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.)
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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.
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