entire year, they would honor each of those hidden wounds.
This devotion formed the bed of the Brigittine spiritual tradition, blending rigorous ascetic discipline with deep affective empathy for Our Lady of Sorrows. Bridget's focus was never morbid emotionalism. She anchored her prayers in the reality of redemptive suffering, urging believers to view Christ's physical torment as an active, voluntary ransom rather than passive victimhood.
