There can be few saints of the late Middle Ages whose lives are so richly documented or so curiously varied as that of St Bridget of Sweden. A contemporary ot St Catherine of Siena, she lived in Italy for a quarter of a century and played politics almost identical with those of Catherine, yet the two women never met; but their lives resemble each otne at many points. Both of them were in their lifetime openly venerated as saints, a circumstance which must have been a further affliction to women each of a profound humility. Both of them were surrounded by ‘families'; and in either case it appears that only the family's devotion to its mother held it together. Just as Catherine Benincasa seems to have given most of her trust to the English friar-hermit, William Flete, so the favoured son St Bridget's largely Swedish ‘family’ was a Spaniard, the hermit ex-bishop Alphonse of Pecha; and Alphonse seems after Bridget's death to have suffered some of William Flete's neglect at hands of the other devotees.