December lights in the fjords

Whenever a year draws to its end, it feels appropriate to find some form of concluding statement or summary that bridges the past months with the months ahead. As this strangest of years comes to a longed-for close, however, I find it difficult to formulate anything that is not either trite or too self-serving or self-centred. Whatever my own experiences and challenges, they have been fairly mild and short-lived compared to what so many others have had to deal with. And although there are things I am likely to talk about at length at a future point out of frustration and anger, it feels pointless to rehearse these now. Instead, I leave this year with a few pictures of my home village this December, to where I was fortunate enough to return at the beginning of the month, and where I was able to quarantine safely and work while enjoying the crisp freshness of the December cold in the fjords. If nothing else, I hope to continue to immerse myself in this landscape in the months ahead. 

 

Saint Thomas of Canterbury at Lund

Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury, better known as Thomas Becket, archbishop, who was killed at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, when a group of knights broke into the church. The murder must be understood against the six-year-long conflict between Thomas and King Henry II of England about the juridical borders and the power balance between church and king, which in turn was part of a power struggle that marked the political discourse of all of Latin Christendom at the time. When the English strand of this conflict culminated with the death of Thomas, he became a figurehead for the reformists of the church who championed the idea of the supremacy of the church not only in spiritual but also in worldly matters, and also the independence of the church from worldly government. Consequently, Pope Alexander III canonised Thomas in 1173, and his cult was disseminated widely throughout Latin Christendom. 

The cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury came to the Norse world very early, and while we do not know much about the concrete details of the dissemination, we know that there were several routes by which his cult could have travelled to each of the different Nordic countries, such as trade, diplomacy, ecclesiastical connections or monastic networks (in particular the Cistercians). Our earliest sources for Thomas' cult in Denmark can be seen in three stories recorded by William of Canterbury in a miracle collection, while printed breviaries from the Danish archbishopric of Lund can be seen to retain the liturgical repertoire that was imported into Denmark already in the latter quarter of the twelfth century.

While there are many things that deserve to be said about the cult of Thomas in the medieval Norse world, there are also many of those things that need to be more thoroughly researched and that are tied up with various works in progress. So for this blogpost - marking the 850th anniversary of his death and forming part of the hashtag Becket 2020 - I'll limit myself to commenting on a late source that perhaps points to a continuous, or at least long-lasting, popularity around the martyred archbishop in medieval Denmark.  

Breviarium Lundense (Kongelige Bibliotek København, R 665 8°), f.98v

The source in question is a detail I encountered in the breviary of Lund, which was printed in 1517 in Paris. By this time, Lund was part of the medieval kingdom of Denmark - it is now in Sweden - and had been its metropolitan see since 1104. Due to Archbishop Eskil's connection with the reformist movement and the Cistercian order, it is likely that Lund was one of the first religious centres in Denmark, even in the Norse world, that adopted the cult of Thomas of Canterbury. The liturgy used for the celebration of Thomas' feast-day was likely brought directly from Canterbury, and it was retained without any notable changes in the printed breviary from 1517, pointing to the durability and conservative nature of liturgical material.

Yet even though the liturgical content of the printed breviary can, in the case of Thomas of Canterbury, be traced back to the twelfth century, there is one aspect of the breviary that is distinctly contemporary with the book itself, namely the note scribbled along the top margin of the page seen in the picture above. The page, folio 98v, begins with the eighth lesson for the hour of Matins - the liturgical apex of the daily round of hours - in which Thomas' role as a good shepherd is highlighted. The good shepherd is one of the roles of Christ, and every clergyman serving as a shepherd is modelled on Christ in this aspect. When Thomas' role as a good sheperd is highlighted here, the author of the liturgical office - belived to be Benedict of Peterborough - strengthens the sainted archbishop's similarity with Christ, as Thomas not only was a martyr in imitation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but also was a shepherd in imitation of Christ as a protector. This lesson caught the attention of some canon or priest - perhaps the archbishop himself - in the early sixteenth century at Lund. And since the Reformation was brought to Denmark in 1536/37, the window for dating the writing of this note is pleasingly narrow. 

The content of the note itself I have not yet managed to decipher, despite some frustrating attempts. The handwriting is not from my period of expertise, and I will probably ultimately have to rely on colleagues for this part. Yet even so, until such time that this is solved, it does nonetheless show that Thomas retained relevance in medieval Denmark as late as the period 1517-36/37, and that his liturgical office continued to be performed and exert an influence on at least some of its listeners centuries after it first was introduced to Denmark.


For other blogposts touching on Thomas of Canterbury, see:


A comparison of the cults of Thomas and Edward the Confessor

The chant Thomas Gemma Cantuarie

A wall-painting in the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle, Milan

A liturgical commemoration from the Norwegian medieval liturgical ordo

A fifteenth-century wall-painting in Skive, Denmark

Some reflections on the iconography of Saint Thomas in late medieval Europe

The Christmas story at Sanderum Church

 
As today is Christmas Day, I was reminded of a scene depicting the Christmas story in the vaults of a Danish parish church at Sanderum, a small village to the north of Odense. The church is from the twelfth century, and has featured in several previous blogposts, but the church space was enlarged in the fifteenth century and covered with an extensive wall-painting programme, some of which has now been heavily restored. The central vault of the church, as seen below, fixes the eye of the churchgoer as soon as they enter into the nave, and the central view is Christ in majesty. On the vault on the left-hand side is a judgement scene, showing the just entering into Heaven, and below that, on each side of the vault, is a summary of Christ's nativity.

On the right-hand side of this vault is the centre-piece of the Nativity, namely the manger with the Christ-child, the Virgin Mary standing above, and the ox and the ass in the background, who, although they do not feature in the gospels, were expected features because of the popular Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and because they feature in the prophecy of Isaiah. On the other side of the vault we find the sleeping or contemplative Joseph, surrounded by a coiling vine. Together, these two separate pieces convey to the onlooker the most important elements of the Nativity. In this way, those in the parish who could not read were nonetheless familiar with the Christmas story, both from the paintings and the vernacular sermon of the parish priest - the first illustrating the words of the second, and the seoncd giving context to the first in an interplay that was integral to how the medieval church conveyed biblical and historical narratives to its audiences. 

New publication: Spor etter folkeleg kult

Earlier this month, I was notified of the publication of a volume to which I was able to contribute an article. Unfortunately, the publication is not in Open Access, so I cannot link to an online copy. But for anyone who can read Scandinavian languages, I recommend this volume on the cult of saints in the north. A table of content can be seen in the second image, and the book itself can be purchased here.


The volume as a whole offers new studies about the cult of saints in Scandinavia and the wider Northern European world, a subject where a lot of work still remains to be done, and a subject to which this volume provides some very interesting chapters. My own contribution - "Spor etter folkeleg kult – aspekt ved helgendyrkinga av Sankt Knud Rex i dansk mellomalder" (Traces of a popular cult - aspects of the veneration of Saint Knud Rex in the Danish Middle Ages) - is a discussion about popular veneration of Saint Knud Rex of Denmark, the king who was killed during an insurrection in Odense in 1086. As is so often the case when studying medieval Scandinavia, our few surviving sources chiefly pertain to to official cult as overseen by ecclesiastic authorities. Some sources do however allow us to piece together a somewhat general understanding of how the laity could participate in the cult of Saint Knud Rex, and what sources we have to this participation.