Closing a chapter

 

Last Friday, I closed the most recent chapter in my life, as my postdoctoral contract came to an end. For 40 months, I lived and worked in Oslo, exploring new things, delving into old, familiar things, and learning more about myself and the world in the process. This period can best be summarised by the first of the two pictures below, as I quickly assembled a large collection of books in my office - most of them borrowed from the university library - and kept them as a reference library for both my actual and my intended writings. This was a temporary library, a library of ambitions. Some of these ambitions came to past, but, as is usually the case, the majority fell by the wayside due to time constraints, distractions, and various unforeseen or ad-hoc additional tasks that sucked both time and energy out of less prioritised projects.  

Friday December 14 was an emotional day. It marked the end of a period that entailed a lot of personal highs, but also some very crushing reminders of how academia is not a meritocracy, and that sometimes your efforts will not be rewarded. It was also a period that reminded how much academic work is hindered by admin, by formalities, and by various conventions that can often only be learned the hard way. I write this blogpost in quiet frustration, partly over the stunted personal hopes, but just as much because of the overarching societal trends that currently affect how we approach academic output and the value of universities and general education - trends that only make it more difficult to do the kind of work that helps us understand the nuances of reality somewhat better than what previous generations have been able to do. 

For the time being, I'm left to apply for jobs, and to digest all the lessons of the past 40 months, and to treasure those of my memories that can bring me joy.   

November 13

December 14 

Saint Nicholas in Compostela

Today, December 6, is the feast of Saint Nicholas. After the removal of his relics from Myra to Bari in 1087, his cult became more popular than before as it entered into the geographical ambit of the Latin Church, and thereby became more accessible to Latin Christian pilgrims. I do not yet know of any monographs that explore his cult in a longue durée perspective, and I only have a piecemeal overview of how his cult was received, what impact it made, and where the various parts of his iconography were embraced. In art, there were particularly three aspects that could be employed in the fashioning of statues or paintings, namely seafaring, a golden coin (which he gave to poor women in order to enable them to marry well), and his resurrection of three children that had been killed and placed in a tub. These last two episodes are rooted in his legend, whereas the seafaring might have had more to do with the voyage through which his relics were taken to Bari. Consequently, while several guilds came to embrace Saint Nicholas from the twelfth century onwards, depictions of him in art often appear to draw on his legend (although I should emphasise that this suggestion might be incorrect, and I encourage the reader to correct me if I am wrong).  

Two days ago, I was reminded of the miracle of the tub, since I was attending a guided tour of the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela. Among the many treasures of medieval art that have been made and used in the liturgical space of the cathedral since at least the twelfth century, is a fifteenth-century statue that is badly damaged yet completely recognisable thanks to the surviving iconographic feature, namely the tub. The statue shows Nicholas carrying the tub, while one of the three murdered boys climbs out of it. The boy is rendered in diminutive stature, perhaps both to emphasise his tender age, but also the greatness of Saint Nicholas. As this iconography was both widespread and common, it is likely that it has contributed to the metamorphosis of Nicholas towards the modern Santa Claus. Traditionally, the gift of golden coins is more directly linked with this trajectory, but as that story pertains to young girls rather than children more generally, it is tempting to suggest that both these episodes from Nicholas' legend have played their important parts in the eventual making of Santa Claus. 

One of the resuscitated children climbing up form the tub

The Växjö rune stone

This evening, I have returned from a short trip to Växjö in Sweden, where I attended the launch of the Mapping Saints database, which contains descriptions and overviews of the various sources of the cult of saints in medieval Sweden. The project behind this database - Mapping Lived Religion - has been headed by Sara Ellis Nilsson, and I was fortunate enough to work as a part of the team for three months back in 2021. It was lovely to mark the conclusion to this enterprise. Yesterday morning, before the launch itself a friend and I headed into town, where I wanted to visit the cathedral. This was my first time in Växjö since I left the city in December 2020, and I was happy to see both the church and the rune stone again.  

The rune stone is located behind the east wall of the cathedral, and was found during renovations in the church building in 1813. According to the information plaque next to it, the stone has been dated to c.1000, but I will add that I myself do not know enough about rune stones to have an opinion on this issue. On the plaque, the text has been translated into Swedish and English, and the latter runs accordingly: 'Tyke - Tyke Viking - erected this stone in memory of Gunnar, Grim's son. May God help his soul'.   

The Växjö rune stone

 

The early date of the stone is intriguing, because it suggests that Växjö was a Christian centre several decades before the first Swedish bishop was consecrated - which was bishop Adalvard of Sigtuna around 1060, if we believe Adam of Bremen. If the date is correct, therefore, the stone is a testament to the slow and decentralised spread of Christianity in Sweden, especially since there was no Swedish church organisation at such an early point in time. In light of such a lack of an organisational infrastructure and framework, it is important, however, that we reflect on what it means to constitute a centre in this part of the Christianisation process. Centrality is relative, and the Christian community in Växjö around the year 1000 is likely to have been small. We should imagine that it consisted of a few locals, perhaps a significant percentage of whom were slaves, and that the religious life was headed by a missionary, either from England or from Germany, as these were the two main centres of active influence in the Nordic Christianisation. Moreover, we should expect that the community was protected by a local aristocrat, on whose farmstead important services were held, such as baptism, funerals, and the celebration of the main liturgical feasts.  

The durability of the Christian community was dependent on its relationship with locals. The protection of the local noble could be revoked, or indeed be insufficient in the face of a strong reaction from the pagan majority. For this reason, when we talk about Växjö as a Christian centre, this centrality does not necessarily mean that the community was deeply rooted or secure against changing attitudes. Centres can, and often are, short lived, and the testimony of the rune stone should not lead us to think that Christianity was stronger in Växjö than it actually was.  

The likely existence of a small but seemingly vibrant Christian centre around 1000, is especially interesting in light of a later legend that emerged in Växjö, namely that of Saint Sigfrid. I have recounted the legend in a previous blogpost, but a brief summary is necessary for the present purpose. Växjö became a diocese in the second half of the twelfth century, following the establishment of the Uppsala church province in 1164. At some point, the cathedral clergy at Växjö began venerating the figure of Sigfrid, who became the centre-point for the cathedral's institutional identity. The earliest surviving version of his legend - as far as I know - is contained in the liturgical office, composed towards the end of the thirteenth century. Here we learn about the English missionary and his three nephews who established a Christian centre in Växjö. Eventually, however, local opinion turned, and when Sigfrid was away visiting the king, his three nephews were killed. Their heads were found in a tub floating on Lake Växjö, and the local populace repented. 

Much is dubious about this story, in part because it makes a late appearance in the source material. We should also note that the name Sigfrid is essentially the same as Sigafrid, a missionary whom King Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway - later Saint Olaf - brought with him from England to Norway in 1016, at least according to Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontifici from the 1070s. Sigafrid is known in later Norwegian sources as Sigurd, and is often identified as the first Norwegian bishop. As the story of Saint Olaf was well known in the rest of the Nordic sphere, it could easily become a reference point or an inspiration for other cults. For instance, the early-twelfth-century legend of Saint Theodegarius in Northern Denmark identified Theodegarius as one of Saint Olaf's missionaries (although that name is not mentioned by Adam). It is entirely possible that the figure of Saint Sigfrid is partly connected to the legend of Saint Olaf, if only through the name of the Norwegian bishop.  

Despite the many dubious elements of the Sigfrid legend, the Växjö rune stone does invite a very important question, namely whether this legend could contain some kernel of truth, such as a very faint echo of actual events from the slow spread of Christianity in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. We will, of course, never know, and we are unable to venture beyond the labyrinth of accrued stories and later additions that comprise the Sigfrid legend. Nonetheless, what we can surmise is that there was Christian activity in Växjö around the year 1000, and this activity endured for some time. We do not know how long, but we can assume that a man who had been spending part of his life abroad as a pirate had gone to the deep Swedish woods - presumably returning to his ancestral region - and there erected a monument in memory of a fellow Christian. This interpretation is not the only possible one, of course. The fates and lives of eleventh-century people could twist and turn in unexpected ways - ways unimaginable to us today, so the historical stories of Tyke and Gunnar might have unfolded very differently from how I imagine them here. Even so, this rune stone is a Christian monument, and a monument is a costly, time-consuming matter, which in turn suggests that there was enough stability and a sufficiently sizeable Christian population in Växjö that the monument was allowed to be erected, and that the monument stood for some time. This rune stone, then, is a anchoring point in time, that allows us to think more carefully about later legends, and about the complexities of eleventh-century history.      

Saint Thomas and apostolic succession in the Antipodes

 

When researching the history of utopian thought, one of my main points of interest is when I can map the continuity of an idea or a topos across the medieval/early modern periodisation. My interest stems from the artificial nature of periods, and how these chronological divides continue to impede our understanding of the past. The other day, I encountered one such example of continuity that both pleased me and surprised me. 

The example in question comes from the 1616 novel Histoire du grand et admirable royaume d'Antangil incogneu jusques a present à tous historiens et cosmographes (‘History of the great and marvellous kingdom of Antangil, unknown to historians and cosmographers until the present day’). On the title page of the 1616, the work is attributed to a certain I. D. M. G. T, whose identity is, as far as I know, still a mystery to us. The work was part of a growing vogue that followed in the wake of Thomas More’s Utopia, published one hundred years before Antangil, where authors described ideal societies found in faraway locations, which could also be used to satirise or criticise the real-world societies of the author’s own time. While the main form of this vogue – a novel about an invented ideal society – had Thomas More’s work as its starting point, both More and later authors belonged to long strands within the history of ideas, and therefore ensured a great deal of continuity in thought and form from both the medieval and the pre-medieval cultural frameworks.   

 

At the point of writing this blogpost, I have not read Antangil in its entirety, and I hesitate to say much about its content, as most of my knowledge about the work comes from secondary sources – especially David Fausett’s excellent 1993 monograph Writing the New World. What I can say, however, is that this marvellous kingdom is located south of the tropic of capricorn, and south of Great Java, the latter being a common point of orientation in late-medieval travelogues. The reader is not only provided with coordinates, but also a woodcut map made with incredible detail, where the main villages and rivers are numbered, and these 129 numbers correspond to a list of three columns where the names are provided. The capital of the kingdom, Sangil, is located at the bottom of a long, narrow inlet akin to a fjord.  

The great kingdom of Antangil

Courtesy of Gallica BnF

Table of the main cities and rivers of Antangil

The capital of Sangil

I hope to delve more deeply into the world of Antangil in the future, but at this point I am most interested in the fifth book, which describes how Christianity was brought to Antangil, and how the kingdom got its first martyr. The events are summarised in the header of chapter 1, which states that the holy gospel was proclaimed the capital of Sangil by Byrachil, who is described as a very sage ‘Braquemane’ who was the disciple of Saint Thomas the Apostle. As I have yet to read how Byrachil met his martyrdom in chapter 16, I can only focus on what the information from chapter 1 tells us, and how this connects to utopian thinking from the Middle Ages. 

Header for chapter 1, book 5

If we start with the description of Byrachil as a ‘Braquemane’, this points us to the tradition of medieval travelogues exemplified in particular by Marco Polo and John Mandeville, two figures whose works remained impactful and widely read well into the seventeenth century. (I say this with full awareness that it was Rustichello of Pisa who gave Marco Polo’s account the shape by which we know it today, and also that John Mandeville might never have existed.) In these accounts, we read about non-Christian sages who are given variations of the name ‘Bragmanni’, which in turn comes from ‘Brahmin’. The descriptions of these sages drew heavily on the so-called Alexander tradition, a long line of fantastical accounts of the exploits of Alexander the Great that comprise the legacy of the Alexander romance by Pseudo-Callisthenes rather than any contemporary accounts from Alexander’s own time. What interests me here, however, is that the figure of the Brahmin was well-established as a marker for the positive ‘other’, and also as a representative of the far east. That the author of Antangil has decided to use such a figure as the apostle of their fictional utopia shows that they were familiar with the traditions of the Middle Ages, and that they expected the medieval traditions to be known to their audience. In short, we see that the idea of the Brahmin was still a figure of contemporary resonance in the early seventeenth century, and that markers of the ideal society established in medieval writing still served that function centuries later.  

 

Another point of importance is that Byrachil was the disciple of Saint Thomas, the apostle of Christ whom the post-biblical apocryphal literature claimed to have evangelised in India. Thomas’ missionary activities were accepted as historically true in the Middle Ages, and there are to this day those who believe that this account is based on historical reality. As Saint Thomas was the apostle of India, it only makes sense to use his activity as a historical reference point for the introduction of Christianity in the antipodean kingdom of Antangil. A similar idea can be found in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1624/27), where the society in question is converted to Christianity through a letter from Saint Bartholomew (who was also credited with evangelising in India). In terms of continuity of ideas, however, the use of Saint Thomas as a marker of an ideal society located on the far side of the world – albeit vicariously through his disciple – is also seen in medieval literature. In the mid-twelfth century, members of the court of Frederick Barbarossa forged a letter claiming to be from Prester John, a Christian king in the east, who ruled over an ideal kingdom, which became a fixture in Latin medieval thought well into the sixteenth century and beyond. In the letter, the king states that the tomb is Saint Thomas the Apostle is located in his realm, and that he undertakes pilgrimages to this holy site. Moreover, the king’s own palace is modelled on the palace that Saint Thomas built for King Gundoforus of India, which means that the connection to the apostle is both one of architectural emulation and continuous contact by way of his relics. In other words, Saint Thomas, as apostle, saint, and biblical figure, a marker that proves the ideal condition – the utopian quality – of Prester John’s realm. This same function is fulfilled by him – by way of his disciple – in the novel Antangil.         

 

The Christianisation of the kingdom of Antangil by Byrachil also rhymes with the medieval thoughtworld in another way, namely that apostles of new members in the Christian oikumene had a connection to a biblical figure. Such a connection provides a link to biblical history, and when the figure in question is an apostle, the Christianisation of the new location takes the form of apostolic succession. Such a succession was not always the case in the Christian histories of Latin medieval kingdoms – Latin is here used about the liturgical language, not about the vernacular – and there are plenty of medieval polities where the apostolic mission is not traced all the way back to the Bible. The native France of Antangil’s author, however, had several traditions concerning such biblical connections. In the ninth-century Vita Dionysi by Hilduin, Saint Dionysius – or Saint Denis of Paris – was conflated with two other individuals by the same name, one of whom was Dionysius the Areopagite, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which recounts his meeting with the apostle Paul. Through this conflation, the apostle of the Paris region was linked to the apostolic activities of Paul. Similarly, around the year 1000, Ademar of Chabannes, a historian at the abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges, rewrote his chronicles to claim that Martial was also a first-century figure. It is tempting to see the apostolic succession from Saint Thomas in India to Byrachil in Antangil as a variant of the theme represented by Dionysius and Martial.          

 

The novel Antangil is very much a work of the seventeenth century, in that it belongs to a contemporary vogue in utopian writing. However, it is also steeped in ideas and traditions that run through the Middle Ages, and which showcase how ideal societies have been imagined or represented in medieval writings. The connection with the Brahmins is a utopian strand where an ideal society is located in the far east. The connection with Saint Thomas is a utopian strand which also places the ideal society in the far east, but which also includes biblical history, and, by extension, the figure of Prester John, the ideal Christian king. The connection with the idea of apostolic succession might be seen as stemming from similar ideas in French medieval hagiography. These medieval strands have remained forceful and important by 1616, and they continued to be so for centuries afterwards. The novel Antangil, therefore, is a good reminder that ideas have a long and often curious life, and that there is more that connects the so-called modern world with the Middle Ages than what separates it.

Edmund Martyr and the curious case of the black cross

 

Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund Martyr, king of East Anglia, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869. His cult was one of the most popular and widespread native cults of medieval England. The foundation of the cult’s success was established in the course of the eleventh century. The church at Bury St Edmunds was reformed into a Benedictine abbey in 1020, and due to the patronage of successive kings throughout the century, the abbey became a centre for text production which bolstered the its institutional identity with Edmund as the identity’s focal point.            

 

The rise of Edmund’s cult coincided with a period in which English ecclesiastics were closely involved with the establishment of church organisations in Scandinavia, especially in Norway and Denmark. Since these burgeoning organisations had not yet developed the infrastructure with which to produce their own books, English ecclesiastical centres provided the Scandinavian churches with liturgical material, including calendars. This English influence continued throughout the twelfth century, even after the establishment of native book production. Calendars and books were still given as gifts or purchased as the expansion of ecclesiastical infrastructure necessitated more liturgical material. Due to the influx of English liturgical material, the cult of Edmund also became a part of the religious life of medieval Scandinavia.        

 

One example of Edmund’s presence in medieval Scandinavia is a calendar fragment, that also opens up for a discussion about the degree to which Edmund was a mere import or someone who was more actively venerated outside of England. The fragment in question is from a thirteenth-century calendar that was produced in England and used in Sweden, most likely in Strängnäs diocese. (For more information about this fragment, please visit the Mapping Saints database.)        

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596 

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596

The fragment, Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25596, contains the feasts for the month of November, and Edmund’s name and titles are written in black ink. The colour of the ink suggests that in the centre where the calendar was produced, Edmund was not regarded as particularly important. Those feasts that were important – such as Martin of Tours on November 11 or Catherine of Alexandria on November 25 – are marked in red. This high liturgical rank meant that during the liturgical celebration, more time was spent singing and reading aloud from their legends in the course of the office for Matins, which was performed in the middle of the night.           

 

However, in the fragment that has come down to us, a black cross has been added to the entry for Edmund’s feast. This black is something of a mystery, because it opens up for many possible interpretations. What we can say for certain, however, is that the cross was added to raise the liturgical rank of the feast, as we see similar crosses – albeit in red and part of the original design – behind the feast-days written in red ink. The questions of where and by whom, however, remain open.            

 

One possible interpretation is that the cross was added before the calendar left England for Sweden. The question then is by whom it was done. It is possible that we see the action of a single individual devoted to Edmund, who felt that the saint had not received the rank he deserved and therefore sought to fix this problem. However, changing the liturgical rank also had practical consequences in the performance of the liturgy, and it was important that the church in question had the sufficient material to perform the office according to the rank of the saint. If Edmund was not particularly popular at that centre, they might not have been equipped to perform the office according to its rank. Moreover, the community of monks or clerics had to accept this raising of the rank.           

 

Consequently, it is unlikely that a single individual has taken it upon themselves to alter the liturgical calendar, and so we should expect the cross to be added on the initiative of the authorities at the centre where the change was made. The question then is whether the cross was added in England or in Sweden. England is perhaps the most reasonable answer, as we know that Edmund was widely popular, and he has a high liturgical rank in several calendars. However, if the cross was added in England, the calendar has most likely been in use at a different religious centre than where it was produced. Such a scenario is possible, and we can easily envision how a scriptorium at a larger centre produced a calendar for a smaller centre.       

Yet this explanation has two main flaws. First of all, if Edmund was important at the smaller centre, why would they not specify this at the larger centre? Or why would they not order the calendar from a centre where Edmund was venerated with a high liturgical rank? It is not impossible that a smaller centre received it as a gift and therefore had to make whatever changes were necessary to fit their own liturgical year, so this might have been the case. However, this brings us to the second main flaw of this scenario. Since the calendar ended up in Sweden, it is unlikely that it came via a smaller English centre instead of a scriptorium that produced liturgical material on a larger scale. It feels more realistic to suggest that the cross was added in Sweden.           

 

If we accept the hypothesis that the black cross was added to the calendar at a Swedish institution – most likely in Strängnäs – the question is then what this can tell us about the status of Saint Edmund in thirteenth-century Sweden. It might be that the black cross is the result of an effort to align the new calendar with an older calendar that had been in use at the Swedish centre in previous years. If this was the case, the high rank of Edmund’s feast might mainly reflect the status of the saint in the older calendar, and might not point to a living cult in thirteenth-century Strängnäs. However, this explanation is not very satisfactory, since a high liturgical rank affected the way that the office was celebrated, and why would the Strängnäs clergy elevate the rank of a saint that was not particularly important to them? If the celebration of Edmund was a relic of a past calendar, why not take the opportunity to trim the dead wood and leave the saint on a lower rank? Such changes were common in medieval churches, and sometimes we see entire feast days removed from the calendar if they came to be considered antiquated.  

 

This leaves us with the following scenario: The cross was added by a scribe in Sweden on the order of the religious authority at the centre where the calendar was used, whether it was the cathedral, a parish church, or a monastic community. The addition of the cross suggests that there was a thriving cult of Saint Edmund at this institution, one that had probably been initiated during the establishment of the Swedish church organisation in the mid-twelfth century, and one that had been sustained into the thirteenth century. 

On an as-yet unpublished postscript

 

I do not normally write about political matters on this blog, but every once in a while circumstances compel me. Today, after the disastrous election results in the United States, is such an occasion.  

This blogpost is no analysis or in-depth commentary. There are far better voices and pens than mine for such texts. Rather, what I write here is a touchstone of the times, something that is meant to reflect a particular sentiment at a particular historical juncture.  

Yesterday, I was working on a draft for an article I'm co-authoring. I spent most of the day moving between two cafés on campus, drinking tea and writing by hand, knowing that my self-imposed deadline is too near for comfort. In-between two such writing sessions, I was checking mail and social media, and I happened to catch a clip of the coming US president at a rally in Georgia, where he spoke frankly and as clearly he is capable of doing, that the transition would be "nasty". The quotation was alarmingly unvarnished, uttered in a matter-of-fact way that left no room for doubt about whether he was just giving the audience what they wanted. Rather, the foreshadowed nastiness had hard ring of evil truth to it. 

What I found most arresting about this clip was not so much the words or the matter-of-fact frankness with which they were said. What hit me the hardest was to hear these words at a time when I was writing about violence and utopian thinking. This is a subject I have written about before on this blog, namely in this blogpost, and this. The ubiquity of violence in how people have imagined their ideal societies is something that continues to astound and fascinate me, and I have spent a lot of time these past two years trying to think of the topic in a more coherent way. And, unfortunately, yesterday's comment by the future US president was a reminder of how relevant this kind of research is. Because however abhorrent and evil the plans of US Republicans are, these plans - as exemplified by the roadmap of Project 2025 - do comprise a utopian vision for the future of the United States. Granted, this is a utopia for a select few, but that is precisely one aspect that fits squarely with the tradition of utopian thinking. The selection involves violence, which also fits with this tradition. The promise of violence that has marked the whole Republican campaign points to a period of pain and suffering, because this is how some people imagine their ideal conditions need to be achieved. 

Having heard these horrifying words, having heard them over and over again as I wrote them down for future reference, I sat down and began writing a postscript to the article I am co-authoring, a postscript intended to catch the tenor of the evening before the election, with the promise of violence hanging in the air like smoke after a devastating fire. I do not know whether the postscript will be published. I suppose it will not. But it felt like a necessary thing to write, a kind of memorandum, something to read calmly in a future where things might be better. And, above all, a reminder that for some people, violence is both desired and actively sought out in their quest for what they believe to be a better world, no matter how dark and dreadful that world is. 

A homily for All Saints

Later today, I am giving a talk at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, which will be about remembering the dead in the Middle Ages - a topic that will also provide an opportunity to describe the cosmology of Latin Christendom, in order to explain why it was so important to remember and commemorate the departed.  As part of my presentation, I have included a picture of the Old Norwegian Homily Book, a collection of homiletic material compiled in Norway around the year 1200. The homily itself is much older, and was part of a religious heritage - or package deal - common to all the churches of Latin Christendom. Since the homily is for a feast dedicated to all the saints, the homily does not focus on any one particular saint's life, but instead provides an opportunity for compressing both biblical and post-biblical history into a short text. This homily in particular thereby provides a very valuable witness to the biblical knowledge available in Norway in the twelfth century.

AM 619 4to, f.73r

The feast of All Saints - which is on November 1 - is also a good reminder of a key aspect of the cult of saints, namely that not all saints are known to us. Consequently, new saints might appear, and old saints might become revealed to the faithful. Moreover, it is also a reminder that not all those who are venerated as saints are indeed holy. These issues are often lost in scholarship on the cult of saints, since the topic is often explored from the perspective of the political context of any given period, or with a view of the dynastic or institutional agendas of those historical actors who promoted a particular cult. However, for a phenomenon like the cult of saints to be wielded as a political tool - which indeed it was - and used to promote dynastic or institutional concerns, there has to be a genuine belief in the saints and their role in Christian cosmology. The veneration of a saint was a way of ensuring patronage from that saint, and the neglect of a saint could incur severe repercussions - there are numerous miracle stories about humans who are punished for not keeping their promise to the saint, or for not listening to the saint's instructions. Since not all saints were known, therefore, the discovery of bones that could potentially belong to a saint provided the living with a particular conundrum. If they ignored the bones, the saint might get offended. If they venerated the bones, they might end up like a community mentioned in the widely famous Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus, where the saint made a dead man speak from beyond the grave, admitting to his venerators that he was not a holy man but a criminal. It was because of this conundrum that signs were looked for, and bones were put to the test. Such mechanisms were not only a matter of ensuring elite control over a powerful religious phenomena, but also instituted to prevent misguided veneration. The feast of All Saints, therefore, is a kind of compromise, or a way to both recognise and circumvent the limits of possible knowledge. It speaks to a worldview where commemoration and recognition of holiness was important, but where recognition could be uncertain and where commemoration could be misplaced.    

The feast of All Saints begins at Vesper this afternoon, roughly around six, and for those who celebrate a liturgical office, the mystical highpoint will be at Matins, sometime in the middle of the night. As a scholar, I for my part am fascinated and intrigued by the feast of All Saints precisely because it is a feast that is difficult to imbue with institutional and dynastic concerns, and instead provides an outlet for acknowledging that at the core of a phenomenon such as the cult of saints is a very real belief in the role of saints, and an understanding of the limits of human knowledge regarding the deeds of men and women in the past. 

AM 619 4to, f.73r

 

The edge of knowledge – sixteenth-century cartography and the North

 

The sixteenth century is one of the most dynamic periods in the history of European cartography. Not only did the voyages of the era provide new knowledge that was transmitted through maps, but experimentation with projections and ways of transmitting knowledge about the world led to a wide variety of maps. However, in some cases the cartographers got things wrong. In some cases – as I hope to blog about at a later point – it was because the sources were faulty, and this is the explanation for why we find a lot of non-existent islands of some of the most cutting edge maps of the period. In other cases, knowledge got warped in transmission. It is one such case I want to write about here.      

 

Knowledge could be warped in a multitude of ways along the chain of transmission. In some cases, the knowledge could be faulty from the start, whereas in other cases something might get lost in translation, seeing as knowledge often passed through several different languages on its way from observation to the map itself. In the present case, the main reason appears to be a mixture of unfamiliarity with the territory in question, combined with unfamiliarity with the language(s) of that region.  

Septentrionalium partium nova tabula (1561)

Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection

In 1561, Girolamo Ruscelli, a cartographer based in Venice, printed two maps of the North Atlantic theatre – one detailed, one rather stylised. The detailed map is known as Septentrionalium partium nova tabula, a new map of the northern parts. This map contains a lot of placenames, including settlements, rivers and islands. These names are often imprecise, suggesting how difficult it could be for those from – for example – the Netherlands or Italy to accurately render the Icelandic, Danish or Norwegian pronunciations. In the case of Iceland, this difficulty is in part suggested by the choice of using Latinised names of the island’s two dioceses, Skálholt and Hólar, rendered as Scalodin and Olensis. While the accuracy of these names can be discussed, the names themselves are correct insofar as the identification of the diocesan sees is concerned.     

 

What is more puzzling, however, is to consider the correct identification of the detailed map with some elements of the more stylised map, the so-called Schonladia Nuova, new Schonladia, issued in the same year. There are several interesting differences in the presentation of Iceland and Greenland in these two maps. The detailed map contains both names, respectively Islanda and Engronelant, the latter suggesting that information was transmitted through Dutch interlocutors. The stylised map, however, does not provide a name for Greenland – and indeed seems to suggest that Greenland is linked with the Kola peninsula – whereas Iceland is identified as Thyle, an alternative spelling of Thule. That Iceland is given the name Thule is not surprising, as these two names were used interchangeably about the island throughout the Middle Ages. Another interesting difference, however, is that the stylised map includes a stretch of frozen sea, the ‘mare congelatum’, which forms a belt of ice along the coast of Greenland.

Schonladia Nuova (1561)

Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection

The most surprising difference between the two maps, however, is that the stylised map contains a strange duplication of names – a duplication of sorts. In this map, there are two place names on Iceland, namely the two dioceses. However, the names are not the same as those found in Septentrionalium partium nova tabula. Instead, the dioceses are called Skalholten and Holen. These are Danified names, and suggest that the information has been transmitted through Danish informants in Venice. A direct Danish contact would not be all that surprising, considering that several Scandinavian ecclesiastics were in exile following the Protestant reformations in Denmark-Norway and Sweden. Given the accuracy of these names, it is therefore curious to see that the Latinised and less accurate names found on the detailed map are still included in Schonladia Nuova, but not where we would expect them to be. Rather, the two Latinised names have been moved to Greenland, where they are rendered as Scalholdin and Holenses, the placements of which do not correspond to any placename in Greenland in Septentrionalium partium nova tabula. We seem to be dealing with some kind of overcorrection, where an attempt to include the vernacular names of Iceland’s two dioceses in the new map has replicated the error elsewhere. This is, of course, presuming that Schonladia Nuova was produced after the other map, which seems likely given the confusion in question.    

 

The case of the duplicated Icelandic names is a good example of how certain parts of the sixteenth-century world were, in effect, the edge of knowledge. Along this edge, some certainties existed – such as the fact that Greenland and Iceland were real places – and so did many uncertainties, such as how to accurately and correctly render the names of these places. The confusion in Schonladia Nuova is not only due to the fact that Venice is a long way away from Iceland and Greenland. It is also indicative of how Greenland was falling off the European edge of knowledge in this period. Throughout the fifteenth century the contact between the Norse settlements in Greenland and the rest of Europe dwindled and eventually stopped. Bishops continued to be appointed to Greenland’s diocesan see, Garðar, but these were bishops in name only and never set foot on the island itself. Greenland was still known, if mainly as a memory or as a landmass occasionally seen by voyagers who traversed the Greenland Sea. Consequently, instead of knowledge there was a lot of information about Greenland, and most of it appears to have been incorrect, as seen in the confusion regarding Scalholdin and Holensis. In this way, knowledge warped into information, and information was tainted by hearsay, legend, and fiction, but became common misconceptions through the medium of maps.

Schonladia Nuova (1561) (detail)

Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection

Schonladia Nuova (1598) (detail)

The sea monster is a decorative embellishment in the 1598 edition of the map

Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection

Reading-spots, part 5

In May of this year, I was in Santiago de Compostela for the first time. While the primary aim of the trip was to visit a dear friend, the journey was also marked by my increased fascination with the cult of Saint James the Elder, known as Santiago, one of the most famous cults of the Latin Middle Ages. The cult was responsible for a phenomenal output of architectural and textual artefacts, such as Compostela's cathedral - now mostly Baroque but with some Romanesque features retained - and the Codex Calixtinus, a manuscript containing five books that collectively are known as The Book of Saint James (Liber Sancti Jacobi). All five parts of this book have now been translated to English, and for the trip to Compostela I had brought with me translation of the first book, which is a collection of liturgical texts and sermons. The translation is by Thomas F. Coffey and Maryjane Dunn, and was published by Italica Press in 2021.  

While in Compostela, I focussed on reading the liturgy, and the book was a steadfast companion on my various excursions throughout the city. One of the most memorable reading-spots, however, was when I visited the cathedral itself, and sat down on a bench in the nave, reading through some of the texts that have been performed in this space throughout centuries. It was an awe-inspiring sensation, a feeling that heightened the experience of reading the book and also of sitting in the cathedral where the ostentatious gold and silver stand in marked contrast with the more humble witnesses to the history of the cult's lived religion, namely the various mason's marks that can still be seen on several of the pillars in the nave. 

On bad art - play, puns, and the shortcomings of artificial intelligence

But when she parted hence, she left her groome
An yron man, which did on her attend
Alwayes, to execute her stedfast doome,
And willed him with Artegall to wend,
And doe what euer thing he did intend.
His name was Talus, made of yron mould,
Immoueable, resistlesse, without end.
Who in his hand an yron flale did hould,
With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth vnfould 

- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Book 5, Canto 1, Verse 12)

As the hype concerning generative artificial intelligence is rising and increasingly affecting various parts of society, I have found myself reflecting on the frustrating discussion about its use for the creation of images and novels. Several claims have been made regarding the possibility of using AI for writing novels, and most of these - as far as I know - fail to acknowledge that what is produced is assembled from stolen bits and pieces from existing novels, and require unethical amounts of energy to produce. Another significant point here is that images and texts assembled through generative AI are also bad - not only of a bad quality, but bad because they have no meaning to them. These products are bad art because the badness has no other element to it than badness.  

What I am writing here might at first seem both hermetic and obtuse, yet I do want to distinguish between between art that can be considered bad in terms of its quality, and art that is bad because it has no meaning. These thoughts have been offset by watching episodes of the animated TV series Batfink, a Batman parody that first aired in 1966-67, and my examples are taken from some of these episodes. My main point, however, is that no matter how one evaluates the series Batfink as art, it will always be better than anything produced through the use of generative AI. The reason for this is that the badness of Batfink - to be presented in more detail shortly - has a meaning to it, and that meaning is due to the series being created by human beings. 

 

 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief

Batfink was an animated series that parodied the Batman TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968, and might arguably have been intended to benefit from some of the popularity of the Batman franchise. The protagonist is an anthropomorphic bat (with features that also resemble both a cat and a mouse), who fights against various criminals together with his servant Karate, a human sidekick who follows a well-established trope of being both ethnically other and less intelligent (such as Mandrake the Magician's sidekick Lothar, for instance). The series ran for 100 episodes of around 5 minutes each, and is notable for its ludicrous plots, its pompous dialogue, its myriad of over-the-top supervillain antagonists. Moreover, the series relied heavily on recycled animation. Although this is common in a lot of animation, the Batfink series recycled its scenes with such frequency as to appear as a deliberate lampooning of the practice. When considering what animators were capable of producing in the 1960s, the Batfink series is definitely cheaply produced, and it might also be called bad due to its cheap production. 

However, even if we accept the label bad for the series, Batfink also reminds us that badness - here meaning low quality - is not without depth, and not without creativity. Because of this depth and because of this creativity, a series such as Batfink has a kind of cultural merit that can never be attained by anything produced by artificial intelligence. First of all, the dialogue, the plots, and, perhaps above all, the implausibly lucky escapes from deadly situations, are all part of a satirical tone that serves as a loadbearing beam for the series - it parodies and mocks the superhero genre, something that can only be done with intent, with deliberation. 

Secondly, the series contains a plethora of puns and references to various cultural products and to elements specific to its own period. These are deliberate details aimed at an audience expected to catch them, to understand them, and to appreciate them. While most episodes are full of these, a few examples will suffice here.  

One case in point is episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief. Immediately, the title points to the central reference, namely the story of the wooden horse by which the city of Troy was captured, as recounted in the epic poem The Iliad, attributed to Homer. In the cartoon episode, the horse is a vehicle used by the recurring supervillain Hugo A-go-go to perform robberies. The animated horse is very different from its legendary reference point, in that it is not disguised as a sculpture, it is not given as a present, and it is not brought into a walled city in order to open its gates from the inside. Instead, the mechanical horse is used as a battering ram to break into bank vaults in broad daylight, and although it does contain a human being inside it, that human is its driver, not a contingent of soldiers. If human creativity had not deliberately parodied the legend of the Trojan horse, the appearance of a mechanical horse in an animated series would have no depth to it. Instead, there is a play on a very famous legendary episode.  

  

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief

A second example is from episode 9, Nuts of the Round Table, where the aforementioned Hugo A-go-go uses robot knights on horseback - living horses this time - to rob banks. Once again, the title indicates the cultural reference that has inspired the plot, namely the legend of King Arthur's knights of the round table. Moreover, the pun on nuts - as in nuts and bolts - is a nod to the robotic nature of these knights. The pun and the reference are both outcomes of human creativity, and they are made deliberately and easily recognisable. 

In addition, it is worth noting that there are two further elements that might also point to topoi from the literary repository to which the stories of King Arthur belong. First of all, the horse - as seen in the screenshot below - is white, a classical image ultimately drawn from Revelation 19:11-16, where the rider on the white horse is a Christlike figure. (Importantly, this is not one of the four horsemen mentioned in Revelation 6.) The white horse is a feature of numerous medieval legends, and has remained a symbol of chivalry in modern cultural parlance. Perhaps the white colour of the animated horse is a nod to this tradition? Moreover, the automaton knight also features in various old stories, be it Talos of Greek legend (mentioned, for instance, in Argonautica), or its early modern version Talus from book 5 of Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene, used in this blogpost's epigraph. I do not know whether the animators and script writers of Batfink were familiar with this topos, and I do not know whether the automaton knight is a nod to this literary element. Importantly, however, because the automaton knight was created by human creativity, there is a possibility that we are dealing with a cultural reference. Had this episode been produced by artificial intelligence, however, the question would have been moot, because artificial intelligence does not have intent and can therefore not make use of literary topoi beyond what it copies and cannibalises from other cultural products. 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 09, Nuts of the Round Table

A final example to be mentioned here is period-specific references. These are elements that only make sense because the intended audiences are familiar with them from their own contemporary frame of reference. Once such case is found in episode 11, Fatman Strikes Again (another pun which points to the very franchise that Batfink lampoons). The plot concerns a man in a fat suit who robs the safes of fat men clubs. Such clubs were once a well-known, if perhaps not widely common, feature of American social life, where fatness could be connected to status and wealth. In the twenty-first century, this reference is antiquated as such clubs are no longer a prominent part of the contemporary discourse - I do not even know if any such clubs still exist. Such period-specific references only carry meaning because there is an intent in them, they are meant for the audiences to recognise. 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 11, Fatman Strikes Again

These examples are not many, but hopefully enough to illustrate my main point, namely that even art that is mass-produced, cheaply made, and that has rather limited entertainment value has more depth than anything produced through generative artificial intelligence, simply because the human-made art in question has intent, is deliberately bad, and contains elements that are included on purpose, and not because the elements in question just happened to be part of the trove which was plundered for parts when assembling a product through generative artificial intellgience. TV series such as Batfink might be bad art, but the badness is playful, subversive, deliberate, parodic, and there is entertainment to be had in this. This intent is what makes the series art, however bad it might be deemed to be. If the series had been created through generative artificial intelligence, however, it would not be art, but a simulacrum of art, and it would be bad because of was just that, a simulacrum without any depth, meaning or intent whatsoever. 

Saint Michael in Santiago de Compostela

Today, September 29, is the feast of Saint Michael and all angels, and for this occasion I give you one representation of Saint Michael that I encountered in the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela earlier this year. In this granite statue, made in Coimbra in the fifteenth century, Michael is shown weighing souls in order to decide whether the souls are allowed into Heaven, or whether they will be sent to Hell. As is typical in such depictions, we see demons or devils hard at work tampering with the scales, so as to claim the souls that would otherwise go to God. In the scene depicted here, they seem to be partly succeeding, given that one of the two souls - this one belonging to a woman - is weighed down and appears to be sentenced to damnation.  

In medieval iconography, the weighing of souls was but one aspect of Michael's duties, he was also the leader of the angelic host and can often be seen battling Satan in a scene that might have inspired the iconography of Saint George. Due to his importance in the cosmology of Latin Christendom, he is a ubiquitous feature in Latin medieval art, and his iconography is shared throughout medieval Latin Christendom. For the pilgrims of the fifteenth century, he would have been a recognisable figure, no matter where those pilgrims were coming from. 

Saint James the Elder in Lier

At any given moment, I have a number of topics at the forefront of my mind, topics that I have to, or ought to, give special attention to because of my current work. This year, one such topic is that of the cult of Saint James the Elder, centred on Santiago de Compostela, but disseminated throughout Latin Christendom from at least the twelfth century onwards. Because the cult - as it was formulated in Compostela - was so widespread, and has retained a significant impact on the culture of later centuries, including our own, I encounter this figure on several occasions. One such occasion was on a recent trip to Belgium. 

In the town of Lier, a little to the southeast of Antwerp, there is a chapel dedicated to Saint James the Elder, close to the city hall. The chapel was consecrated in 1383, and suffered some damage in the course of the Reformation, which in the Lowlands - roughly corresponding to modern Belgium and the Netherlands - often took a strongly iconoclastic turn. Perhaps this is the context for the loss of the original statue in the tympanum above the entrance door, which is now replaced by a more patriarchal-looking James from more recent times, his apostolic status highlighted by a book. The horizontal figure below, however, points to an older statue, possibly one that has shown the saint as a pilgrim, an avatar championed by the cult centre in Compostela. The pilgrim iconography is suggested by the horizontal figure, who has taken off his own pilgrim hat, one of the key symbols of James' patronage of pilgrims. As for the original symbolism of this figure, however, we are left to surmise. Perhaps he represents the pilgrims who support and serve Saint James the Elder. Or perhaps he represents those fallen pilgrims who fail to keep their promise of pilgrimage - in acknowledgement of which his hat is now removed.   

While Northern Belgium was still under Spanish Habsburg control in the early seventeenth century, the chapel served as the parish church of the Spanish troops stationed in Lier. Saint James was also formulated as a soldier as early as the twelfth century, and he was widely regarded as a protector of Christian, and especially Spanish, soldiers. Perhaps the now-lost figure in the tympanum was a representation of Santiago Matamoros, the Moor-slayer who became a popular iconography in the Later Middle Ages.  

Due to Compostela's new golden age as a pilgrimage site, the connection between the cult centre and the chapel in Lier have been renewed - a connection illustrated by a trail of metal conch-shells fashioned to resemble arrows, which point the way through Lier's streets to the chapel of Saint James, marking the town's belonging on the Europe-wide network of pilgrim routes.  

Autophory, Saint Martin, and the old cathedral of Salamanca

 

A few years ago, I coined the term 'autophorous' to describe words that carry their own meaning in themselves. The word comes from the Greek 'auto', self, and 'foros', carry. There are relatively few such words, but enough to comprise a category distinct from other words. The idea was mainly inspired by the Norwegian word for typo, which is 'skrivefeil' (literally: writing error). In contemporary Norwegian parlance, it is common to render this word as 'skriveleif', which is a misspelling of the actual word, and therefore a demonstration of what the original word signifies. The word 'skriveleif' - but not 'skrivefeil' - is therefore autophorous. The same goes for the English word 'short', as it is both monosyllabic and made up of few letters.  

I am also tempted to extend the idea of the autophorous to certain concepts, objects, or even spaces. This idea is based on a picture I took last year, when visiting the old cathedral of Salamanca, where there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Martin, with a thirteenth-century mural showing Martin cutting his cape in half to give it to a beggar. The event depicted here is the point of origin for the word chapel. With the establishment of the Merovingian dynasty in the sixth and seventh centuries, the cape of Saint Martin became an important relic and symbol for the ruling dynasty. The relic was kept in a room called the capella - the cape room - a name which was based on the cape, and which we today use for a part of church architecture. In this way, the chapel of Saint Martin in Salamanca is autophorous, since it carries in itself a representation of the very event which gave the space its name.