Sources for a conference presentation (30.04.21)

 
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am giving two conference presentations this week. The first of these is tomorrow, where I will be speaking on the third and last day of the Becket conference, the belated 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Thomas of Canterbury in 1170 (as well as the 800th anniversary of the translation of his relics in 1220). 

In my presentation, I talk about the veneration of Saint Thomas in medieval Norway, as evidenced by materials for the liturgical office for his feast-day on December 29. While there are many interesting sources to the cult of Saint Thomas in medieval Norway, my focus is only on the materials from the feast-day office, and not about his translation feast or the materials for the mass. 

The presentation is pre-recorded, and to access it you need to register for the conference. If you have not done so, you might still find this blogpost useful, as the purpose of the post is to provide links to some of the sources that I have used in my research. 

AM 679 4to, f.10r

The first source is AM 679 4to, a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript which contains a version of the so-called Ordo Nidrosiense, i.e. a book containing the liturgical feasts celebrated in the Norwegian archiepiscopal province, which included Iceland, Greenland, Shetland, the Orkneys, the Faroes, the Hebrides and Man. This source is invaluable for understanding the yearly cycle of liturgical performance in the churches throughout the Norwegian archdiocese.

The second source is Breviarium Nidrosiense, a breviary containing the materials for the office for the feasts celebrated throughout the liturgical year in the Norwegian church province. The breviary was printed in Paris in 1519, commissioned by Archbishop Erik Valkendorf. The content was most likely drawn - at least in part - from a manuscript of the Ordo, or some similar manuscript used at Trondheim, the metropolitan see of Norway. This means that despite the use of new technology, the content was old and therefore a valuable source to liturgical observance in earlier centuries. 

A digitised edition of Breviarium Nidrosiense can be found on the website of the Norwegian National Library.

A searchable, transcribed edition of the content of the Breviarium can be found on the website Bokselskap. This version is edited by Ingrid Sperber, and it includes an introduction by Espen Karlsen and Sigurd Hardeide, and it is a phenomenally useful tool for any researcher or enthusiast. The edition was published by the National Library for the 500-year-anniversary of the printing of what are known as the first Norwegian (printed) books, and which was celebrated by a series of events throughout Norway in The Norwegian Year of the Book in 2019. 


The third source that I mention, although I do not engage with it, is Missale Nidrosiense, the sister-volume of the Breviarium containing the materials for the mass celebrations in the Norwegian archdiocese. 

A digitised edition can be found at the Norwegian National Library. 

And as with the Breviarium, the National Library has also published a transcribed edition made by Ingrid Sperber, including an introduction by Espen Karlsen and Sigurd Hardeide. And as with the edition of the Breviarium, this edition is an extremely helpful and valuable tool for anyone interested in the medieval liturgy of Norway.



These sources will be mentioned in the course of my talk, and in the event that my presentation, or just the reading of this blogpost, inspires you to explore these sources, here they are gathered on one single plate. Enjoy.

Two online conferences

 
This week, I am participating in two online conferences, where I will be presenting my research. Since these conferences are available for anyone who registers, and because these conferences have a great number of interesting speakers, I am including the links for the events here, and I hope that you will have the time and the interest to join. 




Thomas Becket - Life, death and legacy (28-30.04)

This conference is a belated commemoration of the 850-year-anniversary of the death of Thomas Becket, one of the most famous ecclesiastics of his time, and subsequently one of the most famous saints of Latin Christendom. I will be presenting on the liturgical veneration of Saint Thomas in the Norwegian archdiocese, and there are also a number of other interesting topics covering a wide geographical remit. The conference is organised by Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent.

The event can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thomas-becket-life-death-and-legacy-tickets-133210749939. 





Medievalisms on the Screen: The Representation of the Middle Ages in Audiovisual Media in the 21st Century (29.04-01.05)   

This conference brings together scholars of medievalism in order to explore the various ways that the medieval past is imagined, represented, used and abused in contemporary audiovisual media. As has become abundantly clear these past twenty years, the Middle Ages exert a tremendous influence on popular imagination, popular culture, politics and identity-formation. While the influence of the medieval past is not a new discovery, the recent developments in audiovisual culture has allowed that influence to become even stronger, and therefore in greater need of being understood. I will be presenting on how the historical encounter between Norse and indigenous American cultures has been utilised and developed in popular culture, and how this should be understood in light of contemporary politics. There is also a great array of other interesting topics, all immensely relevant to how we understand our current political and cultural climates.


The event can be found here: https://medievalstudies.ceu.edu/article/2021-03-24/medievalisms-screen-representation-middle-ages-audiovisual-media-21st-century 

A lion from Skibet Church, Denmark

 

Today is the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, whose main attribute is the lion, and on whose feast was performed the great litany, letania maior, a catalogue of saints invoked in the performance of the mass. As an evangelist, Mark belongs to the oldest register of saints, and therefore one of the truly universal saints of the medieval kalendars. 

This year, I had hoped to put together a blogpost on Saint Mark, but as I have been preoccupied with various commitments, I have decided to leave Saint Mark for later, having now convinced my readers that there is a lot to return to. Instead, I will make use of his leonine attribute to share my encounter with one of several glorious medieval lions that can be found throughout the medieval church spaces of Denmark. I encountered this lion in May 2019, my last spring in Denmark, when I joined some colleagues on a trip to Skibet Church near Vejle in Jutland.  

The church was built around 1200, and originally had a broader nave. The main feature of interest in the church is a spectacular restored fresco from the early thirteenth century, which covers the Eastern end of the nave. Unfortunately, as the nave has been narrowed at a later point, there are several details missing, and the general scene and its meaning remains a matter of contention. Despite the unresolved questions, the scene is an absolute delight to behold, and a forceful testament to quality of church art in medieval Denmark. And as always is the case with medieval art - be it wall-paintings, sculptures, illuminations or any other medium - there are several details in which one can get lost when perusing the scenery. One such detail is a lion.

The lion might not appear very leonine to our modern eyes, but it follows the established conventions of how lions commonly were depicted in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries in Latin Christendom. It appears to serve a mainly decorative function, as an architectural feature, a corbel uniting the pillar with the vaulting in the timeless architectural backdrop depicted in the scene. There might be additional layers to how we understand it, as medieval images could carry several meanings at one and the same time, but because the scene remains somewhat obscure to us, it is unclear how we should interpret this lion. As it is now, it serves as a reminder that the iconographical conventions of Latin Christendom also were in place in medieval Denmark, and that although very few Danes could be expected to have ever seen a lion, it was such an established part of the semiotics of the Middle Ages that it is ubiquitous in the sacred spaces even as far as the Nordic world.

There is also another lion from roughly the same period hiding in the architecture of Skibet Church, but that is another blogpost.

A fragment for the eve of the Resurrection

Today, April 3, is the Easter eve, the day between Christ's death on the cross and His resurrection, and the middle point in the liturgical climax of the Christian year. Due to the importance of Easter in the liturgical celebration of the medieval churches, there survives a great amount of manuscripts containing the texts to be sung or read for that season. I have previously posted examples of such paschal fragments from my work in the special collections at Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, for instance here. This Easter, I was reminded of the fragment RARA K 284, about which I have previously written here and here, which contains a part of the mass for the Easter vigil. The fragment comes from a missal, and despite its heavily worn lettering, it has been possible to identify the text as belonging to the Book of Jonah, chapter 3, verses 1-6.  

Syddansk Universitestsbibliotek, RARA K 284

 

Syddansk Universitestsbibliotek, RARA K 284

The text from the Book of Jonah points to an important aspect of the use of the Bible both in the Middle Ages and also today, namely the idea that episodes and events in the Old Testament were repeated in the New Testament. This pattern is also known as typology, whereby the anti-type - or the precursor - can be found in the Old Testament, and the type can be found in the New. In the Christian interpretation, therefore, the Book of Jonah contains an anti-type to the story of Christ's resurrection, because Jonah was swallowed by a whale and emerged from it afterwards, just as Christ came back to life. For this reason, the Book of Jonah provided a suitable reading for the liturgy leading up to Resurrection Sunday, and this is what we see in this now-tattered fragment.