A minor academic blast from the past

Every now and again, I am reminded of how small the world of medieval studies actually is. Recently, however, I was reminded of this by an encounter with my past self, a version from the spring of 2019. For the past few weeks, I have been putting together a draft of an article which seeks to put together a lot of sources spanning about seven centuries, as well as looking at the roots of these sources. Consequently, I have probably driven the university librarians slightly insane with my incessant interlibrary loan requests over the summer. Now that I am back in Oslo, I have to reap what I have sowed, and my office contains more books than ever before. One of these books is a collection of articles edited by Kai Brodersen, simply titled Solinus. New Studies, concerning the fourth-century Roman writer Gaius Julius Solinus, whose work known as Collectanea Rerum Mirabilium was one of the most influential sources by which Graeco-Roman ideas entered into the Latin Medieval learned world.    

The collection is one of relatively few such academic books that I have read in their entirety. Most often, I will read one or two articles while trying to build an argument for an article of my own, or assembling the syllabus for a class. However, as I always do prefer to read books in their entirety, I started adding post-it notes to the table of contents, in order to tick off which of the articles I had already read, so that I could make sure that I had finished the entire book. It was this practice that proved to me that not only had I read this book before, I had also read this specific copy of it before, loaned as it was by the University Library of Southern Denmark.  

This encounter with my past self is a good reminder that one's interests and academic pursuits do not follow a straight line. More often than not, we circle back to some previous point of departure, sometimes with renewed interest, sometimes out of curiosity, and sometimes because we forget that we have covered this material already. To my mind, this is a very positive aspect of scholarly pursuits, because it means that we never know what will serve us well at a future junction, so no matter what we read or write in any given year should be considered frivolous or wasted, just because it is not continued for some time, or because it does not appear in its originally intended form. For some people, these reappearances might be frustrating, since they might easily give the impression that one's work is not going anywhere. I for my part, however, think of it as a very good thing, because being able to return to something with knowledge and experience you did not have at the time when you were first dealing with something, can only make your current work on the material better and better founded. 

 

A Dutch haul

Two weeks ago, I spent a few days in Belgium to attend a friend's wedding. As this was my first time in the country - layovers at Brussles Airport do not count - I was eager to get a chance to explore its literary scene, one which I primarily know through the comic book production of the great Francophone masters of the ninth art. However, as I was in Flanders, most of the available literature was in Dutch, a language that I do not speak, but which I find easier to read than French. Moreover, since I travelled via Schiphol, my first opportunity to buy reading material was also in the Dutch language, represented by the Donald Duck comics. For reasons of time and available luggage space, my literary exploration did not delve too deeply into the shelves of Standaard - a Belgian chain of bookshops that I was happy to learn about - but in-between sightseeing, excellent food, and social activities, I was able to practice some of my very rusty Dutch through reading stories both unknown and - in the case of some Donald Duck stories written in the Netherlands and made available in the Norwegian Donald Duck magazine - very familiar. I'm happy to have some materials for learning Dutch, and I look forward to discovering some of those words that are typically encountered in comic books, namely words that might not be very common outside that literary universe, but which do nonetheless carry a lot of cultural context within them. 

 

Birds in Antwerp Cathedral - centre and universality in a Christian space?

Last week I spent a few days in Belgium, a journey which included a trip to Antwerp and its cathedral. As this was my first time in both the country and the city - and as the excursion to Antwerp was something I had not planned in advance - I was completely unprepared by the lavish decorations to be found within the church space. The cathedral is perhaps most famous for its marvellous paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, but I was even more struck by a pulpit situated in the nave, which probably dates to the seventeenth or early eighteenth century.  

The pulpit is made from wood, and it is a masterpiece of woodcraft, whose components are made to look like a living forest. While its most sumptuous side is the front, I first saw it from behind, and even that was enough to stop me in my tracks. What caught my attention most firmly was its array of birds in extremely lifelike details that perched along the pulpit like a guard of honour. More than the vivisimilitude, perhaps, I was also struck by the types of birds, which include an eagle, a peacock and - even more delightfully - a turkey.  

These birds might have had various functions in the decorative programme of the pulpit. Partly, they no doubt served to amaze its spectators and demonstrate the wealth of the cathedral - perhaps even of the bishop himself. But perhaps they also serve to make a point about the universality of Christianity and the place of Antwerp in this universal space. After all, eagles, peacocks and turkeys were exotic birds to seventeenth-century churchgoers in Flanders, and still are to this day. And while this exoticism might have been sufficient in and of itself to have them commissioned for this pulpit, it is nonetheless tempting to see these birds as signifiers of different parts of the world: The eagle in the far north, the peacock in Asia, and the turkey in the still relatively new world of the Americas. And in the middle of all this: Antwerp. If this orientational function of this wooden menagerie was not one of its original function, I very well imagine that it made several of the cathedral's congregants see themselves as part of a much wider world. 

Saint Lawrence from a Burgos workshop

Today, August 10, is the feast of Saint Lawrence, a deacon of Rome reportedly martyred in 258. He is one of the oldest and most popular of the post-biblical saints to have enjoyed a sustained popularity and widespread cult since Late Antiquity. Part of his popularity might stem from the nature of his legend, according to which he was placed on a large gridiron to be roasted to death - a story narrated in gruesome detail by the fourth-century Christian poet Prudentius in his book on martyrs, the Liber Peristephanon. Due to his popularity and that he is easily recognised by his main attribute - his gridiron - he can often be found in medieval and early modern art.  

One example of Saint Lawrence in medieval art is the below detail from a predella belonging to an altarpiece made by a workshop of artists in Burgos, Spain, in the second half of the fifteenth century. This is a period of great artistic craft in the style now known as Hispano-Flemish Gothic, a name that points to the close artistic ties between Spain and Flanders in the period. Lawrence is found next to Ambrose of Milan, and the predella also features SS Sebastian, Augustine, Helena, and Barbara. The predella is currently housed at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid. 

 

Saint Olaf, Saint Lucius, and Saint Dorothy in Roskilde Cathedral

 

Today, 29 July, is the feast of Saint Olaf of Norway. Since I have spent a lot of my academic career researching his cult in the Middle Ages, as well as the modern reception of him and his stories, I am taking this opportunity to write about one of the myriad cases where the figure of Olaf can be used to explore facets of medieval history. 

Olaf was king of Norway from 1016 to 1028, and died in 1030 in an attempt to regain the Norwegian kingship. The following year, he was proclaimed a saint by Bishop Grimkell, who had been part of the king's retinue and was in practice the only bishop in Norway by 1031. The cult spread quickly throughout the North Atlantic and the Baltic, and Olaf became particularly popular in the Danish cult of saints. While most of the the sources to the veneration of Olaf in Denmark are lost to us, there are some places where there remain some interesting and significant pockets that indicate Olaf's importance. One such place is Roskilde, and I will illustrate this by way of a piece of art visible in the nave of Roskilde Cathedral.  

These restored wall-paintings are found on one of the pillars by the entrance to the choir, and date from the early sixteenth century, when the interior of the cathedral was subject to an extensive redecoration programme. The most famous results of this effort are some of the chapels, where the walls are lavishly decorated with a host of holy figures. The scene shown in the pictures of the present blogpost, however, are more easily missed, but perhaps much more revealing of the priorities of the cathedral clergy around 1500. 

The scene is an interesting summary of how the Roskilde clergy understood themselves in the Christian cosmology. The central figure is the only one without a nimbus in the scene, and it is likely that he represents the bishop of Roskilde, or perhaps the entire cathedral clergy as a pars pro toto. Below him is the tortured - but as-yet uncrucified - Christ surrounded by the instruments of his passion, an iconographic assemblage that was in vogue in the late medieval period, while above the bishop we find the Trinity represented in a similarly typical late-medieval fashion, with the crucified Christ in the foreground, the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ's head, and God the Father seated in the background. This vertical sequence of figures also situates the Roskilde bishop historically and mystically, as his episcopacy is made possible and given meaning through the sacrifice of Christ, while the bishop might also be understood to occupy the historical here-and-now between the historical event of the Passion of Christ below and the Holy Trinity above which sublimates the mystery of salvation and represents the future end of history. This mystic-historical iconography is very common.  

Three other figures, however, who are flanking the Roskilde bishop, comprise a configuration particular to the diocese in question. On the bishop's close left is Saint Olaf, standing atop a dragon in accordance with an iconographic standard that had developed since at least the thirteenth century. Further to the bishop's left is a figure now almost worn away by time, but whose caption tells us that it is Saint Dorothy of Caesarea. Interestingly, she is positioned behind a smaller, cross-legged figure wearing an episcopal mitre, whom she seems to either protect or punish. 

To the bishop's right is the cathedral's patron saint, Pope Lucius I, whose relics were brought to Roskilde at some point around 1100, possibly in the episcopate of Svend the Norwegian (d.1088). The combination of Lucius, Olaf and Dorothy is significant, as Olaf appears together with the cathedral's patron and is in effect the sainted pope's second-in-command, while Dorothy appears to take the place of a third but still important member. The Roskilde bishop is thereby protected by a holy bishop, a holy king and a holy virgin, two universal saints representing early Christendom, and a local (albeit near-universal) saint representing the more recent, perhaps even contemporary Christendom. The placement of these figures served to remind the cathedral clergy at Roskilde that they and their institution are guarded by these saints, and that they are owed particular veneration because of their role in the cathedral's history. In a single work of art, the cathedral and its clergy are positioned within salvation history, and also reminded of their duties towards their heavenly patrons.

Sanctus Lucius

Sanctus Olauus and Sancta Dorothea

Cantigas de Compostela, part 2: Santiago the king?

Today, July 25, is the feast of Saint James the Elder, whose main cult centre is Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The establishment of Compostela as the cult centre of an apostle whose death in Palestine is recounted by the Acts of the Apostles appears to have begun in the ninth century, and flourished into one of the main pilgrimage centres of Latin Christendom in the early twelfth century. One of the reasons for the success of Compostela's emergence as the location of the burial of Saint James the Elder is the plasticity of saints, and how this plasticity was applied to the figure of Saint James, or Santiago. The term 'plasticity' in this context means that the saints can take on a wide variety of roles, and a wide variety of stories can be written about them. Few saints have had such a successfully varied iconography as Santiago, as he is known and venerated as an apostle, a martyr, a pilgrim, and a soldier. I have written a brief summary of this iconography here. Santiago was, however, also subject to other iconographies. In the Miracula Jacobi, the second instalment of the collection of material pertaining to Saint James which is commonly called Liber Sancti Jacobi, we read a miracle account where a Greek bishop, Stephen, claims that James should be called a fisherman and not a soldier, as was then evidently in vogue. The account continues to narrate a vision of Stephen's, in which Santiago appears to him dressed as a soldier, in order to prove that he was wrong to dismiss those who called the apostle a soldier also. This particular story both shows that there were several ideas about how Santiago should be understood in circulation, and also that the authorities at the cult centre saw the need to convince some audiences that Santiago was also a soldier. 

Another iconographical branch of Santiago can be suggested by a thirteenth-century stone sculpture currently housed in the cathedral museum in Compostela. Here, the apostle-pilgrim-soldier-fisherman saint is depicted in a different way, namely as a seated king. The staff on which he rests his hand is probably the pilgrim's staff rather than the sceptre - as it looks nothing like typical depictions of sceptres from contemporary art - so the figure is not solely regal. Perhaps we should understand the crown as signifying Santiago's status as a martyr, since the crown was regarded as the prize for obtaining martyrdom. Yet it is also possible that those who commissioned this statue and accepted its appearance - namely the episcopal authorities - aimed to imbue their patron with a more royal aura. Perhaps, as the royal authority of Castilla and León was undergoing increased centralisation - especially under the reign of Alfonso X (r.1252-84) - the episcopal court of Compostela sought to use this current to evoke the historical kingdom of Galicia, and to make Santiago even more relevant than before.  

Ultimately, I must leave it to the experts on the cult of Saint James the Elder to provide some explanation of this rendition. In any case, it serves as an excellent example of how so much of the cult's success relied on the ability to adapt the iconography to new contexts. 

 

New publication: Holy Bishops, Papal Canonisation and the Legitimisation of Power in Thirteenth-Century Norway and Poland

 
As part of the project where I have been employed for the past three years, I have co-authored an article with my friend and colleague Gregorz Pac, titled 'Holy Bishops, Papal Canonisation and the Legitimisation of Power in Thirteenth-Century Norway and Poland: The Cases of Eystein Erlendsson of Nidaros and Stanislaus of Kraków'. This article explores how Norwegian and Polish ecclesiastics of the 1200s sought to increase the status of their patron saints, and emphasise the legitimacy of their cults, through papal acknowledgement in the form of canonisations. 

The article was published last week in volum 129 of Acta Poloniae Historica, and it can be accessed here, and here.