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.