A lesson in similarities - reflecting on a memoir by Scholastique Mukasonga

 

There is always more that unites the individuals of the human species than what separates us. This is one of the basic lessons I always try to teach my students, and it is one of the most important lessons that the humanities can provide, whether it is through history, religion, or literature. I am reminded of this very fundamental truth time and again, and last week I was reminded more forcefully than I have been in a long time. Last week, I was finishing Scholastique Mukasonga's memoir La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman) in Agnete Øye's Norwegian translation Den barbeinte kvinnen. Scholastique Mukasonga grew up in Rwanda and provides a wonderful and heartbreaking insight into life in a village of exiled Tutsis in the 1960s. This book is a testament to the blood-soaked legacy of colonialism, a witness to the long roots of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, and an overview of the myriad nuances and details that make up life for exiles who have to balance tradition with what is available in their new situation. 

Among the many vivid description of Mukasonga's childhood and upbringing, I was most immediately struck by the descriptions of the agrarian cycle. The plants grown in the Rwandan countryside are for the most part very different to what I am used to from my own upbringing on a Western Norwegian farm. The seasons, too, follow a different pattern than what we have to contend with in the fjords. Even so, despite the differences in climate and the foodstuffs, I recognised immediately the care that went into the preparation of a new harvest, the joy at the sequence of different produce ripening at different times, the worry about an unfortunate and unexpected alteration in the weather pattern, the celebration of the successful completion of the various stages of the agrarian cycle. The emphasis on community also struck a strong chord, as any agrarian life is dependent on the help of one's neighbours and is comprised of deals, quarrels, agreements and compromise throughout the year. The circumstances might differ, but the fundamental elements are the same. 

It was difficult to read The Barefoot Woman. It is an unvarnished account, but told with both poetry and simplicity, and it contains many details that showcase how brutal the conditions were in Rwanda in the 1960s. What is being described is a world strange and in practice completely unknown to me, as the fears and the uncertainties that presided over Mukasonga's childhood are aspects I can only intellectually understand, never physically or emotionally. But through those common touchstones that are so typically and universally human - the cares and joys of farming - I could easily feel the kinship that exists between humans across vast distances in both time and space. And this lesson, that farmers on whichever part of the planet have a shared sense of the yearly round, is yet another piece of evidence that there is more to unite us than to separate us. Reading this book, therefore, is an antidote to the kind of nationalism and racist worldview that insists on humans belonging to separate categories due to the colour of their skin or their geographical location. For me, a son of farmers, I easily feel a stronger affinity with the exiled Tutsis described by Mukasonga than with anyone who is so detached from the world as not to understand that such bonds exist. 

Scholastique Mukasonga, Den barbeinte kvinnen

The measure of a man's work - or, the insufficiency of numbers

He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only 

- William Blake, There is No Natural Religion

Tomorrow, my status as guest researcher at the University of Oslo is at an end. This was a status I was given after my contract was concluded, in order to allow me to carry out some duties to which I had committed myself even though I was no longer employed by the university. It was a kind extension of grace, and not the first one I have encountered in the winding pathways of academia. As this period has come to an end, however, I have recently been transferring files that have accumulated in the course of the four years since I was employed as a postdoctoral researcher. This is a liminal stage, and one where I am compelled - perhaps even forced - to take stock of what the preceding period of my life has entailed. This stock-taking reached its perhaps most poignant moment when I realised that the two memory sticks that I had used to transfer my files provided a very concise measure of my work in those four year, namely 52.7 gigabytes. That is what it all comes down to, and to have this period and all it has entailed summarised so neatly in cold numbers is a brush with mortality and pointlessness at the same time. Such a summary feels like cliometrics taken to its most extreme and perverse end. 

However, despite the coldness of those numbers, I am also compelled to reflect more closely what they envelop and how insufficient they are for providing an accurate measure of the work and worth of those four years. These gigabytes include the files for numerous articles, some of which have been published in the course of this four-year period, some of which are in various stages of completion or publication, while yet others might never be published at all. There are slides and scripts from numerous presentations at various conferences or public events. There are downloaded texts, some of which I have even managed to read. There are pictures, screenshots, drafts, applications, reimbursement forms, a whole range of items that represent possible and realised pathways that together make up my time as a postdoctoral researcher in Oslo, and the subsequent six months as a guest researcher. It is a multitude and a depth that numbers cannot accurately capture. There is some comfort in that insufficiency of numbers as I am settling into a different pace and as I am organising the paperwork of this period that is coming to a close. And it is a good reminder in an academia increasingly obsessed with numbers and measurements that numbers are only signifiers and summaries, they do not contain the complete picture. 

Reading-spots, part 7

 

For work-related reasons, I am currently thinking back to one of my favourite reading-spots from the past few years, namely the restaurant Taiga in the neighbourhood of Lista in Madrid, where I spent many evenings in April and May of 2023, reading, writing, thinking, and just enjoying existence. One of the reasons why this reading-spot has such a strong place in my memory is partly that the two weeks I spent in Madrid that spring were two of the best weeks I have had in the past decade, and from my sidewalk table I could enjoy the feeling of being in a familiar and beloved place - feeling at home, of sorts. Another reason why this particular reading-spot is so important to me, is that it was here that I took a huge step in a new professional direction. 

This spring, I had started focusing more on researching utopian literature, a field in which I had long been interested, and which I was now able to pursue with more concerted effort thanks to a friend and colleague with whom I began collaborating. On that sidewalk outside the restaurant, I spent long evenings reading Gabriel de Foigny's utopian novel La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land, Known) in David Fausett's English translation. I spent much time thinking and writing fervently on a draft that provided an important foundation for future writing. It felt already then like an intellectual turning-point, and this feeling has since been proven correct. 

But this sidewalk table was also the spot for other types of reading, and other types of thinking. It was a busy spring, and I was also preparing a conference presentation to be held in Rome in a month's time, as well as a speech to be held in a fortnight's time in my home village. Looking back, this table was the nexus of my effort to be a man of the world yet remain a village boy at one and the same time, two roles that I try to connect through my intellectual work. It was also a place where I enjoyed the verses of my friend Raquel Lanseros, one of my all-time favourite poets, whose words have given me so much to be thankful for in this life. 

In short, this was a reading-spot, a writing-spot, and a thinking-spot where much happened, at least in my brain and on paper. It is a place I will always treasure.   

A ritual for fishing

 

Earlier this month, I went with my parents to set out fishing nets in a lake. This is an old practice, and a way by which we have harvested food for generations. There is a lot of skill involved, and as I am quite rusty I need to practice so that the mechanics of the various steps become engrained into my muscle memory. Several things can go wrong. For instance, it is important to start near land where the water is shallow, so that the fish is less likely to swim behind the end of the net. For the same reason, when the rower is moving the boat away from the shore, it is important to let the net slip off the hook swiftly and without too much tugging, lest the stone that weighs down the net in the shoremost end is dragged further away from land. 

Setting out fish nets is a practice that goes far back down the earlier generations, and this kind of continuity is part of what grounds me deeper in my native village. There is a timelessness to it, even though the nets we use today, as well as the boat, are both of a type that is decidedly modern, made with modern technology and from modern materials. In other words, fishing with nets is one of those things that remind us that we are always closer to the ways of the past than we are to the ways of an imagined, high-technological, techno-utopian future. 

We had five nets to set, and my father set the first one in a spot of his choosing. He stood in the aft end of the boat while my mother rowed, and he let the net slip off the hook with practiced ease. As the hook itself was the last part remaining, my father spat on it before sending it into the water. This is an old superstition meant to bring good luck, and people also do this with the fishing hook before casting it into a river or a lake.   

The next four nets were set by me while my mother rowed the boat straight ahead. As I am out of practice, I focused intensely on making sure that I didn't drag the net or the net didn't get caught in itself, as it sometimes does when it is a net that is old and frayed. But as the first of my four nets was about to leave my hand, I also leant forward and spat drily and unpreparedly on the hook before releasing it. I did the same with the other nets, and each time I felt an odd satisfaction. This is a ritual, a marking of a transition from one stage to the next, the releasing of the hook a liminal state, a threshold. As so many things in the current historical epoch is entangled in emptiness and destructive fantasies, this kind of ritual felt deeply satisfying, indeed wholesome, as it was an odd but harmless way to mark an important shift in the labour of the evening. I do not believe in such superstitions, but I do believe in the importance of rituals for human beings, however constructed they are. Some rituals are good to have, to retain, to construct, to invent, because these rituals are brief moments that ground us in reality and make us come closer to the interconnectedness of it all. 

I do not believe in such superstition. But the net that my father set was the one that caught the greatest haul.  

Saint Martin and the birds in Salamanca

From the Middle Ages, we have numerous stories about saints and animals. Some of these stories are about animal companions, such as Saint Hugh of Lincoln and his swan. Others are stories of protection (Saint Giles and the wounded hind), stories about healing and recovery  (Saint Thorlak and the lost cow), or stories about control over the animals (Saint Francis and the singing locust, or Saint Edward the Confessor and the nightingales). Regardless of the shape of these stories, they all serve to demonstrate the holiness of the saint in question because of their care for animals or their owners, or because of their miraculous communication with them. These stories also convey the hierarchy of Creation, according to Christian theology, in which humans were set above the beasts and were commanded to be custodians of the earth.  

The various topoi of animals in saint-stories provide a useful background for appreciating a symbolic convergence in the Church of Saint Martin in Salamanca. I went past this church a couple of times when I last visited Salamanca earlier this year, and I happened to note that there is an extensive avian symbolism in both the decoration and the use of the church - all of which has nothing to do with the legend of Saint Martin, but serves to highlight how such coincidences can reinforce pre-existing associations. 

 

One of the entrances to the church was easily accessible as I walked between my hotel and the university area, and I was entranced by the beautiful carvings on the Romanesque portal, a nice - if partial - survival of the twelfth-century stone church, which has been expanded and renovated at various times. The figure of Saint Martin seen above the portal is most likely form the renovation campaign of 1586, but the figures in the arches of the portal show the typical design of the twelfth century, and also has the wear to be expected of carvings that old. In capitals between the pillars and the arches are several winged creatures, including what appear to be sphinxes, long-necked birds (possibly storks), and harpies. These figures are stock characters in Romanesque art, possibly signifying the wild and chaotic world beyond Christian civilisation which the church visitor leaves behind when entering the hallowed space beyond the doors. 

These figures have nothing to do with Saint Martin and his legend. While there is an avian episode from the story of Martin of Tours - in which he hid among geese to avoid being elected bishop - these particular carvings are part of the portal because they were typical figures of their time. Despite not pertaining to Saint Martin's legend, however, these winged creatures do bring a certain symmetry, not so much to the legend itself, but to the Salamancan church of today. Above the church bell, a pair of storks have built a nest and were flying back and forth across the neighbouring streets. As storks are common in Salamanca, there is nothing uncommon about this sight, nor does it have any particular significance for the legend of Saint Martin. Nonetheless, there is something pleasing about the coincidental convergence of iconography and reality when storks settle on the building dedicated to a saint who hid among birds, and which building is also decorated with several avian creatures, including what might possibly be storks. These are coincidences, serendipities, happenstances - but they do converge in a wonderful way to show how life and art sometimes line up, and when you know the art you can also appreciate this convergence more strongly. And we should expect that medieval venerators of Saint Martin would do just that in case they saw birds nesting on this church in the Middle Ages. 

The Loon - a poem by Robert Bly

 

This morning, a pair of loons were frolicking in the lake behind the house of my late grandparents. While I am used to hearing their ghostly cry in one of the lakes higher up in one of the valleys - where their plaintive sound is more naturally at home - this was not the first time I have seen them in this little bay of the lake. And as always happens when I see or hear loons, I was reminded of Robert Bly's wonderful short poem.

The Loon 

From far out in the center of the naked lake

the loon’s cry rose…

it was the cry of someone who owned very little 

- Robert Bly

Lost stories - a possible example from Santiago de Compostela

 

As a historian predominantly concerned with texts, I am keenly aware of how important stories are to the shaping of societies, identities - indeed, of history in general. The way our understanding of the world is shaped happens through stories, often in ways we do not notice. This is why it is so crucial to get at the narrative drive behind people's actions, and also why it can be so difficult to make certain people understand that their understanding of historical reality is not built on solid ground. 

My research deals with stories practically every day. I analyse them, compare them, keep track of their variations, and try to examine how they have shaped the historical context of any given period, and - mutatis mutandis - how the historical context has shaped the stories. The stories that I research are usually well known, if only within a specific field of history or literature, and it has never happened that I have encountered a previously unknown story. (I came close once, but that is a tale for another day.) However, sometimes I do come across stories in images which I do not recognise. For instance, several of the full-page illuminations of the so-called Rothschild Canticles - a fourteenth-century religious florilegium - depict scenes that I do not know, and that I cannot decipher. Although these stories are unknown to me, however, I am certain that there are experts who will be able to recognise them.

Last year, when I visited the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela, I was struck by a series of carved pillars displayed there. The pillars date to the twelfth century, and are from an early stage in the cathedral's building history. They are exquisitely carved and testify to the skill and craft that went into decorating and constructing the cathedral. Along the winding grooves of each pillar are figures and floral forms that seem to depict episodes from stories - perhaps even consecutive episodes from one and the same story. And even though I looked at them carefully while I was there, and even though I have looked at them even more carefully since, I cannot identify the story or stories they represent. The Compostelans who passed by them in the cathedral, however, most likely understood exactly what these carvings meant. They might have heard the stories from sermons, or they might know the stories on which the related sermons were based, or they might have talked to the masons who carved them once they had received instructions from the cathedral clergy. Perhaps pilgrims from all across Latin Christendom were likewise able to recognise these figures. After all, several individuals, both masons and clerics, who were active in twelfth-centuy Compostela came from France and might have brought stories with them from their native places. To us, or at least to me, these stories are lost. 

The loss of stories is a colossal barrier to our understanding of the past. Without catching the various references that remain in the surviving source material, we are unable to understand parts of the storyworlds of the people in a specific period - storyworlds whose stories might have influenced how they made certain decisions, for instance through fear of becoming like the fool in a story, or through a desire to become like the hero of a particularly beloved story. As an example of such a story that might not be altogether lost - I hope those who know it will tell me - but very much lost on me, I give you a sequence of figures from one of the twelfth-century pillars. 

From the top and downward in a spiral, we see a devil standing behind a mermaid, while holding the tale of a snake which is coiling itself around the rightarm and shoulder of the mermaid. The mermaid is clutching her tail with her righthand and holding her tailfin with her left. From under her tail emerges the serpent's head, and it seems to spew a jet - probably of poison - arches its way behind a pair of human figures. The figure closest to the serpent's head is a man who might be hooded. In his right hand is a knife whose blade lies flat along his right thigh. The other figure has a headdress which suggests that it is a woman, and she has seductively placed her right hand on top of the man's right thigh while the left is equally seductively placed on the inside of the man's left shin. The hem of the man's dress - possibly a monk's habit - can be seen flowing behind the woman's head, suggesting she has free access to the man's body.    

What is the story? From these details, it might appear some kind of clerical warning against the sins of the flesh. The mermaid, or siren, is a typical symbol for lust - always blamed on the women - and the devil holding a serpent might be a reference to the temptation of Adam and Eve. The two figures, however, are clearly not Adam and Eve, because they are already dressed - at least partially - and the man is holding a knife. Is he about to castrate himself in order to avoid the temptation of carnal congress? Perhaps in recollection of Christ's words in Matthew 18:9 about cutting out the eye that tempts you to sin? Or is he about to kill the woman, just as we read in stories about some saints to whom the devil appeared as a seductress? The story unfolding along the pillar might draw on all these references mentioned here - after all, they were part of the Latin Christian storyworld. But even if my interpretation of the individual elements is correct - and it might not be - the story itself is no clearer. Are we dealing with a legendary episode? Or perhaps something from Galicia, something even witnessed by those who commissioned the carvings to be made? Or is it more a collection of semiotic signs that together are meant to remind clerics of key aspects of their supposedly chaste way of life, rather than a story as we commonly think of it? It is easy enough to ask these questions, but the story that is likely to be behind this sequence of carvings is lost to me. 

A new, short chapter

Some chapters are so short that they can hardly be considered chapters, but appear rather as vignettes interspersed in-between chapters as intermezzos in the main narrative, or as a parallel story told in brief episodes. (I am here in particular thinking of the untitled vignettes that separate the individual short stories in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time.) I am currently living through one of those chapters. 

From May 01 until October 31, I am employed at the University of Bergen as a co-editor of the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, which was published in 2008 and last updated in 2012. Thanks to a six-year grant to the project CODICUM, centred in part at the University of Bergen, some resources were allocated to update the encyclopedia in accordance with the advances in research in the past seventeen years. The job has already proved both interesting and intense, as there is much information that has to be sorted and navigated in order to assess what to do, how to do it, and where to begin. In the course of this work, I have been reminded of how much research has been done on various topics within the broader umbrella of medieval Nordic literature in Latin, and also of how much remains to be done in the cases of some of the more neglected or at least more minor texts and sources. 

This employment is short, but a welcome respite from unemployment, and a very fortuitous opportunity to delve into some sources that I have not yet managed to devote as much attention to as they truly deserve.    

 

Compostela by night

This month, I have spent much time writing about the cult of Saint James the Elder in medieval Europe, as he was formulated and disseminated at and from the cult centre at Santiago de Compostela. Today, April 29, most of my work day was dedicated to writing a one and a half page summary of the cult-making process of the twelfth century. While the writing itself only took a few hours, those hours were founded on long periods of reading, travelling, writing, discussing and researching spread throughout 2024. In order to write that page and a half, I relied on notes and memories, and in order to reach this particular point in my work I have read three books, numerous articles, travelled to Santiago de Compostela twice, prepared and given two conference presentations, and expanded my personal library. This preparatory work is part of the pleasure of writing academic texts, but it is work that is rarely acknowledged by funding bodies or by universities. But today, I could relish in all those hours spread across 2024 that I had dedicated to researching the cult of Saint James and the history of Santiago de Compostela. And part of that relish rested on some of the glorious views of the city that I was able to witness in the course of my travels. Below are some of those views, taken a late evening in December, on a day that cemented my love for Santiago de Compostela even more strongly, and made me feel even more at home in its confusing and confounding streetscape. 

 

A three-week book haul

Most of March 2025 was spent on a long, circuitous journey that brought me to two cities in Norway, one in Germany, and two in Spain. The journey was occasioned by two conferences, one in Hamburg and one in Salamanca, and since these conferences were quite close in time but not close enough to warrant a more direct itinerary, I decided to spend the majority of three weeks travelling, spending my nights variously at hotels or at the houses of kind friends. It was an eventful and lovely trip, and I returned home much richer than when I left, as is always the case when I have been inundated with impressions, food, new knowledge, and the joy of friendships new and old. And when I have purchased new books. 

This time around, I was heroically restrained in my book-buying adventures. Partly, my restraint was due to a rather tight schedule, where so much of my time was spent either at conferences on en route to them, or meeting up with friends along the way. For instance, I found no time to peruse the numerous bookshops that I passed when hurrying to and from the conference locale in Salamanca, and I just managed to purchase an edition of Lazarillo de Tormes that I happened to see displayed outside one of them. Partly, however, the restraint was guided by practical matters, as I was travelling with a large suitcase for three weeks, and I wanted that suitcase to remain manageable throughout the journey. Even so, I did manage to add a few valuable tomes - valuable to me, that is - to my still-too-miniscule book collection. The haul is shown below, containing items from Hamburg, Bergen, Salamanca, and Madrid. 

Pain in stone - the Deposition of Christ at Aguilar de Campoo

There is a narrative about modernity that presupposes that people of the past did not have the same kinds of emotions as we do today - that they were harder, more toughened by high death rates and statistically low life expectancy. There is a variant of this narrative - once uttered by a friend of mine who is an early modernist - where medieval art is said to have been static and without emotion, in contrast to the glorious geniuses of the Renaissance. Both narratives come from the same place, namely the identity-construction of the Enlightenment and its latter-day versions promoted by capitalists, industrialists and techbros. The basic purpose of this idea is to argue that we as humans are evolving, becoming more civilised, that we are more elevated than the people of the past, especially the Middle Ages. Both these narratives are pure nonsense, and there are plenty of sources that provide evidence against them. 

Since today is Holy Saturday, I will take the opportunity to provide one of my favourite examples of such sources, namely the Deposition of Christ as depicted on a capital in the church of the monastery of Aguilar de Campoo in Northern Spain. The capital, along with others from the same church, are currently kept in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, and it is one of the many masterpieces of Spanish Romanesque art.  

These pictures were taken in the spring of 2024, and I viewed this capital from every possible angle. The pain carved into these figures is breathtaking, and would have been even more powerful in their original locations as they would likely have been painted, meaning that the death-closed eyes of Christ had provided an even more powerful contrast to the Virgin Mary's eyes shut in the pain of weeping. This capital is a wonderful, painful, amazing reminder that the pain of love - in its myriad manifestations - is universally human and not something that came about in modernity, or something that is typically modern. 

The Crucifixion in Ål stave church

As today is Good Friday, I take the opportunity to share a scene from one of the most stunning survivals from the wealth of art created in medieval Norway, namely the ceiling of the ciborium of Ål stave church. The ciborium, a barrel-valuted structure placed above the choir, was painted in the thirteenth century, and provides a compressed version of the salvation story, beginning with the Creation and reaching its climax with the Resurrection. The ceiling is currently housed in the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, where the paintings are accessible to the general public. 

The crucifixion scene is a good way to assess the level of biblical and apocryphal knowledge available in medieval Norway in the thirteenth century. In our times, there is a pervasive myth that medieval Norway was out of touch with Christian traditions and Christian knowledge elsewhere in Europe, which in turn has led to several unfounded claims about the continuity of paganism, at least on a popular level. By the thirteenth century, Norway had been Christian for three centuries, and although urbanisation was limited and there were few monasteries, the network of parish churches ensured that at least the most important feasts of the liturgical year were celebrated throughout the country, despite its rather difficult topography.  

The crucifixion scene shows that there was a familiarity with Christian iconography in thirteenth-century Norway, and also that the artists behind the ceiling at Ål stave church were just as adept at compressing information as artists elsewhere in Latin Christendom. The scene also reminds us of the abiding and pervasive evil that is antisemitism. 

The central feature of the scene is, of course, the crucified Christ, bleeding from his pierced side, his head drooping in the typical manner of the Gothic style, emphasising the suffering and human Christ. Above him, we see two symbols of the evangelists, namely the angel of Matthew and the eagle of John. Six figures are standing at the foot of the cross. The most recognisable are perhaps John the Evangelist on the left (or the viewer's right), depicted as a young, clean-shaven man, and identifiable as an evangelist thanks to the book he is holding, and the Virgin Mary on the rightmost end, clutching her hands in pain. Next to the Virgin Mary, a woman, probably Mary Magdalen, is raising aloft a chalice. This chalice is strongly laden with symbolism, but it is difficult to assess how it is meant. It might be that the chalice represents the jar of alabaster which is Mary Magdalen's saintly attribute. It is possible that the chalice refers to Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, where he asked God to let the chalice pass him by, meaning that he would not have to go through with the ultimate sacrifice. A modern audience will probably connect the chalice to the vessel that gathered some of Christ's blood, which is part of the developing grail mythology - but this is unlikely given the stage at which this story had developed in the thirteenth century. 

Beyond the Virgin and the Magdalen, two male figures are located. The one closest to the cross is the Roman soldier Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with his spear. According to post-biblical tradition, the blood of Christ got in the soldier's eye - to which he is indicating in the scene - and thereby healed it. The miracle promptly converted Longinus to Christianity, and his feast was celebrated in calendars until the twelfth century - at least that is as far I have been able to trace it. As part of this story, Longinus' spear became the holy lance, which was claimed by Ottonian emperors and became part of a long register of Christ-related relics in the Middle Ages. 

Beside Longinus, we see a beard-puller, a typical figure of otherness in medieval art. It is likely that the beard-puller represents the unbelieving Other, the non-Christians who refused to accept Christ as Messiah, and it is possible that this figure represents both pagans and Jews. 

The final figure, placed between the cross and John the Evangelist, is another and indeed more forceful reminder that Christian iconography is, tragically, saturated with antisemitism. This figure, appearing as a royal harlot, is most likely a figuration of the Synagogue, a figure demonising and attacking all Jews. The crown askance might be understood as the imminent loss of sovereignty - being replaced by the Christian faith - and the bared breasts and the goat held by the horns might be interpreted as lasciviousness or unfaithfulness. 

The antisemitic imagery in this picture is part of an artistic tradition that fuelled Christian antagonism against Jews throughout the Middle Ages, and which continues to do so today. We are therefore reminded that it can be intensely difficult to untangle the heritage of Christian antisemitism from the commemoration of the mystical climax of the Christian liturgical year, and indeed the history of salvation. In our own times, antisemitism remains deeply rooted in many groups of society - including many Christian groups - and for Christians the season should be a time of reflection for how Christians have persecuted Jews throughout the centuries, all in contradiction with Christ's commandment of love and tolerance. 

New publication: The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

Today, I was notified of the publication of an article that is one of the texts that I have had the most fun writing. The article in question is titled 'The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period', and is published in the journal Belgrade Philosophical Annual vol. 37, issue 2. The text can be accessed and downloaded here and here. The article is based on a talk I gave last February, which can be accessed through this blogpost. There are significant differences between the talk and the published article, however, both because of how my thinking has developed, and because of new things I have read since then. 

The article is quite simple, as the title suggests. I explore how texts that can be understood as utopian, broadly speaking, from both the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period utilised religion and science in fashioning the ideal condition. By spanning the medieval-early modern divide, I also seek to reject this divide and point to continuities in the worldviews within which the various utopists formulated their ideal societies. It was great fun to write, because it allowed me an excuse to delve into material that has hitherto been quite peripheral to my research, yet which has held my interest for the better part of a decade. Moreover, the longue durée perspective has made me even more convinced about the need to rethink the artificial divide between medieval and early modern thinking, and also how we understand utopianism.   

Joys of returning - an evening meal in Salamanca

As much as I enjoy seeing new places, there is a particular joy in returning to somewhere familiar. Since I am currently in Salamanca, a city I have loved for ten years, I am particularly reminded of this, and especially when I am navigating the food scene. The first evening, I went out to get a quick bite to eat before bedtime, and I ended up in a bar with an intriguing selection of toasts. Spanish toasts are, luckily, more elaborate than the ones commonly found in the UK, for instance, and these were laden with delicious spreads and condiments. Trying to make decisions, I asked the waitress what the things were, and I could not help notice a bemused look that bordered on delight when she witnessed this very obvious foreigner correctly identifying such local specialties as the morcilla, the blood sausage. It turned out to be spectacular, but the joy of the food itself was nothing compared to that deep feeling of belonging - of having returned to a beloved place and, while clearly not a native, being sufficiently well-versed in the language, the various references, the iconography, to encounter the familiar yet also to expand the horizon in different directions. 

 

Utopia closed - encountering a literary topos in Pontevedra

 

Every once in a while, reality corresponds with fiction, and sometimes in delightful ways. These are the brief moments that remind us that even though literary topoi have often come to be seen as signs of literature being divorced from reality - relying instead on cliches and intertextual games to express things - these topoi do resonate with reality. To paraphrase Siri Hustvedt in The summer without men, something that never happens in modern fiction might still happen in modern life. Conversely, just because something is a literary topos does not mean that it cannot echo the real world in some way or another. I was reminded of this puzzling relationship between truth and fiction during a visit to Pontevedra in Galicia. I took a bus from Santiago de Compostela in the morning, and around midday I found myself walking the quiet streets of a town preparing for the mid-afternoon rest. 

Not far from the bus station, I happened upon a bar with the promising name Utopia. For me, having dedicated much of my research time to utopian literature, this felt like a lovely example of synchronicity, where two elements of your life come into contact by chance rather than design. I would have felt professionally obliged to visit this bar, but unfortunately it was closed. However, although I was disappointed not being able to enter Utopia, there is also a delightful aspect to my misfortune. After all, utopian spaces - broadly understood as locations where life is better than elsewhere - are typically closed off for the majority of people. Only those who are selected or who otherwise fit the criteria for entry are allowed to access Utopia. We find this restriction in classical literature, medieval formulations of ideal spaces, and the more purified literary versions in early modern texts. In other words, this chance encounter at the wrong time of day enabled me to live a literary topos.  

Saint James the Elder in Skive

 

These days, I'm preparing for an upcoming talk at a conference in Spain, where I will once more delve into the history of the cult of Saint James the Elder. The cult of Saint James is one of the most remarkable iconographical metamorphoses, as the apostle became a pilgrim and then became known as such throughout the entire medieval Latin Christendom. The signature hat, staff and scallop shell are all part of a recognisable iconography that continues to resonate to this day, and that can often be found in small places far away from the cult centre in Santiago de Compostela. One such place is Skive in Northern Jutland. 

Saint James the Elder

Skive Church

In my upcoming talk, my focus is on the cult of Saint James - as Santiago, which serves as a useful shorthand for the Compostelan iteration of the saint - and his medieval cult in the Nordic sphere. One of the examples of his cult is a wall-painting in the Church of Our Lady in Skive, which is part of a fresco cycle that was completed in 1522. The cycle consists of several saints, some of whom I have written about in other blogposts. Saint James appears as his pilgrim self on the side of the archway that separates the choir from the nave. This archway and the choir are dedicated to the Trinity and the apostles, except Saint Matthias who for some reason is not included.  

That Saint James the Elder appears as a pilgrim is only to be expected, given that saints were depicted in ways that would make them recognisable. It is, however, a fascinating testament to the flexibility of medieval temporal imagination that a saint is placed in a distinctly biblical context, yet is depicted as what would be a post-biblical figure representing the later development of his cult. There is no contradiction in this, at least from the point of view of medieval venerators, since once a saint entered Heaven they were atemporal and existed in all time periods postdating their deaths. What we see here, therefore, is not so much anachronistic a achronic - an example of how time exists on a different plane than mere history, at least within the perspective of the medieval cult of saints. 

Reading-spots, part 6

 

In December, after the end of my most recent employment, I returned home to my native village of Hyen in the Western Norwegian fjords. Here, I spend as much time as I can tying up various loose ends, applying for jobs, and working on the several commitments I have made to friends and colleagues. Such transitions like this one are always difficult, always emotional, because they are final and irreversible, and they are always tinged with a series of annoying what-ifs. As I'm settling into a new rhythm, I also find myself seeking out some solutions I have tried out before. One of these is to use my late paternal grandfather's room as an office, which was how I organised my work back in 2021. I was then in a similar situation, although I still had some short-term employment, and to sit in this room again with a cup of coffee and a cup of tea makes the transition seem less dramatic - the irreversibility of turning a new page feels less dauting, simply because I have been here before.  

This early in the year, it is still too cold to spend long sessions in this room, but when I do the quietness of the walls and the view of the beloved fjord serve as a great framework for thinking and reading, and especially to try and forget about the world for long enough periods at a time.  

Typographic continuity - an example from the novel Antangil

 

In a recent blogpost, I wrote about some of my early impressions and experiences researching the 1616 utopian novel Histoire du grand et admirable royaume d'Antangil incogneu jusques a present à tous historiens et cosmographes (History of the great and admirable kingdom of Antangil, unknown until the present by all historians and cosmographers). Since then, I have had cause to delve deeper into structure of the book, and the book as an object - mainly in order to compare its thematic division with similar works, and to see how much of the novel was dedicated to military matters. 

One detail that struck me with particular force during this work, was how the typography of the of a book printed in 1616 retained many of the same features of medieval manuscript culture that was carried over into the first printed European books. Granted, I always tend to emphasise continuity and to eschew the common medieval/early modern divide, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how the abbreviations from the Middle Ages were retained. One passage that demonstrated the situation particularly well is the one illustrated below, from a chapter on the exercises of the gendarmerie in times of peace. The passage describes how the soldiers are promised to be liberally bestowed with "[charges] et honneurs, venans à se monstrer de plus en plus braves, genereux et fideles" (responsibilities and honours, coming to show themselves off as more and more brave, generous and faithful). I am amused by this aspect of early seventeenth typography, and especially because this makes it actually easier for me to read the text, unaccustomed as I am to read French and seventeenth-century material. 

I. D. M. G. T., Histoire du grand et admirable royaume d'Antangil incogneu jusques a present à tous historiens et cosmographes, 1616, p. 90.

Eden in the Norwegian fjords

Yesterday, I wrote a blogpost on how medieval Christians in Europe connected themselves to the biblical past through typology. Typological thinking, however, is a phenomenon in many Christian cultures and periods, and today I was reminded of another case of Nordic biblical typology that is far removed from the twelfth-century baptismal font in Fiskbæk Church.  

I come from the small village of Hyen in the Western Norwegian fjords, and at the time of writing I am residing here while applying for jobs. Earlier today, I went for a walk which took me along part of the old main road which was used from time immemorial until the 1930s. In so doing, I passed an old stone which looks somewhat like a bed or a couch, which goes by the name of "Adam og Eva-steinen", the Adam and Eve stone. My paternal grandmother, born in 1912, told me about how she and her generation imagined that this was where Adam and Eve had their bed, and this idea was commonly shared at the time of her childhood. My grandmother also had an idea that I believe to be her own - at least based on how she told me about it when I was little - namely that the orchard of one of the farms in this part of the village was the Garden of Eden.  

My grandmother was born into a world of Lutheran piety, where the biblical frame of reference saturated a lot of popular culture as well as the schools and public gatherings. In this sense, Western Norway of the 1910s was quite similar to the Middle Ages, although the type of Christianity in those two eras were very different from one another. It was only natural that both children and adults would fuse their knowledge of the Bible and their immediate geographical horizon together in the way that led to the naming of the Adam and Eve stone. This case, then, points to how easily typological thinking can be infused into a cultural framework, and how human creativity can run with this kind of thinking and create very lovely and very endearing ideas.  

 

The River Jordan in Denmark - a baptismal font from Fiskbæk Church

 

In the Latin Middle Ages,  meaning the part of the medieval world where Latin was the liturgical language, people understood themselves as belonging to a divinely created pattern where contemporary elements were reiterations of similar elements from biblical history. To put it differently: people, events and iconography of, say, the twelfth century interpreted their role in Creation according to patterns and references laid out in the Bible. This typological connection could be iterated in many different ways, such as by drawing on biblical passages in descriptions of persons or in narratives, or by presenting persons or events as new iterations of episodes in the Bible. This connection provided a keystone in Latin medieval identity-construction. 

In this short blogpost, I present to you one of the vestiges that point to this typological thinking, which also shows how this way of thinking was disseminated to every nook and cranny of Latin Christendom. The vestige in question is a Romanesque baptismal font from Fiskbæk Church in Northern Jutland. The font is most likely twelfth century. I have not yet encountered any suggestions about its origin, but it could very well be from Gotland where the production of baptismal fonts was common in this period. 

The font is beautifully carved with a row of trees circling the bowl, and these trees provide the key to the nature of the typological connection represented by the font. While it is always difficult to assess exactly which tree is represented in these highly stylised renditions, it is safe to assume - based on the shape - that the middle tree in the picture is intended to be a palm tree. The palm tree is a symbol of the Holy Land, and pilgrims to Jerusalem returned with pilgrim badges in the shape of palm leaves to commemorate their journey.     

Given that this is a baptismal font, the evocation of the Holy Land is particularly interesting. The trees are lined up in a row as if on a river bank, and we know that beyond the trees - so to speak - is the water in which people are baptised into the Christian faith. In the Bible (Mark 1:6-9), John the Baptist baptises Christ in the River Jordan to mark the start of Christ's ministry on earth. The font in Fiskbæk Church serves as a reminder that every Christian who is baptised imitates Christ, and in the moment of baptism the little church in Fiskbæk Northern Jutland is mystically transformed into a new iteration of the River Jorden. This is the logic of typology, and such connections with the biblical past could be done simply, effectively, and very poetically. A row of stylised trees in stone sufficed to evoke one of the key elements in the history of Christ and, by extension, the history of human salvation, as viewed by Christian eyes.  

An insufficiency of books

 

Earlier this evening on Bluesky, I launched a new suggestion for a collective noun for books, namely 'an insufficiency'. The term struck me as I was considering some of the books in my collection of primary sources from the Middle Ages, and how few I actually possess. Luckily, I have enough that I can do quite a lot of writing and research even without access to a physical university library collection, but I do not have enough. Most likely, I will never have enough, because new needs keep arising and more books keep demanding my attention. Any library will therefore always remain insufficient for me, and so no matter how many books there are in any collection, there collective noun has to be 'an insufficiency'.  

One of my book cases, demonstrating the insufficiency of my personal library

Cantigas de Compostela, part 3: Saint Sebastian

 

Around 1450, a chapel was built in the cathedral complex of Santiago de Compostela, dedicated to the Holy Spirit. The chapel contained stone statues of various saints, one of whom was Saint Sebastian. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Sebastian was one of the most ubiquitous figures of the collegium of holy men and women venerated in Latin Christendom. According to tradition, he was a Christian soldier who was arrested for preaching the Christian faith, tied to a pillar and shot through with arrows. He survived, and was healed back to life by Irene, a fellow Christian. Later, when he had resumed his preaching activities, he was clubbed to death. This was part of the Diocletian Persecutions, c.300-c.303.

The cult of Saint Sebastian appears to have emerged in the late fourth century, but it is uncertain whether he was a historical figure or one that was retroactively imagined or created after Christianity had become legal and had undergone some institutional solidification in places such as Rome and Milan. Sebastian's popularity, however, was not steady until the late thirteenth century, and then surged significantly in the fourteenth century. One of the main factors in this development was the inclusion of his story in Legenda Aurea, a collection of legends by the Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine, later archbishop of Genoa. The collection was disseminated across Latin Christendom, and appeared in numerous translations and vernacular adaptations and imitations. Another main factor for the surging popularity of Sebastian was that Legenda Aurea identified him as a saint who was particularly effective when praying against plague.  

The statue in Compostela, perforated and blood-soaked, followed a typical contemporary iconography established in Italy, where Sebastian is muscular, beardless, and shot trough with arrows. It is uncertain whether the artist operating in Compostela was familiar with the Italian tradition, or whether the similarity in execution is due to indirect influence mediated through workshops in Catalonia or Burgos, for instance. In any case, for the artisans working on this chapel around 1450, it was a modern, trendy rendition of the saint that was taking shape.  

Cathedral museum, Santiago de Compostela

The leonine undertakers - a detail from the legend of Saint Paul of Thebes

Today, January 15, is the feast of Paul the Hermit, who is also known as Paul of Thebes. According to tradition, he died in the year 341, and was the first Christian hermit. The earliest known account of Paul's legend was composed by the church father Jerome, and functions in essence like a prequel to the very popular biography of Anthony of Egypt written by Athanasius of Alexandria and later translated into Latin by Evagrius. Athanasius' biography of the historical hermit Anthony had a long-reaching impact on the development of Christian mythology - both chronologically and geographically speaking. It is, therefore, tempting to suggest that by penning a story about an even older hermit whom Anthony meets, Jerome sought to capitalise on this popularity and expand the emerging Latin Christian historical vision that was being solidified in the course of the fourth century. 

The narrative of Jerome's story tells about how the hermit Anthony learns about an older and even more austere colleague living in the Egyptian wastes. He sets out to meet him, and after the two hermits have shared a meal brought by ravens - a typological connection to Elijah - Paul eventually breathes his last, and is interred by Anthony in a grave dug by two lions who miraculously appear. The burial of Paul became a well-known motif in later medieval art, presumably - at least in part - because it is the most iconographically interesting episode in the narrative. One of the more curious renditions is found in a Flemish manuscript from around 1300, which is now known both as the Rotschild Canticle, and by its shelfmark Beinecke MS 404. The manuscript is a collection of various Christian texts, assembled as a kind of florilegium or anthology, and also left unfinished. The pages are filled with a rich array of medieval illuminations which showcase the magnificent world of the medieval imagination. One of these illuminations is a full-page depiction of the burial of Paul the Hermit (f.31r), and it is a curious rendition of the motif. As can be seen in the picture below, the artist has illustrated the lions' assistance in a peculiarly anthropomorphic twist, by having one of them actually carrying the body of Paul together with Anthony. The anthropomorphic lion is not uncommon in medieval art, but is perhaps most often seen in illuminations showing episodes of Reynard the Fox or other animal tales typical of the Latin medieval literary world. Consequently, this illumination stands out as rather unusual, at least to the modern mind. To the medieval beholder, on the other hand, this scene might simply be understood as a very effective rendition of the well-known topos from Latin Christian hagiography, namely that nature and all its denizens were subordinate to, and came to the aid of, the saints of God.  

In Beinecke MS 404, this scene is one of several full-page illuminations by the same artist found in the manuscript, and these are all depictions of a single scene from the life of a saint or from a particular story. Unfortunately, the page following each illumination is left blank, and the extracts from the various legends that were likely intended to be included, were never copied into the manuscript. For this reason, it can sometimes be difficult to assess to which story a particular illumination refers. In the case of the one on folio 31r, however, every detail of the scene provides a clear pointer to the legend of Saint Paul the first hermit, one of the earliest and most successful prequels of the Latin Christian traditions, at least outside the biblical apocrypha. 

The lions help Anthony bury Paul

Beinecke MS 404, f.31r