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.