Saint Edmund in the litany - the 1482 Breviarium Othoniense and the cult of Edmund Martyr in medieval Denmark

Today, November 20, is the feast of Edmund Martyr, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869, and whose cult became one of the most important native cults in medieval England. His cult also spread to the Nordic sphere, most likely as a consequence of both deliberate dissemination and frequent contact between the Nordic polities and medieval England. The history of Edmund's cult in the Nordic world is still incompletely mapped and insufficiently understood in its totality, and there are several tantalising clues to suggest that Edmund was perhaps more important than we have hitherto ascertained. 

In October, I was reminded of one such source when I was doing research in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and I was leafing through the 1482 Odense breviary, or Breviarium Othoniense. This was the first commissioned printed book in the Nordic world, and the second to have been printed - since a pamphlet was finished before the breviary - and it was later superseded by two new editions in 1497 and 1510. The breviary reflected recent changes in the ecclesiastical scene of Odense, as King Christian I had dissolved the Benedictine abbey of Saint Knud, which had served as the cathedral chapter of the Odense bishop. Since the liturgy was no longer performed by monks, it had to be abbreviated to suit the more restrained length of secular offices (nine lessons versus twelve for the most important feasts). As a consequence, the Breviarium Othoniense is a challenging source to the liturgical history of Odense diocese, since it represents a recent rupture in the historical practice. The evidence provided by the liturgical material in the breviary must therefore be weighed carefully before being used to suggest historical trajectories. 

One of the notable aspects in the 1482 breviary is Edmund's placement in the litany, a list of saints placed according to rank within the diocesan church, to be invoked for their intercession. The litany begins on the previous page and opens with prayers to the Virgin Mary, the angels, the apostles, and then the martyrs. The order of the martyrs is an interesting testament to the popularity of the different saints, and one of the big questions concerning this order is whether it reflects an older ranking or more recent changes. It is, for instance, remarkable that Saint Mauritius comes before Saint Olaf, but that is a different blogpost. 

The page shown below, folio 91v, begins with Saint Alban, who was the patron saint of one of the churches in Odense, and whose cult had been brought to the city in the eleventh century - by Saint Knud Rex himself, if we are to believe the hagiographical tradition. His relatively high position among the martyrs is therefore ot surprising. After him comes Saint Olaf of Norway, one of the most important saints in Denmark, but one whose fame appears to have been less intense in the diocese of Odense than in Lund, Roskilde, Ribe, Aarhus, or Børglum. Then comes Thomas, which is Saint Thomas of Canterbury, whose cult in Odense appears to have developed independently of the diocesese of Lund and Roskilde. Then we come to Edmund Martyr. Interestingly, he is before Oswald of Northumbria, whose relics had been brought to Odense alongside those of Saint Alban, according to the hagiographies of Saint Knud Rex.  

The main clue about Edmund's standing in the diocese of Odense is his placement before Oswald. The veneration of Oswald is, as mentioned, well attested in sources from the late eleventh century onwards, but no such evidence can be found for Edmund. In the breviary, his feast is celebrated with six lessons, making it a feast of medium importance, and in the 1497 edition the feast has been largely overshadowed by the feast of Saint Elizabeth (see this blogpost). That Edmund was placed between Thomas of Canterbury - whose cult spread quickly and whose fame rose to phenomenal heights, also in Denmark - and a saint whose relics were an important part of the local religious history of Odense, suggests that there also was a veneration of Edmund going back to the twelfth century, since this is the period in which his cult is most likely to heave undergone a new vogue in Denmark. No churches dedicated to Edmund are known from medieval Denmark, and I do not know of any relics of Edmund in the Odense diocese. The large trove of relics in Sanderum Church, for instance, which is situated close to Odense, does not include such relics (although some of the labels are illegible).  

The evidence of the litany is not extensive and must be treated with caution. The six-lesson office of Saint Edmund points in the same direction, however, namely that before the overhaul of the cathedral liturgy in the 1470s, the veneration of Edmund in Odense was more significant than other available evidence would suggest. It is perhaps time to envision an even greater impact on religious life in Odense from English ecclesiastics. 

Breviarium Othoniense 1482, f.91v

Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Roskilde

 

Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury, the archbishop who was murdered by a group of knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Following his canonization in 1173, his cult spread quickly along various networks, and became a well-known reference point in Latin Christendom. The cult reached Denmark at a relatively early point. It is not known exactly when - and when it comes to religious impulses, their arrivals can rarely be reduced to a single point in time anyway - but we should expect it to have taken place already in the 1170s. The reason for this early date is that a Canterbury collection of miracles associated with Thomas, mentions a few Danish cases, one of which being associated with the Danish crusade against the Wends that began around 1180.  

The popularity of Thomas in medieval Denmark remains a contentious issue. Only a few, scattered sources have survived, and there has not yet been a research project seeking to map out the development of the cult. Consequently, we do not know whether the cult remained stable in its popularity, or whether it shifted and waned, or whether there were significant local differences. 

From time to time, I have myself delved into the sources pertaining to the cult of Thomas of Canterbury in Denmark, and I am still thinking about what to make of my scattered findings. One thing that has become clear, however, is that in several parts of Denmark, the feast of Thomas was celebrated using the liturgy composed in, and disseminated from, Canterbury, namely the office known as Studens livor. This is an unsurprising discovery, because Canterbury Cathedral was very active in its promotion of the cult of Saint Thomas, and this liturgical office became the standard in many medieval church provinces. However, unsurprising is not the same as uninteresting. That the standard liturgical office was in use in Roskilde diocese - as demonstrated by the 1517 Breviarium Roschildense - suggests that there were contacts between Canterbury and Roskilde in the twelfth century, when the office was composed, and that these contacts left an imprint that lasted throughout the medieval period - largely thanks to the conservative nature of liturgical practice.    

In Breviarium Roschildense, the feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury begins with an antiphon, which is exactly how Studens livor usually begins. It is a summary of the story of Thomas, describing his martyrdom and its importance, serving - in effect - to inform new listeners about what they are about to hear in greater detail. Below the picture, you will find both a transcription of the Latin and a translation into English by Kay Brainerd Slocum, taken from her excellent monograph Liturgies in Honor of Thomas Becket, to date one of the best monographs on the cult of Saint Thomas.  

Breviarium Roschildense (1517), f.98v

Pastor cesus in gregis medio 
pacem emit cruoris precio. 
O letus dolor in tristi gaudio 
grex respirat pastore mortuo, 
plangens plaudit mater in filio, 
quia vincit victor sub gladio 


The shepherd, slain, in the midst of his flock, 
Purchases peace at the cost of blood; 
Joyous grief in sorrowful praise, 
The flock breathes, though its shepherd is dead; 
Lamenting, the mother rejoices in the son, 
Because he lives, as victor under the sword. 

Saint James the Elder and Saint Olaf - a brief comparison

 

Today, July 25, is the feast of Saint James the Elder, one of the most famous saints of Latin Christendom, and arguably the most famous saint of Spanish history. One of Christ's apostles, medieval legend placed his shrine in Compostela in Galicia, Northern Spain. At the beginning of the twelfth century, Compostela was the locus of one of the most intense bouts of mythopoiesis - myth-making - in the Middle Ages, where the clergy at Compostela created a legend that tied their place with biblical history, the legend of Charlemagne, and with the contemporary, twelfth-century world. This myth-making process created one of the three main pilgrim sites in the Latin Christian consciousness, with Rome and Jerusalem being the other two. Part of that process was the erection of the great Romanesque cathedral of Compostela, which is now largely supplanted by a later Gothic one, and the corpus of hagiographical material that is compiled in the Liber Sancti Jacobi (Book of Saint James), whose main textual witness is the twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus. Since James the Elder was known throughout Christendom due to his appearance in the Bible, and since his sanctity was accepted by all Christians, Compostela's claim to be the apostle's resting place resulted in durable myth that has continued to work its effect into our own times. Saint James, or Santiago, has become in effect a patron saint of Spain and of Spanish imperialism. The historical development of the cult is complex, but a very simplified summary of the evolution of Saint James' iconography can be found in this old blogpost. In short, however, we should note that Saint James goes from being an apostle, to a pilgrim, to a battle-helper. This is an evolution that demonstrates, in a typical fashion, the plasticity or malleability of saints.   

From a Norwegian perspective, there are notable similarities in how Saint James the Elder became a focal point of myth-making in Spain and how Saint Olaf became a focal point for a similar process in Norway. The myth-making centred on Saint Olaf gained momentum from the 1150s onwards, after the establishment of the Norwegian Church Province in 1152/53, where Trondheim - Saint Olaf's resting place - became the metropolitan see of a church organization that stretched from Oslo to Greenland. By the mid-twelfth-century, the sanctity of Olaf had become an accepted part of Scandinavian historical thought, and he was venerated throughout the Norse world, largely thanks to the Nordic diaspora whose members continued to tell stories about him. From the 1150s onwards, however, these stories became more fixed as they were committed to writing, and the clergy at Trondheim used the legend to anchor Norway and the Norwegian Church both locally within Norway, within a wider European context, and also within a universal history that reached back into biblical times. Saint Olaf became the patron saint of Norway, and his cult enjoyed a stable and widespread popularity well beyond the Reformation, and he remains an important point of reference in our own time. (He is even featured - although as a historical figure rather than as a saint - in the TV series Beforeigners.) Like Saint James, Olaf has also undergone an iconographic evolution, being presented as a warlord, a battle-helper, and as a Christian ideal king. Also like in the case of Saint James, while these representations accrued over time, they also co-existed and made for a very composite and complex image of the holy figure.  

The two saints were both important focal points in their respective geographies, although the similarities between the two cults are out of balance due to the much more widespread fame and status of Saint James the Elder and of Compostela as a holy site. Many of the mechanisms between the two cases of myth-making are similar, however, and it remains an academic fantasy of mine to have those two myth-making processes carefully compared through an international project. For the time being, however, I will have to be content with noting, as people have done before me, that these similarities exist, even though there are very few zones of contact between the two cults. While Saint James was venerated in Norway, there is little reason to think that Olaf was known in Spain, even though the twelfth-century miracle list, known as Miracula Olavi, claims that a Galician knight came to the shrine of Saint Olaf to be liberated from his chains.   

As far as I know, the Norwegian mythmakers drew inspiration from the general practices of Christian mythmaking, and not from one single cult in particular. It is unclear whether any of the clerics and monks involved in the Norwegian mythmaking drew on the corpus of legends connected to Saint James, but the gist of this corpus was indeed known in twelfth-century Norway. This knowledge is demonstrated by a detail from a reliquary in Hedalen stave church, which contains a relic of Saint Thomas of Canterbury (d.1170; can. 1173). One of the short sides of the reliquary contains two figures, namely Olaf and James the Elder, the former recognizable through his axe and crown, the latter recognizable through his pilgrim's garb. This depiction of James shows that the Compostela legend - which formulated him as a pilgrim - was known in Norway. 

The Hedalen reliquary 
Photo by Nina Aldin Thune; courtesy of Wikimedia

Detail from the Hedalen reliquary 
Photo by Trond Øigarden
From an exhibition at the Oslo University Library curated by José Maria Izquierdo, autumn 2021

Sources for a conference presentation (30.04.21)

 
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am giving two conference presentations this week. The first of these is tomorrow, where I will be speaking on the third and last day of the Becket conference, the belated 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Thomas of Canterbury in 1170 (as well as the 800th anniversary of the translation of his relics in 1220). 

In my presentation, I talk about the veneration of Saint Thomas in medieval Norway, as evidenced by materials for the liturgical office for his feast-day on December 29. While there are many interesting sources to the cult of Saint Thomas in medieval Norway, my focus is only on the materials from the feast-day office, and not about his translation feast or the materials for the mass. 

The presentation is pre-recorded, and to access it you need to register for the conference. If you have not done so, you might still find this blogpost useful, as the purpose of the post is to provide links to some of the sources that I have used in my research. 

AM 679 4to, f.10r

The first source is AM 679 4to, a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript which contains a version of the so-called Ordo Nidrosiense, i.e. a book containing the liturgical feasts celebrated in the Norwegian archiepiscopal province, which included Iceland, Greenland, Shetland, the Orkneys, the Faroes, the Hebrides and Man. This source is invaluable for understanding the yearly cycle of liturgical performance in the churches throughout the Norwegian archdiocese.

The second source is Breviarium Nidrosiense, a breviary containing the materials for the office for the feasts celebrated throughout the liturgical year in the Norwegian church province. The breviary was printed in Paris in 1519, commissioned by Archbishop Erik Valkendorf. The content was most likely drawn - at least in part - from a manuscript of the Ordo, or some similar manuscript used at Trondheim, the metropolitan see of Norway. This means that despite the use of new technology, the content was old and therefore a valuable source to liturgical observance in earlier centuries. 

A digitised edition of Breviarium Nidrosiense can be found on the website of the Norwegian National Library.

A searchable, transcribed edition of the content of the Breviarium can be found on the website Bokselskap. This version is edited by Ingrid Sperber, and it includes an introduction by Espen Karlsen and Sigurd Hardeide, and it is a phenomenally useful tool for any researcher or enthusiast. The edition was published by the National Library for the 500-year-anniversary of the printing of what are known as the first Norwegian (printed) books, and which was celebrated by a series of events throughout Norway in The Norwegian Year of the Book in 2019. 


The third source that I mention, although I do not engage with it, is Missale Nidrosiense, the sister-volume of the Breviarium containing the materials for the mass celebrations in the Norwegian archdiocese. 

A digitised edition can be found at the Norwegian National Library. 

And as with the Breviarium, the National Library has also published a transcribed edition made by Ingrid Sperber, including an introduction by Espen Karlsen and Sigurd Hardeide. And as with the edition of the Breviarium, this edition is an extremely helpful and valuable tool for anyone interested in the medieval liturgy of Norway.



These sources will be mentioned in the course of my talk, and in the event that my presentation, or just the reading of this blogpost, inspires you to explore these sources, here they are gathered on one single plate. Enjoy.

Two online conferences

 
This week, I am participating in two online conferences, where I will be presenting my research. Since these conferences are available for anyone who registers, and because these conferences have a great number of interesting speakers, I am including the links for the events here, and I hope that you will have the time and the interest to join. 




Thomas Becket - Life, death and legacy (28-30.04)

This conference is a belated commemoration of the 850-year-anniversary of the death of Thomas Becket, one of the most famous ecclesiastics of his time, and subsequently one of the most famous saints of Latin Christendom. I will be presenting on the liturgical veneration of Saint Thomas in the Norwegian archdiocese, and there are also a number of other interesting topics covering a wide geographical remit. The conference is organised by Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent.

The event can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thomas-becket-life-death-and-legacy-tickets-133210749939. 





Medievalisms on the Screen: The Representation of the Middle Ages in Audiovisual Media in the 21st Century (29.04-01.05)   

This conference brings together scholars of medievalism in order to explore the various ways that the medieval past is imagined, represented, used and abused in contemporary audiovisual media. As has become abundantly clear these past twenty years, the Middle Ages exert a tremendous influence on popular imagination, popular culture, politics and identity-formation. While the influence of the medieval past is not a new discovery, the recent developments in audiovisual culture has allowed that influence to become even stronger, and therefore in greater need of being understood. I will be presenting on how the historical encounter between Norse and indigenous American cultures has been utilised and developed in popular culture, and how this should be understood in light of contemporary politics. There is also a great array of other interesting topics, all immensely relevant to how we understand our current political and cultural climates.


The event can be found here: https://medievalstudies.ceu.edu/article/2021-03-24/medievalisms-screen-representation-middle-ages-audiovisual-media-21st-century 

Saint Thomas of Canterbury at Lund

Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury, better known as Thomas Becket, archbishop, who was killed at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, when a group of knights broke into the church. The murder must be understood against the six-year-long conflict between Thomas and King Henry II of England about the juridical borders and the power balance between church and king, which in turn was part of a power struggle that marked the political discourse of all of Latin Christendom at the time. When the English strand of this conflict culminated with the death of Thomas, he became a figurehead for the reformists of the church who championed the idea of the supremacy of the church not only in spiritual but also in worldly matters, and also the independence of the church from worldly government. Consequently, Pope Alexander III canonised Thomas in 1173, and his cult was disseminated widely throughout Latin Christendom. 

The cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury came to the Norse world very early, and while we do not know much about the concrete details of the dissemination, we know that there were several routes by which his cult could have travelled to each of the different Nordic countries, such as trade, diplomacy, ecclesiastical connections or monastic networks (in particular the Cistercians). Our earliest sources for Thomas' cult in Denmark can be seen in three stories recorded by William of Canterbury in a miracle collection, while printed breviaries from the Danish archbishopric of Lund can be seen to retain the liturgical repertoire that was imported into Denmark already in the latter quarter of the twelfth century.

While there are many things that deserve to be said about the cult of Thomas in the medieval Norse world, there are also many of those things that need to be more thoroughly researched and that are tied up with various works in progress. So for this blogpost - marking the 850th anniversary of his death and forming part of the hashtag Becket 2020 - I'll limit myself to commenting on a late source that perhaps points to a continuous, or at least long-lasting, popularity around the martyred archbishop in medieval Denmark.  

Breviarium Lundense (Kongelige Bibliotek København, R 665 8°), f.98v

The source in question is a detail I encountered in the breviary of Lund, which was printed in 1517 in Paris. By this time, Lund was part of the medieval kingdom of Denmark - it is now in Sweden - and had been its metropolitan see since 1104. Due to Archbishop Eskil's connection with the reformist movement and the Cistercian order, it is likely that Lund was one of the first religious centres in Denmark, even in the Norse world, that adopted the cult of Thomas of Canterbury. The liturgy used for the celebration of Thomas' feast-day was likely brought directly from Canterbury, and it was retained without any notable changes in the printed breviary from 1517, pointing to the durability and conservative nature of liturgical material.

Yet even though the liturgical content of the printed breviary can, in the case of Thomas of Canterbury, be traced back to the twelfth century, there is one aspect of the breviary that is distinctly contemporary with the book itself, namely the note scribbled along the top margin of the page seen in the picture above. The page, folio 98v, begins with the eighth lesson for the hour of Matins - the liturgical apex of the daily round of hours - in which Thomas' role as a good shepherd is highlighted. The good shepherd is one of the roles of Christ, and every clergyman serving as a shepherd is modelled on Christ in this aspect. When Thomas' role as a good sheperd is highlighted here, the author of the liturgical office - belived to be Benedict of Peterborough - strengthens the sainted archbishop's similarity with Christ, as Thomas not only was a martyr in imitation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but also was a shepherd in imitation of Christ as a protector. This lesson caught the attention of some canon or priest - perhaps the archbishop himself - in the early sixteenth century at Lund. And since the Reformation was brought to Denmark in 1536/37, the window for dating the writing of this note is pleasingly narrow. 

The content of the note itself I have not yet managed to decipher, despite some frustrating attempts. The handwriting is not from my period of expertise, and I will probably ultimately have to rely on colleagues for this part. Yet even so, until such time that this is solved, it does nonetheless show that Thomas retained relevance in medieval Denmark as late as the period 1517-36/37, and that his liturgical office continued to be performed and exert an influence on at least some of its listeners centuries after it first was introduced to Denmark.


For other blogposts touching on Thomas of Canterbury, see:


A comparison of the cults of Thomas and Edward the Confessor

The chant Thomas Gemma Cantuarie

A wall-painting in the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle, Milan

A liturgical commemoration from the Norwegian medieval liturgical ordo

A fifteenth-century wall-painting in Skive, Denmark

Some reflections on the iconography of Saint Thomas in late medieval Europe

The imperfectly remembered archbishop - three late-medieval images of Saint Thomas of Canterbury

Today, September 18, I virtually attended a workshop on hagiography, comprised of scholars working in the Nordic countries. It was a welcome opportunity to present research, which is something I have missed more than I thought I would in this year’s string of conference cancellation. My talk was focussing on the cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in medieval Denmark, a topic on which I have spent a lot of time this year, and which continues to fascinate me. As I was preparing for my talk, I was reminded of one quandary that has been in the background of much of my research on the cult of saints. When trying to chart the development of a particular saint’s cult, or the role of saints in a particular historical period, one important perennial question is this: How do we measure the popularity of a saint outside that saint’s cult centre? And more to the point, how do we measure that popularity when the saint in question is of very widespread fame?       

This matter is particularly pressing in the case of Thomas of Canterbury. Due to his role as a figurehead for the struggle of ecclesiastical power against royal power in the twelfth century, the cult of Thomas was disseminated throughout Latin Christendom very rapidly following his canonisation in 1173. Because of this widespread reception of his cult, the figure of Thomas is a ubiquitous feature in sources pertaining to the cult of saints in the later Middle Ages, and in particular liturgical books and legendaries. The papal request to include Thomas in liturgical calendars meant that Thomas can be encountered in probably every church province of the papal church. Similarly, because Thomas was one of few modern saints included in Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine in the 1260s, the martyred archbishop was included in practically every edition, translation and adaptation of this collection of saints’ lives, which was one of the most popular books produced in the medieval period. Consequently, Thomas of Canterbury appears in a wide range of sources from all over Latin Christendom from the late twelfth century onwards. Because of this wealth of cult material pertaining to Thomas of Canterbury, I find myself asking the question: To what extent do these numerous witnesses to his cult actually indicate popularity?          

To answer this question would require a scholarly article, perhaps even a monograph, but all I have at the present is this blogpost. I therefore wish to go into some of the ways in which we approach this question, and what follow-up questions that we need to posit in order to find at least a tentative conclusion.    

First of all, we need to ask whether the source in question contains a version of the legend of Thomas which follows the narrative of his vita. This is of course a question that can only be put if the source allows for a narrative, be it textual or pictorial. In the event that the source provides a narrative of sorts, we need to consider whether this source follows the narrative of the vita to a significant degree. If the answer is yes, we might tentatively interpret this as evidence of popularity.   

However, if the source only follows the narrative of the vita to a limited degree, or perhaps not at all, we have to go back to another set of questions. In this case, we need to consider whether the discrepancy in the narrative can be explained by a local tradition about Thomas. If so, we should probably interpret this as an expression of popularity. On the other hand, if the discrepancy stems from an imperfect attempt at recording a narrative that is not well known in and of itself, we should not interpret the inclusion and depiction of Thomas as anything but the sign of the universality of his cult, and not as a sign of popularity.    

In addition to the narrative of the vita, we also need to pose these questions when looking at the iconography of Thomas that appears in the source, and here I mean both textual and pictorial iconography. Do the images employ or point to a notable familiarity with the legend of Thomas and with his iconographic tradition as it was established in the twelfth century? Does the iconography differ? And if it differs, is this because the source in question follows a local tradition – which would suggest popularity – or does it differ due to a lack of familiarity with the established iconographic tradition? Moreover, if the divergence comes out of a lack of familiarity with established iconography, should we interpret this as a lack of popularity, as indifference, or even unpopularity?    

I do not have the answers to these questions myself – at least not yet. But as a kind of scholarly experiment, I want to point to three late-medieval images from different parts of Latin Christendom. All these images depict the martyred archbishop of Canterbury in different ways, and in ways that do not correspond very well to the iconographic tradition of the twelfth century onwards, as it was formulated in England and France. 

A very curial Thomas of Canterbury
Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.015v, missal, Bologna, late C14
(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr.)

 
The first image comes from a fourteenth-century missal, produced in Bologna and used at the papal court of Avignon, with the shelfmark Avignon – BM – ms. 0136. This book reportedly belonged to pope Urban V and his controversial successor antipope Clement VII, and it is a sumptuously illustrated manuscript. On folio 15v, we find the above initial in the introit of the mass for Thomas of Canterbury. Thomas himself is depicted as what we might presume to be a typical senior churchman of the times, holding the palm to signify his martyrdom. This image is very different from the earlier depictions of the archbishop with which I am familiar. The difference lies in the static nature of the image. In older illuminations, we usually see Thomas being martyred, usually with an indication of how the archbishop received the wound in the head. In the Bologna missal, however, we see a typical martyr-archbishop, a stock figure ready to be inserted whenever the need arose. Should we interpret this as a sign of papal veneration of Thomas of Canterbury? Or should we see this as a sign that in this missal, Thomas was just one in the crowd of universal saints and of no particular importance? Or should we perhaps see this in another way? Perhaps as a way to present this famous archbishop as a contemporary bishop, which would signify a departure from iconographic tradition for the purpose of exploiting his symbolism? It is impossible to say for certain, of course, but we see a clear departure from the iconographic tradition as it had been formulated in the past two centuries.

Thomas of Canterbury out in the open
Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.311r

The second image comes from Germany. This is a woodcut from the incunable Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, printed by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck. The image in question comes from the 1493 edition, here seen in the book with the shelfmark Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15. Das Leuend der Hÿlghen was one of several German collection of saints’ lives that were based on Legenda Aurea, but which also added a number of local and regional saints, and which were adaptations rather than translations in the strictest sense. In this image, we can clearly note a connection to the established iconographic tradition: The protagonist is an archbishop, and his killer has raised his sword in a movement that foreshadows the imminent blow to the head. That the archbishop has his back to the murderer is in keeping with the established tradition, but this would also have been the case if Thomas had faced the murderer, since this was also a version which came into place already in the late twelfth century.          

However, there are two other features in this image which suggest that this depiction is not in keeping with the established tradition. First of all, the archbishop is being led away by a soldier. In the traditional narrative, as depicted in all the early vitae and almost all older representations of the scene, the knights do not lead away the archbishop, but murder him on the spot. What appears to be an arrest of Thomas in the woodcut is, therefore, a feature that is not based on the original narrative. Moreover, the scene of the martyrdom is clearly out in the open, as seen by the winding road in the background. This, too, is a deviation from the narrative of the vitae, since the martyrdom expressly took place inside the cathedral of Canterbury, which added to the transgressive nature of the crime. Here, too, it is difficult to assess how to interpret these deviations, but it does beg the question whether the Lübeck printers had any particular interest in the famous archbishop.

Wall-painting from Skive Church, Northern Jutland, c.1500

The final image is also one of German production, although it is situated in Northern Jutland in Denmark. This is a detail from the wall-paintings of the Church of Our Lady in the town of Skive, and it is one of several saint figures that decorate the vaults of the church interior. The church itself was built around 1200, but the wall-paintings are from around 1500, and they are believed to have been produced by a workshop of German painters. The iconographic programme of the church shows a selection of the most common and famous universal saints in the liturgical calendar, with a few Nordic saints included as well. In other words, the frescoes seem to be a standard selection of the saints deemed most powerful and meritorious among those in vogue at the time. This is in and of itself an indication that the selection should not be interpreted as a sign of the personal devotion of the donors of these wall-paintings.      

This suspicion seems strengthened, perhaps even confirmed, when we turn to the depiction of Thomas of Canterbury. The image clearly depicts him as an archbishop, and the text-scroll above his head states that he is indeed the martyr of Canterbury. However, the sword protruding from his chest is not in keeping with the traditional narrative of his death. The sword is pierced through his breast from the front and out the back, whereas the established tradition clearly states that Thomas received his wound in the head. There exist other images that also present Thomas as dying from being pierced rather than being cut, but these are later and do in their own way deviate from established tradition. In light of how the image differs from the tradition, and in light of the general context of the pictorial programme, it feels relatively safe to say that this depiction of Thomas of Canterbury does not suggest a particular popularity, but rather a more general fame, a fame shared with a plethora of other saints also depicted in the church.


These thoughts are some tentative ideas about how to interpret images that do not conform with iconographical tradition. But to be more certain of these interpretations, I would have to delve deeper into the issue, and one day I hope I get the chance and the time to do just that.

Grains of sand - or, the disproportionate amount of time it takes to answer a simple question

It is a familiar problem: You want to make a minor statement in an article, and you know that you have fairly good reasons to make this statement, and you also know that whether or not that statement can be verified is of very little significance to the overall point of the text you are writing. You could leave it at that. You could present the statement as a skein in a greater tapestry and leave it for some future reader to be sufficiently plagued by doubts that they will undertake that deep dive into the source material that you are trying to avoid. You could do that - but there is this nagging doubt in the back of your head, the dissatisfaction of leaving a loose end, the discomfort of knowing that you are presenting something that isn't as thoroughly checked as it could be.

I have experienced this mental trajectory on numerous occasions. It happened particularly often when I was writing my MA dissertation, and then it owed a lot to my general lack of experience as a researcher - I had not learned to leave some questions aside, I had not quite learned to prioritise, to resist the temptation of something that my inexperience and romanticism believed might open up an important point that could transmute my work into something great and memorable. Experience has taught me to deal with these temptations in a better way, and I have learned to identify more quickly which questions will not be worth the trouble. Yet even so, sometimes I am unable to resist.

The most recent example happened last night. For the past few days I have been preparing a presentation I will give at a forum for medievalists at Linnaeus University, where I work. This is an opportunity for me to test a new research topic and to get feedback on something I hope to publish in one form or another. And it is precisely because I am in this early stage of my research that it has been so very difficult to avoid falling down the sundry rabbit holes along the way. 

The topic in question is the cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury - or Thomas Becket if you prefer - in medieval Denmark. This is a topic that has received some attention by previous researchers, but usually in a peripheral way. In order to gather as much material as possible, I have been researching the liturgy of Saint Thomas as it survives in a handful of printed Danish breviaries, and this material has proved immensely fruitful.

I will not go into details about my findings on this topic here, mostly because my thoughts are still a bit too scattered and my ideas are still too poorly formulated. Suffice it to say that it made sense to compare the liturgy of Saint Thomas with that of Saint Alban, the protomartyr of England. They are both English saints, and they both appear to have had a significant cult in the bishopric of Odense, where one of the breviaries was printed. Unfortunately, the liturgy of Saint Alban has not yet been edited, at least to my knowledge, at the only way for me to properly compare the two saints was to jump straight into the rabbit hole, i.e. to transcribe the office of Saint Alban as it is transmitted in the first printed version of Breviarium Othoniense, the Odense breviary, from c.1482.

First nocturne of the office for Saint Alban

Breviarium Othoniense 1482, f.369f 

(København, Kongelige Bibliotek LN 29)

It began very tentatively: A quick look at the opening of the office to scan for similarities or any noteworthy details that might save me the trouble of transcribing all of the office, but this approach ended up drawing me in all the more strongly. Because there was, in the first column, some details that strengthened and partly confirmed my suspicions, and I decided to see where this would lead me. I gave in and started transcribing. Initially, I thought that I could just do a little bit before bedtime, go to sleep, and then dabble with the transcription on and off throughout the workday. But once you have embarked on a trail like this one, it is very difficult to get out of it, and you end up sifting grains of sand to find that one grain of information that you can actually make use of. And so it continues, for a long, long time.

In the end, I kept transcribing for several hours until I finally managed to get some sleep, and I continued once I had woken up. The main result is that I now have a rough transcription of the liturgy for the feast of Saint Alban, and this is in and of itself a very useful outcome, as a transcription will make it possible for me to search the text and easily compare with other materials. As for the question that had lured me into this task, a question that was of such a kind that it could only engender new questions rather than any firm answers, I managed to find enough to justify the endeavour, but only because my suspicion was shown to have been reasonable.

It remains to be seen what I can do with the information I have gathered through the transcription of Saint Alban's office, beyond the vague confirmation that I was right to be doubtful. Perhaps I will not find much use for this information in the end. Or perhaps the only significant outcome will be that by going down that rabbit hole I have rid myself of the nagging sensation that I ought to pursue this query. In academic terms, this is not little.

Martyrdom of Saint Alban

BL MS Royal 2 B VI, f. 10v, St Alban's Psalter, 1240-60

Courtesy of British Library

Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Skive Church

Today is the feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, more commonly known as Thomas Becket, who was killed in Canterbury Cathedral on this day in 1170. The murder of the archbishop at the hand of knights in King Henry II's retinue was a scandal in its time, and even though the English king had not himself ordered the death of Thomas, he was widely blamed for the deed, especially in ecclesiastical circles.

The cult of Thomas spread quickly throughout Latin Christendom. This was in large part due to the network of ecclesiastical figures to which Thomas had belonged, and that shared his reformist views on the relationship between royal and ecclesiastical power that marked the political map of the twelfth century. The key figure in this network was Pope Alexander III (r.1159-81) who had supported Thomas' cause during the archbishop's exile in France from 1164 to 1170. It was Alexander who canonised Thomas in 1173.

Other important reformist figures were the Norwegian archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (r.1157-88) who is largely credited with bringing the cult of Thomas to Norway (see this blogpost), and the Danish archbishop Eskil Christiernson, or Eskil of Lund, who is considered to be responsible for bringing the cult of Thomas to Denmark, in no small part through the Cistercian order to whom both Eskil and Thomas were close. 

The cult of Thomas in medieval Denmark is still a subject that requires more work, and I hope to be able to contribute to this scholarly lacuna in the coming year. As a way to remind myself of the work to be done, I'm sharing with you one late medieval example of the veneration of Thomas in Denmark, namely a wall-painting from Skive Church in Northern Jutland.

Tomae de Cantuarienus [sic]

Wall-painting from Skive Church, Northern Jutland, c.1500

The example in question comes from the Church of Our Lady in the town of Skive in Northern Jutland. The church was built around 1200, and it is commonly known as Skive Old Church to distinguish it from the eighteenth-century church situated nearby, and which appears to be the hub of today's religious life in Skive.

The early history of Skive is uncertain, and the current scholarly consensus is that the town was most likely established around 1100. Its status as a market town - i.e. a town with particular mercantile privileges - was confirmed in a letter from 1326 (see this website), but the status might have been achieved earlier. Judging from the Church of Our Lady, Skive appears to have been an important town by the turn of the twelfth century, and its importance can be explained or measured by three main factors. First of all, Skive lies very close to Viborg, the episcopal see of Central Jutland which was established c.1060 and thus one of the main power centres in the area. Secondly, a royal manor, Skivegård, is mentioned in the survey of King Valdemar II (r.1201-41), the so-called Liber Census Daniae (see here), and points to the town's vicinity to royal power in addition to the episcopal power at Viborg. The third factor is the fish trade which is likely to have brought a lot of money to the town's wealthier inhabitants. These three factors must all be taken into account as possible explanations for the erection of the Church of Our Lady around 1200.

Vor Frue Kirke, Skive

Vor Frue Kirke, Skive, interior, towards the main altar

In the nineteenth century, the Church of Our Lady was about to be demolished, which was the fate of several redundant churches in Denmark at the time. Fortunately, an impressive programme of late medieval wall paintings was discovered in time, and the church was preserved. It is in this programme that we find the aforementioned late medieval depiction of Thomas of Canterbury. 

The interior of Skive Church is filled with a vast array of saints. These saints were painted c.1500, and it is thought that the workshop that executed these paintings was the same, or was at least connected to, the workshop that decorated Roskilde Cathedral (see here, and here). Among these many saints we find Thomas of Canterbury, situated in the vaulted roof between Peter Martyr of Verona (d.1252) and Sebastian. The question then is how we are to understand this as an expression of veneration of Thomas.

The painting of Thomas of Canterbury in Skive is interesting, both because it is one of very few known medieval Danish depictions of him, and also because of its wider pictorial context. Thomas is here one of many saints. On the one hand, these wall-paintings were commissioned by local donors who might have given very specific instructions about which saints to include. It is therefore tempting to see the inclusion of Thomas in light of the wider history of his cult in medieval Denmark. 

On the other hand, we might understand this as just an expression of his general popularity in Latin Christendom at the time. The saints of Skive Church are for the most part universally venerated in the Latin Church and by the time of the programme's execution these universal saints had been venerated for a very long time. Even the youngest of the saints included, Peter Martyr and Roch (whose traditional, but not uncontested, year of death is 1327), became widely celebrated within a relatively short timespan and are therefore unsurprising to see among more veteran saints. Even those saints that are not universally venerated outside the Nordic countries are nonetheless of regional importance, such as Knud Rex (d.1086) and Knud Dux (d.1131) whose cults were established throughout all of Denmark, and Saint Olaf of Norway (d.1030) whose cult was immensely popular throughout the Nordic world. The inclusion of Thomas in this saintly collegium is, therefore, a testament to the contemporary trends within the cult of saints, rather than a stage in a continuum in the veneration of Saint Thomas in medieval Denmark.

Even so, while the depiction of Thomas in Skive Church might not yield much information about his Danish cult, it nonetheless provides evidence of the endurance of his cult in Latin Christendom, and we see both that he was one of the trendy saints even in Northern Europe around 1500, and that he was one of the many ways in which the donors of Skive's wall-paintings sought to express their participation in the religious trends of Latin Christendom.

Similar blogposts

Saint Olaf in medieval Denmark

Thomas of Canterbury in medieval Norway

On the early cult of Thomas of Canterbury

A song for Thomas of Canterbury

Martin of Tours in Skive Church

A commemoration of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in the Nidaros liturgy

Today, December 31, is the feast of Pope Silvester I, famous for converting Constantine the Great to Christianity and for defeating a pestiferous dragon hiding in the caverns beneath Rome. However, this blogpost is not about the sainted pope, but about the sainted archbishop Thomas of Canterbury, popularly known as Thomas Becket, who was appointed by King Henry II to the see of Canterbury, was sent into exile in 1164, and was murdered by knights at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 within a year of having returned to England and been reconciled with the king. Thomas was canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1173, lives and liturgical offices were soon written in his honour, and his cult spread to the various corners of the Latin West.

Thomas of Canterbury going into exile
BL MS Royal 2 B VII, psalter, between 1310 and 1320

One of the corners in which the cult of Thomas of Canterbury achieved great popularity was the Norwegian metropolitan see of Trondheim, the centre of the Nidaros Archbishopric which - by the turn of the twelfth century - covered mainland Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Orkney, Shetland, and the South Islands (Hebrides and Man). The popularity of Thomas in Norway was owed in large part to the circle around Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (r.1161-88) and his successors, who belonged to the same school of ecclesiastical thought as did Thomas of Canterbury, and also Pope Alexander III. These high-ranking ecclesiastics all embraced the reformist ideals that had been formulated in the course of the Gregorian Reform Movement in the eleventh century also throughout the twelfth century.

We do not know exactly how and when  the liturgical celebration of Thomas of Canterbury arrived in Norway, or who brought the liturgical texts that were used, but there were many points of contact between the Norwegian and the English churches in the twelfth century. Moreover, the metropolitan see in Trondheim were probably eager recipients of the cult of Thomas as this gave them another saintly patron in their efforts to establish a Gregorian ideal kingdom in which the king was subject to the church and not the other way around. These efforts were cut short, however, when the pretender Sverre made claims to the throne and emerged victorious in the civil war that raged from 1177 to 1184. Despite this victory, King Sverre and the Norwegian clergy continued to quarrel about the relationship between king and church, and this conflict is likely to have strengthened the importance of Thomas of Canterbury in the Norwegian church province.

There is much to be said about the liturgical celebration of Thomas of Canterbury in Norway, but for the time being I will restrict myself to one single commemoration to exemplify his importance. The commemoration in question is found in the Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae, a collation of manuscripts from the Nidaros province in which there are found rubrics and notes regarding the details of the liturgical celebrations of the Nidaros churches. It was edited in 1968 by the Norwegian medievalist Lilli Gjerløw.

In the details for the feast of Saint Silvester on December 31, under the heading of the office of Lauds (around daybreak), a number of antiphons are listed that are to be performed in commemoration of important saints of the Christmas season. Among these were Stephen Protomartyr whose feast was on the 26th of December, the child martyrs of Bethlehem whose feast was on the 28th of December, and Thomas of Canterbury whose feast was on the 29th of December.

While the liturgical office, typically attributed to Benedict of Peterborough, was used for the celebration of Thomas' feast in Nidaros, the antiphon used for his commemoration is not from this repertoire but instead from the common of one martyr. These texts from the common of a type of saints comprised a shared repertoire of liturgical chants that were accessible to all of Latin Christendom. When a chant from this common material was used in the celebration of a specific saint, and especially a saint who had been added to the liturgical calendar in recent times, the individual saint's place among his saintly colleagues was emphasised. In the case of Thomas of Canterbury in Nidaros, the chant from the common of martyrs emphasised that he belonged in the collegium of martyrs who had been martyred alone - as opposed to the martyrs who had died as a group (although links between various types could be established through chant as well).

The antiphon by which Thomas of Canterbury was commemorated, was Nisi granum frumentum (CID 003883). The text of this chant is as follows:

Nisi granum frumenti cadens
in terra mortuum fuerit ipsum solum manet

The antiphon applies the imagery of the grain that is being threshed and in that process is being refined. In the liturgy of martyrs, as well as other saints, it was very common to apply imagery that invoked various labours of refinement. This is also seen in the office composed specifically for Thomas of Canterbury, where one responsory describes the exile of Thomas as a gem that is being hammered for six years, meaning that this hardship was part of what proved Thomas' sanctity.


That the antiphon Nisi granum was used in the Nidaros Archdiocese to commemorate Thomas of Canterbury on Saint Silvester's day, is just one of the many examples of Thomas' importance to the Norwegian clergy. It is as yet unclear whether such a commemoration, and this antiphon in particular, was established in the Norwegian liturgy by the metropolitan clergy, or whether it was a practice that was brought from overseas. The latter is more likely, because in the context of the reform movement the clerics sought unity and adaptation of existing practices, not originality or uniqueness. Together with other commemorations throughout the Christmas season in the Nidaros liturgy, the antiphon Nisi granum demonstrates that the cult of Thomas of Canterbury was of great importance in the Norwegian church province.  
 

Sancity in Milan, part 3 - Thomas Becket in Chiaravalle

A few weeks ago I started a series of blogposts concentrating on the cult of saints in, about and from Milan (the two previous posts can be found here and here). The occasion for this was a long weekend work trip arranged by the Centre for Medieval Literature where I work, and in future blogposts I will talk more about my experiences in Milan and related topics.

In this blogpost, however, I will present a maybe somewhat unexpected example of Milanese veneration of saints, namely a depiction of the death of Thomas Becket, found in a seventeenth-century fresco in a Cistercian monastery.

The martyrdom of Thomas Becket

The day after our arrival, on the suggestion of a friend and colleague who went with us, I and a few others took a little excursion to the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle, situated a few kilometers outside Milan. The monastery was founded in the twelfth century by Bernard of Clairvaux after he had been sent to Milan on a diplomatic mission. Disgusted with the pomp and riches of the Milanese clergy, Bernard founded the Chiaravalle monastery whose name is an Italian rendition of Clairvaux.

Chirarvalle is situated in a beautiful meadowland outside the city, and true to the Cistercian tradition it was placed in what was then wilderness. When the grounds were being prepared and the first livestock was introduced, the Cistercians were plagued by mosquitoes from the nearby marshlands as they carried disease with them. Eventually, however, they managed to get rid of the insects by draining the marshes and the land could be properly cultivated. A legend arose that Bernard had excommunicated the mosquitoes, which ensured that they stayed away from the monastery. In recent years, however, the ban must have been lifted or simply ignored, because I was bitten by several mosquitoes during our visit.

The interior of the abbey church is beautifully decorated with sumptuous frescoes, quite unlike what you usually expect in a Cistercian house, known as they are for the lack of ornament. The frescoes, however, are from the Early Modern Period and display the sentiments of the Counter Reformation rather than Bernard of Clairvaux's rather Spartan approach to art. This is not to say that Chiaravalle was only decorated after the Counter Reformation. In the fourteenth century an artist known to us as"Il Primo Maestro di Chiaravalle", and who was inspired by Giotto, decorated the interior of the dome with a series of saints. These were, however, not easily visible to the ministrant monks down below and although impressive they might perhaps be seen more as art addressing the saints than the monks. These frescoes were supplemented by other works placed lower down, attributed to "Il Secondo Maestro di Chiaravalle".

The first cycle of frescoes on the ground level, however, were painted by Bartolomeo Roverio, also known as "Il Genovesino" and two brothers called "Fiammenghini", the Flemings, because their father was from Antwerp. Their names were Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere. These frescoes portray the history of the Cistercian order with important martyrdoms displayed in the left transept, which is where we find the rendition of Thomas Becket's martyrdom.

The martyrdom of Thomas Becket (dressed in Cistercian clothing and given a blonde beard)
Painted by the Rovere brothers, I Fiammenghini, in 1615

The story of Thomas Becket should be well-known to most of my readers, and additional information can be found in blogposts here and here. Becket is an interesting figure and a saint with a very wide dissemination in the European cult of saints. What is most curious here, however, is that he is included in a cycle of Cistercian saints, for Becket himself was archbishop of Canterbury, a Benedictine house. Nonetheless, it is small wonder that he has been appropriated by the Cistercians in this way, because during his exile in France Becket resided with Cistercian communities and partook in their life and rituals which was very much at odds with the expected lifestyle of an archbishop. One of the most famous features in the claim for Thomas Becket's sanctity was that he had been found wearing a hairshirt under his archiepiscopal paraments, a sign of his austere secret lifestyle which was very much in tune with the form of self-mortification espoused by the Cistercians. Consequently, we find Becket here in Chiaravalle, depicted in a Cistercian-white garment and equipped with blonde beard perhaps to signify that he comes from the North.

For similar blogposts, see these.

A brief introduction to the cult of Thomas Becket

A song for Thomas Becket

Saint Louis IX rendered in the Mannerist style

Saint Edmund of East Anglia in Legenda Aurea

Two frescoes of Saint Sebastian

A fresco of Edward the Confessor

Gerald of Wales and the Irish saints

 This seems to me a thing to be noticed that just as the men of this country are during this mortal life more prone to anger and revenge than any other race, so in eternal death the saints of this land that have been elevated by their merits are more vindictive than the saints of any other region.

- Gerald of Wales, The Topography of Ireland (transl. by John O'Meara)

A priest accosted by a werewolf

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

In this blogpost I'm looking at Gerald of Wales' presentation of some Irish saints in his famous work Topographica Hiberniae which was composed in the latter half of the 1180s. The book is in part a recollection of things Gerald heard or witnessed during his trips to Ireland in the period 1183-85. On his second visit he was a part of King Henry II's retinue and was the tutor of his son John. When Gerald returned to Ireland in 1185, he was part of John's retinue. Gerald was also related to members of the Anglo-Norman invasion force, and was therefore doubly invested in the Anglo-Norman campaign to subdue Ireland.

It is in this context Gerald's comments on Ireland and its people must be understood, and in this blogpost I wish to see how Gerald's treatment of Ireland's saints can be explained by context of invasion and subjugation (I hesitate to use the term "colonial context").

The fish with three gold teeth

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

Gerald's views on the Irish saints as expressed in the epigraph are found as the last chapter of part two of his Topographia hiberniae. In this chapter, Gerald records the wonders, the miracles and the holy men and women of Ireland. The chapter begins with natural wonders, such as a fish with three gold teeth, or the wonderful well of Munster whose water turned things put into it grey. After these natural wonders, Gerald moves on to wonders pertaining to men and beasts, and he records a boy of Wicklow who was a man in most physiognomical respects, but whose nose, eyes, hands and feet resembled those of an ox. This deformed boy was regularly given food at the court of Maurice fitzGerald, one of Gerald's relatives and one of the leaders of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.

The werewolves of St Natalis

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

Saint Natalis and the Werewolves

As for the Irish saints, their vindictive nature becomes apparent already in the first story in Gerald's catalogue of animal wonders. The story tells of a priest who was travelling through a wood together with a young boy, and after they had lit up a fire for the night a wolf came up to them and started speaking. In order to calm them down, the wolf spoke about God - and said reasonable and Catholic things, Gerald notes - and then he explained what he wanted:

We are natives of Ossory. From there every seven years, because of the imprecation of a certain saint, namely the abbot Natalis, two persons, a man and a woman, are compelled to go into exile not only from their territory but also from their bodily shape. They put off the form of man compltely and put on the form of wolf. When the seven years are up, and if they have survived, two others take their place in the same way, and the first pair return to their former country and nature.

- Topography of Ireland, chapter 52 (translated by John O'Meara)

The wolf then goes on to explain that his "companion in this pilgrimage" is close to death, and he asks the priest to give her the solace of divine mercy at her life's end. The priest agrees and after some exhortation also gives the dying woman the last rites, including the communion. This story bears some echoes of an old Celtic tale where two brothers are punished by being sent into the woods as a he-wolf and a she-wolf. They later return in their human shape and with the children they have incestuously reared while bearing the shape of wolf. This is not to say that Gerald knew this story, or that it had any impact on the anecdote related above, but it suggests a deep-rooted belief in lycanthropy in Irish folklore. More interesting for my purpose here, is the detail that the fate of these wolves was ordained by St Natalis as a punishment, perhaps a particularly Irish punishment at that, which presents us right away with the vindictive nature of the Irish saints.

St Kevin and the blackbird

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

The Curse of Saint Kevin

Another example of this vindictiveness is related in chapter 61, which tells about St Kevin, "a great confessor of the faith". Kevin is perhaps most famous for his patience exhibited when, during the saint's prayer, a blackbird started building a nest in his outstretched hand, which was the subject of a poem by Seamus Heaney. In kindness to the bird, Kevin did not move until the birds were hatched, and Gerald notes that because of this, the blackbird features in the iconographical representations of the saint. However, Gerald also tells us about Kevin's vengefulness to birds. We are told that on his feast days, the ravens of Glendalough are "prevented by a curse of Saint Kevin" from being on the ground and from eating, so the birds fly about the village and make "a great noise". The reason for this curse, Gerald speculates, might be that the ravens had caused one of Kevin's students to spill some milk.  

The teal of St Colman

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

The Teal of Saint Colman

The next chapter records a story in which saintly vindictiveness is protecting rather than harming birds. Here Gerald tells of some teal inhabiting a lake in Leinster, who have resided there since the time of St Colman (it is not specified when that time was). These birds are tame enough to take food from people's hands, but

[w]henever any injury or molestation happens to the church, the clergy, or themselves, they go off to a lake at some distance, and do not return to their former abode until due satisfaction has been made. In the meantime during their absence the waters of the lake, which before were limpid and clear, become brackish and dirty, and cannot be use either for man or beast.

- Topography of Ireland, chapter 62 (translated by John O'Meara)

Gerald further records that once a teal was accidentally brought back from the lake with some cooking water, but although the water was cooking for a long time, the bird - thanks, no doubt, to the miraculous protection of St Colman - remained unhurt. Similarly, Gerald tells of a story happening "in our own times" when the Anglo-Norman invader Robert fitzStephen travelled through the area in the company of King Dermot of Leinster. An archer, ostensibly belonging to the retinue of King Dermot, shot one of the teal and tried to cook it for his king. When he showed King Dermot the miserable result of hours and hours of cooking, the king understood that this was a bird protected by Colman, and exclaimed "Alas form me! That this misfortune should ever have happened in my house". The archer perished miserably a short while after.

The anecdote is relatively sparing in contextual detail, but it is tempting to see King Dermot's fear of St Colman's vengeance in the light of his apparent alliance with the Anglo-Normans, dreading perhaps that his seemingly secure standing would change in the vicissitudes of occupation. Or perhaps this anecdote can be seen as Gerald's warning to the Anglo-Norman barons and their soldiers, that although the subjugation of Ireland is right - since they presented as a nation of bestial and uncivilised men - they should not suffer needless injuries, and nor should their churches be plundered. This should be seen in light of part three of the book, where Gerald gives praise to the Irish clergy, both monks and priests, although he reproves them for lack of discipline.

Minor incidents and lack of vermin

After the anecdote about the teal of St Colman, Gerald soon comes to some minor examples of the powers of Irish sanctity. The first of these is treated in chapter 64, where we are told of a village in Connacht which was "celebrated for a church of Saint Nannan". Once this village was badly infested with fleas, but St Nannan had them miraculously brought to a meadow close by, where the fleas were confined and made it inaccessible to men and beasts alike.

A similar story follows in chapter 65, where we learn of the district of Ferneginan. Here lived Bishop Yvor, who was so plagued by rats eating his books that he cursed them, and the result was that they all were expelled from Ferneginan, and from that day on, it was impossible for rats to live in that district. If rats were to be brought in, they would die. This particular anecdote becomes even more interesting because of its similarities to the supposition noted by Gerald in chapters 21 and 22 that poisonous reptiles are not found in Ireland. This is an old story, and the legend states that it was St Patrick who drove the snakes and other reptiles from the island. Gerald records this belief as a "pleasant conjecture that Saint Patrick and other saints of the land purged the island of all harmful animals", but goes on to suggest that Ireland must have been without these creatures from the beginning of the island's existence.

 

However, this does not explain why reptiles brought into the island perish upon entering the the land, and in chapter 23 Gerald suggests that this has to do with qualities in the Irish soil rather than saintly protection. What is significant about this, is that in chapter 48 Gerald tells how the jurisdiction of the island of Man was granted to Britain rather than Ireland, because poisonous reptiles could live there. And already in chapter 25 Gerald has recorded the discovery of a live frog near Waterford - significantly where the Anglo-Norman invaders entered Ireland in 1174 - which was taken as a sign by King Duvendalus "of the coming of the English, and the imminent conquest and defeat of his people". Ireland allows for heretofore alien reptiles and prepares itself to allow the Anglo-Norman conquest. But the saints are not in the picture, they are not relinquishing patronage nor endorsing the invaders, it is the soil itself that changes - although presumably through divine machinations. Gerald does not pit Irish saints against English saints, but relies instead on what we might call scientific rumination to explain the relationship of reptiles to Ireland.  

The book-eating rats of Ferneginan

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

Miracles of St Brigid

The next saint to be treated in Gerald's catalogue of wonders is "the glorious Brigid". Some miracles pertaining to St Brigid's fire are mentioned, and a longer account is given of a falcon in Kildare who was believed to have lived there since the time of Brigid (i.e. several generations). This bird is used by Gerald as an example "of honour to churchmen", because during its mating season it flew away from the hallowed precincts of the church where it resided and fornicated elsewhere. The bird "was killed by a rustic" at the time when John, son of King Henry, departed from Ireland the first time.

For my purpose here, however, the significant aspect of St Brigid's powers is her protection of a hedge which surrounds the perpetual fire which is kept burning by her devotees. Since only women are allowed to perform the office as fire-keepers, a man who crosses the hedge "does not escape the divine vengeance". The curse of St Brigid also prevents goats to "have young here".

St Brigid's hedge is described in chapter 69, and Gerald returns to it in chapter 77 where we learn of an archer belonging to the retinue of the Anglo-Norman earl Richard. The archer crossed the hedge and blew upon the saint's fire and immediately went mad. The chapter concludes with an anecdote about a man who had only gotten his shin across the hedge before he was pulled back, and consequently lost his leg. This kind of violent territorial protection is not a feature unique to the Irish saints. Several instances are found in hagiographical texts from all over the Latin West, perhaps most famously St Edmund's killing of Sweyn Forkbeard at Bury St Edmunds. However, when seen in the context of Anglo-Norman invasion and settlement, this anecdote seems to reinforce Gerald's preoccupation with the importance of respecting the Irish places of religion. It seems as if common decency can't prevent the invaders from violating the churches, perhaps a fear of the vengeance of saints might be of help.

Protection of the Land

Keeping in this vein, in the following chapters we find several anecdotes rehearsing the dangers of encroaching upon land belonging to the Irish saints. Chapter 78 contains an anecdote about a soldier who had unlawfully expropriated land belonging to St Finbar in Cork. The bishop of the place, in sadness and anger, asked God (rather Finbar himself) not to allow this land to bear fruit. God listened to the bishop and performed the requested miracle "through the merits of the holy man" (although we are left uncertain as to whether this is Finbar the saint or the bishop of Cork).

The next chapter records how two Anglo-Normans were punished for their lack of piety. The first was Philip of Worcester who forced tribute from the clergy of Armagh, the seat of St Patrick, during Lent. On his departure from Armagh, Philip "was stricken with an illness and scarcely survived". Then we are told of Hugh Tyrrell who stole a cooking-pot from the clergy of Armagh, and the night after he had returned to his lodgings in Louth a fire broke out that burned down a great part of the settlement, killing two horses that had carried the pot away from Armagh. Tyrrell himself was later cast into a civil strife between Anglo-Norman factions. Although it is not elaborated upon, the two aforementioned anecdotes are related to injuries committed against the clergy of Armagh, i.e. under the protection of Patrick, patron of Ireland.

After these vengeful miracles of St Patrick, we are presented with two revenges performed by St Fechin, who was very protective of a mill in Meath, which he had himself cut "out of the side of a rock". When a archer in the army of Hugh de Lacy raped a girl there, he "was stricked in his member with hell-fire in sudden vengeance and immediately began to burn throughout his whole body. He died the same night". Fechin's protection of his mill was not only concerned with violent injuries, but also with minor occurrances. In chapter 82, Gerald tells that two horses who had eaten stolen corn from the mill died afterwards.  

Bernard and the horn of St Brendan

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library

Confessors, not martyrs

Gerald's Topographia hiberniae is to a great degree a document intended to justify the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland, yet as we have seen it is apparent that Gerald is concerned with the proper conduct of the conquerors. Ireland is lawfully occupied by the Anglo-Normans because, as is suggested in part three, the Irish are uncivilised and maintain evil customs (ch. 100), not all of them have been baptised (ch. 103) and their kingship ritual contains element of bestiality (ch. 102). However, Ireland and its places are not completely up for grabs, for the Irish saints are protecting their clergy, their pastures and their holy places with a fearful vengeance and they must therefore be respected. Furthermore, despite some shortcomings in discipline and religious practice, the Irish clergy has many good qualities, and its people has a proper respect for saints and their relics. As an example of this, Gerald includes in chapter 108 an anecdote that happened in Wales, where an Irishman carried a horn which was a relic of St Brendan. The horn was held in such great reverence that nobody dared to blow it, and when a Welsh priest did this, he turned mad and had to learn the psalter from the start.

However, despite the vindictiveness "in which the saints of this country seem to be very interested", the saints of Ireland appear to have accepted the coming of the Anglo-Normans. An explanation for this is offered by Gerald in chapter 105, in which he provides further comments on the nature of the Irish saints. For he states that

all the saints of this country are confessors, and there is no martyr. It would be difficult to find such a state of things in any other Christian kingdom. There was found no one in thise parts to cement the foundations of the growing church with the shedding of his blood. There was no one to do this service; not a single one.

- Topography of Ireland, chapter 105 (translated by John O'Meara)

These lines are very important for several reason. Although Gerald emphasises the sanctity of the Irish holy men and women, it appears that he suggests there is no protector of Ireland as a whole, not even the venerable Patrick. Gerald blames the Irish prelates for this state of affairs, because none of them have stood up for their church, or shed blood or suffered exile for its cause. Since this is written less than twenty years after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket (d.1170), for which King Henry II was punished and for which he sought reparation, it is tempting to suggest that Gerald has the model of Becket in mind when he chastises the Irish clergy. He then recounts a comment made by the Archbishop of Cashel:

'It is true,' he said, 'that although our people are very barbarous, uncivilized, and savage, nevertheless they have always paid great honour and reverence to churchmen, and they have never put out their hands against the saints of God. But now a people has come to the kingdom which knows how, and is accustomed, to make martyrs. From now on Ireland will have its martyrs, just as other countries.'

The archbishop's words are chilling and seem prophetic in such a short time after the battle at Waterford, and the canonisation of Becket (1169/70 and 1173 respectively). However, Gerald states that the archbishop's comment, although hard-hitting, does not invalidate Gerald's opinion on the Irish prelates.

Saints and the conquest of Ireland

A final point is worth noting in Gerald's treatment of the Irish saints. As stated, the holiness of the Irish saints remains undisputed and their vengeful patronage are held up as a perennial warning against misconduct against the Irish churches. In chapter 97, Gerald records how the Anglo-Normans themselves showed their due respect for the native saints of Ireland:

Saint Columba and Saint Brigid were contemporaries of Patrick. Their three bodies were buried in Ulster in the same city, namely, Down. They were found there in our times, in the year, that is, that Lord John first came to Ireland, in a cave that had three sections. Patrick was lying in the middle, and the others were lying one on either side. John de Courci, who was in command there, took charge when these three noble treasures were, through divine revelation, found and translated.

- The Topography of Ireland, chapter 97 (translated by John O'Meara)

In other words, through the revelatory will of God, the Anglo-Norman conquerors have become devotees of Ireland's three major saints, and the patrons of Ireland are now the patrons of the Anglo-Normans. The episode is reminiscent of the legend of the seven sleepers at Ephesus recorded at length by Osbert of Clare in his hagiography of Edward the Confessor (c.1138). It is also interesting for its resemblance to similar aspects of Plantagenet appropriation of popular belief. In 1198 the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were reported to have been found in Glastonbury, thus proving to the Celtic world that Arthur was not resting at Avalon or anywhere else, but was dead and buried. In the late 1200s, King Edward I, during his Welsh campaign, had Arthur's remains translated and perhaps even canonised (although informally so since it was never accepted by the papal church). The purpose was the same at both these instances: to expropriate local history, and display the dynasty's reverence of and protection from these legendary figures.

It is tempting to suggest that this strategy had also been used by the Anglo-Norman conquerors in Ireland, and although Gerald does not elaborate on the importance of this revelation in any great degree, it might explain why Gerald's concern is to warn about local patronage and vindictiveness rather than worrying about the revenge of the great patrons of Ireland.

The making of an Irish king

MS Royal 13 B VIII, Gerald's Topographia, England, c.1196-c.1223

Courtesy of British Library