In this article, I discuss the presence of Classical
culture and the Latin language in central Brigittine texts. Although heathen
gods and Roman emperors were sometimes mentioned as negative examples, references
to authors such as Seneca and Cicero were relied upon to give the texts
authority. Different persons were sometimes mixed up with each other and their
names sometimes appeared in corrupted forms, which shows that the writers’
knowledge of Antiquity was superficial. The syntax and the style of the texts were
often influenced by Latin models. In some cases, a native Swedish construction
became more frequent because of language contact with Latin. Some constructions
such as the future participle had no native roots in the Swedish language but
were adopted into the written language from Latin. These constructions were
sometimes used even in passages in which the Latin source text utilized other
constructions. The Swedish translators not only copied constructions from the
source texts but extended their use to new contexts.