._ In English the prayer would read
as follows: "O Mary, thou mediator between God and men, make of thyself
the medium between the righteous God and me, a poor sinner! O Mary, thou
helper in all anguish and need, come to my assistance in all
sufferrings, and help me resist and strive against the evil spirits and
overcome all my temptations and afflictions. O Mary, thou restorer of
lost grace to all men, restore unto me my lost time, my sinful and
wasted life! O Mary, thou illuminator, who didst give birth to the
eternal Light of the whole world, illumine my blindness and ignorance,
lest I, poor sinner that I am, enter the darkness of eternal death. O
Mary, thou advocate of all miserable men, be thou my advocate at my last
end before the stern judgment of God, and obtain for me the grace and
the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ! Amen." Another prayer calls Mary
the "mighty queen of heaven, the holy empress of the angels, the one who
stays divine wrath." A prayer to the eleven thousand virgins reads as
follows: "O ye, adorned with chastity, crowned with humility, clad with
patience, covered with the blossoms of virtue, well polished with
moderation--O ye precious pearls and chosen virgin maids, help us in the
hour of death!"

With this idolatry and saint-worship silly superstition was combined. In
order to be efficacious, a certain prayer prescribed in the _Hortulus_
must be spoken not only with "true contrition and pure confession," but
also "before a figure which had appeared to St. Gregory." Whoever offers
a certain prayer "before the image of Our Lady in the Sun" "will not
depart this life unshriven, and thirty days before his death will see
the very adorable Virgin Mary prepared to help him." Another prayer is
good "for pestilence" when spoken "before the image of St. Ann;" another
prayer to St. Margaret profits "every woman in travail;" still another
preserves him who says it from "a sudden death." All of these promises
however, are far surpassed by the indulgences assured. The prayer before
the apparition of St. Gregory obtains 24,600 years and 24 days of
indulgence: another promises "indulgence for as many days as our Lord
Jesus Christ received wounds during His passion, _viz._ 5,475." Whoever
prays the Bridget-prayers not only obtains indulgence for himself, but
15 souls of his kin are thereby delivered from purgatory, 15 sinners
converted, and 15 righteous "confirmed and established in their good
standing." (W. 1