Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Skive Church

Today is the feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, more commonly known as Thomas Becket, who was killed in Canterbury Cathedral on this day in 1170. The murder of the archbishop at the hand of knights in King Henry II's retinue was a scandal in its time, and even though the English king had not himself ordered the death of Thomas, he was widely blamed for the deed, especially in ecclesiastical circles.

The cult of Thomas spread quickly throughout Latin Christendom. This was in large part due to the network of ecclesiastical figures to which Thomas had belonged, and that shared his reformist views on the relationship between royal and ecclesiastical power that marked the political map of the twelfth century. The key figure in this network was Pope Alexander III (r.1159-81) who had supported Thomas' cause during the archbishop's exile in France from 1164 to 1170. It was Alexander who canonised Thomas in 1173.

Other important reformist figures were the Norwegian archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (r.1157-88) who is largely credited with bringing the cult of Thomas to Norway (see this blogpost), and the Danish archbishop Eskil Christiernson, or Eskil of Lund, who is considered to be responsible for bringing the cult of Thomas to Denmark, in no small part through the Cistercian order to whom both Eskil and Thomas were close. 

The cult of Thomas in medieval Denmark is still a subject that requires more work, and I hope to be able to contribute to this scholarly lacuna in the coming year. As a way to remind myself of the work to be done, I'm sharing with you one late medieval example of the veneration of Thomas in Denmark, namely a wall-painting from Skive Church in Northern Jutland.

Tomae de Cantuarienus [sic]

Wall-painting from Skive Church, Northern Jutland, c.1500

The example in question comes from the Church of Our Lady in the town of Skive in Northern Jutland. The church was built around 1200, and it is commonly known as Skive Old Church to distinguish it from the eighteenth-century church situated nearby, and which appears to be the hub of today's religious life in Skive.

The early history of Skive is uncertain, and the current scholarly consensus is that the town was most likely established around 1100. Its status as a market town - i.e. a town with particular mercantile privileges - was confirmed in a letter from 1326 (see this website), but the status might have been achieved earlier. Judging from the Church of Our Lady, Skive appears to have been an important town by the turn of the twelfth century, and its importance can be explained or measured by three main factors. First of all, Skive lies very close to Viborg, the episcopal see of Central Jutland which was established c.1060 and thus one of the main power centres in the area. Secondly, a royal manor, Skivegård, is mentioned in the survey of King Valdemar II (r.1201-41), the so-called Liber Census Daniae (see here), and points to the town's vicinity to royal power in addition to the episcopal power at Viborg. The third factor is the fish trade which is likely to have brought a lot of money to the town's wealthier inhabitants. These three factors must all be taken into account as possible explanations for the erection of the Church of Our Lady around 1200.

Vor Frue Kirke, Skive

Vor Frue Kirke, Skive, interior, towards the main altar

In the nineteenth century, the Church of Our Lady was about to be demolished, which was the fate of several redundant churches in Denmark at the time. Fortunately, an impressive programme of late medieval wall paintings was discovered in time, and the church was preserved. It is in this programme that we find the aforementioned late medieval depiction of Thomas of Canterbury. 

The interior of Skive Church is filled with a vast array of saints. These saints were painted c.1500, and it is thought that the workshop that executed these paintings was the same, or was at least connected to, the workshop that decorated Roskilde Cathedral (see here, and here). Among these many saints we find Thomas of Canterbury, situated in the vaulted roof between Peter Martyr of Verona (d.1252) and Sebastian. The question then is how we are to understand this as an expression of veneration of Thomas.

The painting of Thomas of Canterbury in Skive is interesting, both because it is one of very few known medieval Danish depictions of him, and also because of its wider pictorial context. Thomas is here one of many saints. On the one hand, these wall-paintings were commissioned by local donors who might have given very specific instructions about which saints to include. It is therefore tempting to see the inclusion of Thomas in light of the wider history of his cult in medieval Denmark. 

On the other hand, we might understand this as just an expression of his general popularity in Latin Christendom at the time. The saints of Skive Church are for the most part universally venerated in the Latin Church and by the time of the programme's execution these universal saints had been venerated for a very long time. Even the youngest of the saints included, Peter Martyr and Roch (whose traditional, but not uncontested, year of death is 1327), became widely celebrated within a relatively short timespan and are therefore unsurprising to see among more veteran saints. Even those saints that are not universally venerated outside the Nordic countries are nonetheless of regional importance, such as Knud Rex (d.1086) and Knud Dux (d.1131) whose cults were established throughout all of Denmark, and Saint Olaf of Norway (d.1030) whose cult was immensely popular throughout the Nordic world. The inclusion of Thomas in this saintly collegium is, therefore, a testament to the contemporary trends within the cult of saints, rather than a stage in a continuum in the veneration of Saint Thomas in medieval Denmark.

Even so, while the depiction of Thomas in Skive Church might not yield much information about his Danish cult, it nonetheless provides evidence of the endurance of his cult in Latin Christendom, and we see both that he was one of the trendy saints even in Northern Europe around 1500, and that he was one of the many ways in which the donors of Skive's wall-paintings sought to express their participation in the religious trends of Latin Christendom.

Similar blogposts

Saint Olaf in medieval Denmark

Thomas of Canterbury in medieval Norway

On the early cult of Thomas of Canterbury

A song for Thomas of Canterbury

Martin of Tours in Skive Church

The chalice of John the Evangelist

Today is the feast of John the Evangelist, and for this occasion I decided to dig deep in my archives in search of a memory from when I was an MA student and spent quite a lot of time in York. I was reminded of the many beautiful pieces of surviving medieval stained glass in the city's many churches, and I had some hazy recollections of John the Evangelist featuring in some of them. In particular, I was convinced that the Church of St Denys on Walmgate had at least one memorable depiction of John, and it turned out that I was right, in a fashion. The images I found were not quite what I had envisioned, but what I found was well worth sharing, especially because one of the images teaches a very good lesson about the importance of iconography. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

John the Evangelist, holding his attribute, the eagle

The above picture was one I had forgotten, but which shows one of the typical representations of John: A young, beardless man holding the eagle, his attribute which points back to the tetramorph of the vision of Ezekiel. In his other hand he holds what looks like the palm leaf, commonly attributed to martyrs, which is puzzling considering that John was not martyred but rather died of old age. It is possible that it is a lily signifying his virginity, but this is uncertain. The glass is fourteenth century. 

Saint Denys

Saint Denys, tower and repaired Norman doorway

The Church of Saint Denys is a treasure trove of medieval vestiges pointing to its long history. The doorway beside the tower, for instance, points to its early twelfth-century origin, as it is a Romanesque Norman arch with mason work typical of the period. Although the stonework and the gateway itself is, to the best of my judgement, original, its placement is a result of the continuous changes of the medieval church space. The main church building with its central nave and two flanking aisles dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the period when the oldest surviving stained glass windows were constructed. The nave was badly damaged during the English Civil War, presumably in particular during the Siege of York in 1644, and therefore significantly shorter and more quadratic than it was originally. Consequently, while the Norman doorway once was the main entrance into the nave, it presently stands in its rebuilt form as a side entrance. 

Saint Denys, interior

Because the church has undergone many accidents and tumultuous changes in the course of its long history, a lot of what survives today is not in its original place - as demonstrated by the case of the Norman doorway. This is particularly evident in much of the stained glass. Some of the figures remain in their original positions, either by being put back in place or simply by serendipitously surviving the many changes in the subsequent centuries. Much of the medieval glass, however, survives only in fragments. These fragments have been put into whichever empty lead frame that fit them, resulting in an incongruous mix of displaced details that together provide an imperfect but powerful glimpse of the once complete programme of stories, episodes and figures that filtered the light for the churchgoers in the late Middle Ages. To the medievalist, these assemblages of fragments provide a veritable treasure hunt by which a picture, a narrative or a figure might be teased out from the chaos. One of these figures is John the Evangelist. 

In the picture above we see some of the many details that once were part of complete stories in glass. We see trumpeters that might hint at a doomsday window since the gonfanon is decorated by horned devils and ominous black birds that could be owls. We see the crowned head of the crucified Christ that might have been a free-standing crucifix or part of a larger crucifixion scene. And we see a chalice with a serpent. This chalice is the chalice of John the Evangelist, and can be found in a story recounted by Jacobus de Voragine in Legenda Aurea. According to this story, John was given a cup of poisoned wine by a pagan priest, but John drank the wine and survived, thus proving the power of God.

What is particular interesting about this disembodied attribute is exactly that it is recognisable even outside its original context. Once this stained glass fragment flanked a figure of John the Evangelist and reminded the onlookers of the story of the poisoned wine, which the priest might have recounted in sermons on precisely this day, December 27. They would have been reminded of this story whenever they went to church, looked up and saw this chalice and the now-lost figure of the evangelist. And even now, centuries later, with the figure of John irretrievably lost to the accidents of history, this single chalice, displaced from its original context, is still identifiable precisely because the stories survive, and precisely because the stained glass is a reminder of that stories, a shorthand for a larger narrative. In this way, fragments of a now-lost vitreous splendour is sufficient for us to, at least mentally, piece together what was once a familiar sight to the parishioners of Saint Denys, Walmgate, York.

New publication: Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy - The first royal saint of Denmark

In November 2017 I attended the seminar Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy, arranged in collaboration between the research group Centrum at Odense Bys Museer (Odense City Museums), senior researcher Anne Hedeager Krag, and the University of Southern Denmark (my then employer). This seminar had grown out of recent archaeological excavations in Odense that had begun in 2015. These excavations had shed new and much needed light on the city's medieval past, and the wealth of new information allowed for a reappraisal on several aspects of Odense's history. The seminar was centred on Knud Svendsson, king of Denmark, who reigned from 1080 until his death in Odense in 1086 following a kingdom-wide rebellion, and who was declared a saint at an synod of Danish bishops in 1095. The seminar brought together a range of experts from many different background and from several disciplines, and the papers dealt with aspects of Danish medieval history as well as comparative cases from other parts of Latin Christendom. 

The proceedings from this seminar is now finally available as an open access e-book, downloadable from this address: https://museum.odense.dk/centrum/publikationer/kulturhistoriske-studier/life-and-cult-of-canute-the-holy.

The volume, Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy - The first royal saint of Denmark, is co-edited by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Mads Runge, Anne Hedeager Krag and myself, and it is published by Odense Bys Museers as volume 4 in the series Archaeological and Historical Studies in Centrality.

Sanctity in Milan, part 5 - Nabor and Felix

Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres
- Ambrosius, Hymn 10


Today, December 7, is the feast-day of Ambrose (d.397), bishop of Milan. At this time, Milan was one of the most important cities in the western part of the Roman Empire, along with Trier and Ravenna, while Rome was predominantly important as the symbolic heart of the empire, and as a bishopric. This was also a period where the bishops had become increasingly important political figures, as the old aristocracy had in many cases left the city for their villas and manors, and as the emperor was often preoccupied with military threats from the Sasanians in the East and the Germanic and Slavic tribes along the northern border. This situation would continue into the fifth century. Aside from the problems coming from outside of the empire, the stability within the empire was also shaken by the rivalries between Catholic and Arian factions. Such rivalries also bled into the political sphere, since both camps could count important political figures among their members. In an important imperial city as Milan, this was particularly destabilising because both factions were more numerous there than elsewhere, and because there was still a considerable pagan faction. Ambrose was actively involved in these controversies, and much of his writing and much of his work as bishop must be understood in light of this religio-political context. And it is the backdrop of the present blogpost.

Despite its opening paragraph, this blogpost is not primarily about Ambrose but about two saints that were important to him, namely Nabor and Felix. According to their legend, they were soldiers serving in the Roman army at the beginning of the fourth century, while Maximian was co-augustus of the western part of the empire, and while Diocletian was the main augustus. As Christians, Nabor and Felix were among the victims of the Diocletian persecution, and they were martyred in Milan, the traditional year of their death being set to 304. Nabor and Felix were then venerated as saints in Milan, and by the time Ambrose had accepted the position as bishop, the two soldier-saints were an established part of the tapestry of Catholic religion in the city. Accordingly, Ambrose actively supported and expanded their cult, and he even wrote a hymn in their honour, the opening part of which serves as this blogpost's epigraph. This hymn is the foundation for what I want to talk about here.

The hymn in honour of Nabor and Felix begins with a greeting to the saints, which also provides the main biographical details provided by their story. The first verse runs accordingly:

Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres,
solo hospites, Mauri genus
terrisque nostris aduenae

Victory, pious Nabor and Felix,
martyrs of Milan,
lonely guests of the land of the Mauritanian people
and you came to us

(The translation is open to other renditions; "Victor" might be a third saint excluded in later renditions of the legend.)

Nabor and Felix 

Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.254v, Roman missal, c.1370, Bologna 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

The biographical information provided in the beginning serves, as I have argued elsewhere, to demonstrate to the saints that the singer of the hymn is familiar with the saints and therefore worthy of receiving their help. What I want to emphasise in this biographical information is the fact that Ambrose addresses Nabor and Felix as being from the land of the Mauretanian people. This means the Roman province of Mauretania, and not the modern country. (I use "Mauretanian people rather than the outdated and problematic "Moor".) This trait of soldier-saints originating in Africa is a common feature of several saints' legends, most famously that of Saint Mauritius and the Theban legion, who have provided patron saints for countless religious houses, villages and cities throughout the Alps.

Ambrose states that Nabor and Felix were guests in the land of the Milanese, thus emphasising their origin in a different part of the world from the foothills of the Alps. Yet they are also Milanese martyrs, and by their death in that very city, it is in that city they reside as saints and it is there that they perform their patronage. They are foreigners becoming Milanese, they are Mauritanian and Milanese at one and the same time.

There are two main points I want to make here. First of all, we see in the legend of Nabor and Felix yet another example of the multicultural world of Late Antiquity, where people from all over the Roman Empire moved and were moved throughout its breadth and width. This multicultural world is accessible through a variety of sources, and the cult of saints is a particularly good one. Secondly, Ambrose was a participant in this multicultural world, and to him there was no contradiction in coming as a stranger from the Mauritanian people and becoming a saint for the Milanese. They were Christian martyrs who had a special bond with the city of Milan, and accordingly he was their venerator, and so were the Catholics of Milan.

To Ambrose, Nabor and Felix were important parts of the Catholic civic identity that he sought to strengthen throughout his tenure as bishop, in part as a bulwark against Arianism. As a part of this construction of a Milanese Catholic civic identity, Ambrose composed hymns and established the liturgical standard known as the Ambrosian liturgy, and he also promoted the cults of other saints. And it should be mentioned that although Nabor and Felix were undoubtedly Milanese, they were not natives to the city, and so Ambrose sought to establish cults of native saints as well. This quest would eventually result in the suspiciously fortuitous discovery of the skeletons of SS Gervasius and Protasius, which I have written about here. Ambrose's biographer, Paulinus, also records the finding of another pair of saints, Nazarius and Celsus, about whom I have written here. This shows that despite venerating the two Mauretanian Milanese, he also sought to provide the city with saints who were born in it - possibly as a way to emphasise the Catholic nature of Milan as a counter-argument to the Arian faction.   

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Nabor and Felix, likely drawn from an illuminator's generic model rather than the legend

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430 

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Nabor and Felix remained important to Milan, and their importance spread elsewhere too. Frederick Barbarossa brought their relics back to Köln when he had sacked Milan, while a monastery in Bologna was named after the two Mauretanian Milanese, a monastery in which the jurist Gratian was a monk. So in addition to their importance in Milan, Nabor and Felix also were important in other parts of Christendom, but that is a story to which I might return some other day.



For similar blogposts, see:

Gervasius and Protasius

Nazarius and Celsus

Thomas of Canterbury in Chiaravalle

Bartholomew in Il Duomo