Saint Bartholomew and the devil - the legend of Bartholomew in the Old English Martyrology

Today is the feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, who is famous for his grisly method of execution, namely being flayed alive. For this reason his attribute is a flaying knife, and his saintly patronage extends to tanners and other craftsmen in skin and hide. For the feast of Bartholomew I will here give the legend as it was rendered in the Old English Martyrology, translated and edited by Christine Rauer. Here the date is given as August 25, but that is either a mistake made by the scribe or evidence of a different practice in tenth-century England.

Bartholomew with his knife

MS Harley 2449, prayers for saints' vigils with calendar, Netherlands, c.1276-c.1296

Courtesy of British Library

On the twenty-fifth day of the month is the feast of the apostle St Bartholomew; he was Christ's missionary in the country of India, which is the outermost of all regions, on whose one side lies the dark land, on whose other side lies the world ocean [or 'Oceanus'], that is Garsecg. In this country he cast out idols which they had previously worshipped there. And an angel of God came to them there and revealed to the people what their god was, whom they had worshipped previously. He showed them an enormous Egyptian whose face was blacker than soot, and his beard and hair reached down to his feet, and his eyes were like hot irons, and spakrs came from his mouth, and a foul stench came out of his nostrils, and he had wings like a Thorny broom, and his hands were tied together with fiery chains, and he cried out with a terrible and loathsome voice and fled away and never appeared again anywhere. that was the devil, whom the people had earlier worshipped for themselves as a god, and they alled him Astaroth. Then the king of that people received baptism and his queen too, and all the people who belonged to his kingdom. Then the pagan bishops went and complained about that to the king's Brother; he was in another kingdom, and he was older than he was. He therefore ordered Bartholomew, the servant of Christ, to be flayed alive. Then the believing king came with many people and took his body and transported it away with great splendour, and put it in a fantastically large church. And the king became insane, who wanted him killed, and all the pagan bishops became insane and died, who had reported him.
- From The Old English Martyrology, edited and translated by Christine Rauer, D. S. Brewer 2013

The flaying of Bartholomew

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.104, Martyrology, Notre-Dame des Prés de Douai, 13th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

The story of Bartholomew is an exciting and intersting story for many reasons, but perhaps especially its solid portion of exoticism and gore. From an academic point of view, this tale provides another set of details that are worth commenting. To me, for instance, it is interesting to note the geographical setting which places India as the outermost realm, and as a neighbour to the dark land, which is possibly meant to be Ethiopia which was confused with India all they way up to the sixteenth century. Bartholomew is placed in India already by Eusebius and in the Roman martyrology, although the latter gives Armenia as his place of of martyrdom.

Another significant thing here is the appearance and description of the devil. That the devil is said to be worshipped by the Indians as Astoreth harkens back to an old Christian tradition which claims that the old pagan gods were in reality fallen angels who had taken up residence on earth as gods, a treatment which is beautifully summarised in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Although it is an angel of God rather than Bartholomew in person who casts out the devil, he is associated with conquering the devil. This is something we find in the tradition around Saint Guthlac of Croyland, who came to his wild fens and established his hermitage on the feast of Bartholomew and henceforth dedicated himself to Bartholomew's patronage. Guthlac's vita was written by Felix already in the eight century, but the story was expanded by a local tradition at Croyland in the twelfth century which had Guthlac chastise demons with a scourge given to him by Saint Bartholomew.

A final point I want to comment on here is the appearance of the devil, described as a black Egyptian. The portrayal of the devil as a black man as an old tradition in Christian hagiography, and can be found already as early - and perhaps earlier - as Athanasius' Life of Antony, written in the fourth century. Here Antony struggles with his fight against a demon, and after a heavy bout of prayer, the demon finally gives in and materialises for Saint Antony:

he appeared, as was fitting, in a form that revealed his true nature: an ugly black boy prostrated himself at Antony's feet, weeping loudly and saying in a human voice, 'Many have I led astray, many have I deceived, but now I have been defeated by your efforts as I was by other holy people.' When Antony asked him who it was who was saying this, he replied, 'I am the friend of fornication. I have used many different kinds of shameful weapon to attrack young people and that is why I am called the spirit of fornication (...)'.
- Life of Antony, translated by Carolinne White, Penguin Classics, 1998

The flayed Bartholomew

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.104, Martyrology, Notre-Dame des Prés de Douai, 13th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

For similar blogposts, see these:

Antony and Guthlac compared

Guthlac using liturgy as a weapon against demons

The bearded women of the far East



Bibliography

Farmer, David, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

Rauer, Christine, The Old English Martyrology, D. S. Brewer, 2013

White, Carolinne, Early Christian Lives, Penguin Classics, 1998

Sanctity in Milan, part 2 - Nazarius and Celsus

In my previous blogpost I gave a brief account of the legend of the Gervasius and Protasius whose bodies were allegedly discovered by Ambrose of Milan in 386. In this blogpost I want to continue the series of blogposts on Milanese saints by talking about another pair of martyrs found by Ambrose: Nazarius and Celsus.

Nazarius and Celsus with the generic palm of martyrdom

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004 , f.546, Franciscan breviary, c.1430

Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

 

The bodies of Nazarius and Celsus were found by Ambrose in 395, nine years after the discovery of Gervasius and Protasius, but unlike his first discovery, Ambrose does not mention these two saints in his writings. The story of how these saints were found comes down to us from Paulinus who was Ambrose’s biographer and who claims to have been present at the inventio of these two saints. According to Paulinus, a body of a martyr was found in a sepulchre in a garden outside Milan. There was no way of telling when the martyr had been killed, but the head had been cut off and its blood still seeped out of the body which was as intact as if it had been recently prepared for the burial. These signs of a very recent death were taken to mean that the body belonged to a holy man, because although they did not know the date of its death – an important emphasis – Ambrose and Paulinus were certain that this was not a man recently killed. Considering that Christianity had been legal in the Roman Empire for more than eighty years at the time of this discovery, we can understand why a man who bore a hallmark of martyrdom – decapitation – could not have been martyred recently as there had been no persecution in decades in Milan.

After the discovery, the body of the alleged saint was carried to the Basilica of the Apostles, and then Ambrose, Paulinus and a retinue of clerics went back to the garden to pray. There they meet the keepers of the garden who tell them that there is a treasure buried there, and the treasure in question turns out to be another sainted body, that of Saint Celsus. The newly-found body was also taken to the Basilica of the Apostles and there they interred the two martyrs with the due rites. During this ceremony, a person possessed by a demon interrupted Ambrose’s sermon, but the demon turned silent when it was verbally chastised by Ambrose.

The story of the inventio of Nazarius and Celsus is the earliest source we have for the two saints, and although we might cast a sceptical eye towards the circumstances of these finds, the fact that Paulinus was an eyewitness means that we can be certain that two bodies were interred by Ambrose and that they were venerated as saints.


                               
                                       Nazarius and Celsus (with Victor and Innocent)
                        Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.257, Roman missal, c.1370, Bologna
                                                   Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

The story of Nazarius and Celsus, however, developed as a Milanese tradition over the years. At some later point there was composed a legend which purported to give an account of their lives and passio, but this is of no historical value to the actual historical account of these saints, whose historicity is as dubious as that of Gervasius and Protasius. However, the legend is interesting for its own sake, and I will here give a short version based on the story as it is transmitted by Jacobus de Voragine in Legenda Aurea. According to Jacobus, one tradition claims that Ambrose learned about these two saints from an account of the story of Gervasius and Protasius, which in turn was found in a book buried together with the saints. There is also another tradition, Jacobus tells us, that claims that “a certain philosopher who was devoted to Nazarius wrote his passion, and that Ceratius, who buried the saints’ bodies, placed the writing at their head” (Jacobus de Voragine 2012: 405). This latter tradition probably draws on the legend of Gervasius and Protasius, and it is interesting to see how the legends of these to saint-pairs are brought together and become intertwined, almost to the point where the legend make up part of a Milanese mythology. For instance, in his account of Gervasius and Protasius, Jacobus de Voragine refers to the tradition where Nazarius and Celsus are thought to be contemporaries of Gervasius and Protasius. This places Nazarius and Celsus at the time of Nero, for it is established already at Ambrose’s time that Gervasius and Protasius suffered under him. In Legenda Aurea, we are told that Gervasius and Protasius stayed with Nazarius while he was “building an oratory near Embrun” (p. 326). The three men and Celsus who is Nazarius’ apprentice are arrested for being Christian and brought before Nero. The young Celsus was crying and a soldier hit him. This enraged Nazarius who criticised him, and then the soldiers beat the man and threw him in jail, but later when he was thrown into the sea to die he was miraculously rescued and later came to Milan.

In the chapter dedicated to Nazarius and Celsus, Jacobus de Voragine tells us that Nazarius was African by birth, son of a noble Jew and the Roman Christian noblewoman Perpetua “who had been baptized by Saint Peter the Apostle” (p. 405). After evaluating the different religions of his parents, Nazarius chose the faith of his mother and was then baptised by Linus, Peter’s follower and the second pope. Jacobus alerts us to some inconsistencies in the tradition, because the legend calls Linus pope at a time before Peter’s death. This suggests that the temporal setting of this legend is a much, much later addition.

Since Nazarius had become a Christian, his parents feared for his life and sent him out of Rome “with seven mules laden with his possessions” (p. 405). As a good Christian, Nazarius distributed his wealth along his journey. Eventually he came to Milan “where he learned that Saints Gervasius and Protasius were detained in prison. It became known that he was visiting these martyrs and exhorting them to perseverance, and he was denounced to the prefect” (p. 405). When he was confronted with his actions, he stood firm in his faith in Christ and was “beaten with cudgels and driven out of the city”. He then led an itinerant life which brought him to Gaul where he was asked to baptise a young boy called Celsus and to take him with him on his travelling. When the prefect of Gaul was told about this baptism he had the two arrested and tortured, but the prefect’s wife – presumably in imitation of the wife of Pilate – told her husband that these two were innocent and persuaded him to release them. Unlike Pilate, the perfect of Gaul listened to his wife and after their release Nazarius and Celsus went to Trier where he converted many people and built a church. The governor in Trier found out about this and reported the two Christians to Nero, and they were then arrested and sent to Rome.

   

Nazarius and Celsus walking on the sea

Clermont-Ferrand - BM - ms. 0069, f.486, Roman breviary, c.1482

Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

While Nazarius and Celsus languished in prison Nero was busy deciding how best to torture his prisoners. Suddenly, a pack of wild beasts which had been captured for the circus burst into his garden and killed and wounded many people. Nero was himself wounded and thought there might be a connection between this and the arrest of Nazarius. Consequently, he had Nazarius and Celsus brought before him, and when the emperor saw a shining lustre on Nazarius face he thought that the saint was a wizard of some sort. Nazarius was then brought to the temple and asked to sacrifice to the idols, and Nazarius asked everyone else to go outside of the temple while he remained there praying. As he prayed the pagan idols crumbled to dust, and Nero ordered him to be taken to the sea and thrown into the water , a topos perhaps most famous from the legend of Saint Clement. Jacobus describes the scene accordingly:

Nazarius and Celsus were therefore put into a ship, carried out to sea and thrown overboard. At once a violent storm broke out around the ship, while a perfect calm surrounded the two saints. The ship’s crew feared for their lives and repented the wrongs they had done the saints; and behold, nazarius and Celsus came walking over the water and boarded the ship. The crew professed the Christian faith, Nazarius prayed, the sea fell calm, and the whole company landed at a place not far from the city of Genoa.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012: 406

From Genoa Nazarius made his way to Milan “where he had left Gervasius and Protasius” and when the prefect learned about this he ordered Nazarius to go into exile. Celsus was placed in the custody of a Milanese matron. Nazarius then went to Rome and reunited with his father who had then become a Christian. In Rome he got into trouble with the pagan priests and came once more back to Milan where and Celsus were brought before the judged. They were then taken outside the Porta Romana and brought to a place called Tres Muri where they were beheaded. On the following night they appeared in a dream to Ceratius and adviced him to bury them under his house – a motif probably taken from the story of Gervasius and Protasius.

Jacobus then recounts some of the miracles and quotes Ambrose in his account of the inventio. In his book on Ambrose, F. Homes Dudden claims that Ambrose never referred to these saints in his own writing (Dudden 1935: 319), and it is likely that Jacobus’ quote is from the Pseudo-Ambrosian tradition. This tradition is relatively extensive as many works have been ascribed to Ambrosius which were composed much later. Good examples of this are a letter which describes the inventio of Gervasius and Protasius and a sermon for their dies natalis.

Nazarius and Celsus

Detail from the Averoldi Polyptych by Titian, 1520-22, comissioned by Altobello Averoldi

Courtesy of Wikimedia

The story of Nazarius and Celsus is an interesting legend for many reasons, perhaps especially in the way it is woven into the already established legend of Gervasius and Protasius, and how it thus creates a collegium of Milanese saints. Although these Milanese legends became widely distributed throughout the Middle Ages, it is interesting to note that in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, which is a compilation of legends of saints mainly from Italy, neither of these four saints are mentioned. Nonetheless, as evidenced by their inclusion in Legenda Aurea and references in several European liturgical documents, their cult remained strong also outside Milan.

Nazarius on a horse

Fresco, 1480, San Nazzaro and Celso Abbey, Novara, Italy, attributed to Giovanni Antonio Merli

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Bibliography


Dudden, F. Homes, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, Clarendon Press, 1935
Gregory the Great, Dialogues, translated by Odo John Zimmermann, The Catholic University of America Press, 1983

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012

Sanctity in Milan, part 1 - Gervasius and Protasius

 

In September, the Centre at which I’m working, the Centre of Medieval Literature in Odense and York is going on a work trip to Milan. In preparation for this, I’m familiarising myself with the cult of saints in the city, and in what I hope to be a long series of blogposts I will delve into the subject. First up are the protomartyrs of the city, Gervasius and Protasius.

Gervasius and Protasius

MS Egerton 3763, Prayerbook of Archbishop Arnulph of Milan, between 998 and 1018

Courtesy of British Library

Gervasius and Protasius first emerge into recorded history in 386 when their beheaded bodies were found by Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Nothing is known about their history, and their historicity remains a dubious matter. According to the legend, they showed themselves to Ambrose while he was praying in the Church of Felix and Nabor, which was raised over the relics of two martyrs from the Diocletian persecution of the early fourth century. In Legenda Aurea, Jacobus de Voragine records the event as follows:

Ambrose was at prayer in the church of Saints Nabor and Felix, and was neither wide awake nor sound asleep when two handsome youths, dressed in white tunics and mantles and shod with short boots, appeared to him and prayed with him. Ambrose prayed that if this apparition was an illusion it would not occur again, but if it was a true one it would be repeated. At cockcrow the two youths again appeared in the same way, praying with him; but on the third night, fully awake though his body was worn out with vigils, he was astonished when they appeared to him with a third person, who looked like Paul the apostle in the painting Ambrose had seen.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea (translated by William Granger-Ryan), 2012: 327

Ambrose inspired by Saint Paul

Paris - Bibl. Mazarine - ms. 0562, f.001, collection of Ambrosian writings, 16th century

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

Paul, for indeed it is him, then goes on to explain to Ambrose who these men are and where he can find their bodies, namely in a coffin twelve feet under the earth. In this coffin, Ambrose would also find a book containing the history of these martyrs. After discussing the matter with some other local bishops, Ambrose decided to dig for the relics and indeed found them where Saint Paul had said they would be, a feat which earned him the patronage of archaeologists (shared with Damasus and, I believe at least in Spain, with Helena).

The legend of Gervasius and Protasius tells us that the saints were the twin sons of Saint Vitalis and his wife Valeria. Since they were children of Christians, and since they lodged with Saint Nazarius, they were soon persecuted by the pagan authorities and brought before Nero. The twins were then later taken to Milan, and here they received the enmity of the pagan priests.

At the time when Gervasius and Protasius came to Milan, a military leader called Count Astasius also came there on his campaign against the Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni. Astasius was then told that the gods would be deaf to his prayers unless he forced Gervasius and Protasius to offer sacrifice to them, and Astasius had the twins brought forth to perform the rites. True to the topos of such saint-stories, the two men refused to offer sacrifice and blasphemed the pagan idols as being deaf and dumb. Gervasius then said that Astasius would only receive victory from God and the count responded by having him beaten with leaded whips until he died. Then Protasius was summoned, and he mocked the count for all the fuss he made about the two Christians. For this, Astasius had him hung on the rack but Protasius kept mocking him and was eventually beheaded. The bodies of the twins were then collected by a Christian called Philip, who buried the stone coffin secretly in his house and who wrote the book which he placed at their relics.

Gervasius and Protasius with the instruments of their passion

Mans (Le) - BM - ms. 0254, f.044v, Missal, Use of Le Means, between 1495 and 1503

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

The relics of the two martyrs were placed in the Church of Felix and Nabor by Ambrose, and these two saints became the centre of the Milanese cult of saints. The cult of Gervasius and Protasius is fascinating, particularly because of its inception. Ambrose lived in a time when Milan had been an important imperial city since the third century, and when the imperial power was weakening and local episcopal power was on the rise. It was also a time when aristocratic Christians, especially Christian matrons, expanded their own prestige by collecting relics of saints and constructing private mausoleums in their gardens. These features were common to the Western Roman Empire, and we see them also in the papacy of Damasus I (366-84). It is therefore possible that Ambrose either invented the legend of Gervasius and Protasius or exploited a local oral tradition in his establishment of their cult. For example, it is interesting to note that the martyrdom of these saints are set two the first Christian persecution, i.e. about 250 years earlier than the deaths of Felix and Nabor who were then replaced by a new – but older – saintly couple. Thus, Gervasius and Protasius not only become protomartyrs of Milan, but provide the bishop with saints of greater antiquity and prestige than the saints hitherto venerated in Milan by its local nobility.

Gervasius and Protasius with the palms of martyrdom

Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.502, Franciscan breviary, c.1430

Courtesy of enluminures.cultures.fr

Bibliography

Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints, University of Chicaco Press, 2015

Farmer, David, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton, 2012

Sághy, Marianne, "Pope Damasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography", printed in Gecser, Ottó; Laszlovszky, Józef; Nagy, Balázs; Sebók, Marcell; Szende, Katalin (eds.), Promoting the Saints – cults and their contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, Central European University Press, 2011

Saint Olaf and the literature of Nidaros Archbishopric c.1180 - c.1220

Yesterday, June 29^th, was the dies natalis of Saint Olaf, patron saint of Norway. In Norwegian this day is known as "olsok", which comes from "olavsvaka", the wake of Olaf, and in Trondheim the day is celebrated as a part of the Olaf days, a fair held in honour of the saint-king. Saint Olaf is an interesting figure in Norwegian history, and although we have been a Protestant country since 1536/37 and are becoming increasingly secular, Olaf occupies an important place in our national consciousness.

For me, on the other hand, he is chiefly interesting from an academic point of view, since part of my PhD thesis will deal with the medieval cult of Saint Olaf. Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to write about some of the texts about Olaf from medieval Norway, or more precisely, the texts written within the milieu of Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson.

Eystein Erlendsson received the pallium in 1161 and began his office as archbishop of Norway which had been established only very recently after the archbishop of Lund was divided into three. In the course of his office, which he held until his death in 1188, Eystein did his best to establish Nidaros, modern-day Trondheim, as the ecclesiastical centre of Norway. In his first year as archbishop, he consecrated an altar to SS John the Baptist, Vincent and Silvester, and in the course of his career he was deeply embroiled in the political struggels of his time, even leading a brief exile in England in the early 1180s.

An important part of Eystein's effort was the cult of Saint Olaf, who became known in the twelfth century as rex perpetuus Norvegie, meaning that the kings of Norway were seen as vassals of the saint. As a consequence of Eystein's engagement with the cult, there grew up a significant body of literature within or connected to the archiepiscopal court at Nidaros, and furthermore a literature that was at times at odds with the literature steeped in non-ecclesiastical traditions. Books of the latter kind, such as the royal sagas of Snorri Sturlusson, are today most widely famous and widely referred to by the non-academic public. This means that the public debates often give the impression that before Snorri there was nothing, or at best there is a fleeting mention of Passio Olavi, the Latin vita of Olaf's deeds, death and miracles. In this blogpost, I want to present the ecclesiastical literature connected to the cult of Olaf before Snorri's Heimskringla.

The following is a brief introduction to various works written from c.1180 onwards, it is not an exhaustive list of twelfth-century Norwegian literature, and nor does it enter into a discussion about the literature of the Olaf cult prior to 1180, of which little is known with certainty.

The martyrdom of Olaf Haraldsson

Detail from an antependium from an unknown Norwegian church, c.1320-40

Courtesy of Store Norske Leksikon

Historia Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium

The History of the Old Kings of Norway was written around 1180 by a monk belonging to the retinue of Archbishop Eystein who gives his name as Theodoricus Monachus, most likely a latinised form of the Norwegian name Tore. The work is dedicated to Eystein, and although its prime focus is the kings of Norway, here and there we read chapters that treat other issues, such as the age of the world and the placement's of Homer's Scylla and Charybdis in the Norwegian waters. The work is also suffused with references to contemporary learning and recent writers, and it appears that Theodoricus – like his patron Eystein – had received his education in France, for instance in Paris or Chartres. This was not the first Latin historiography written in Norway, but for its effect it might be said to be the most significant: Theodoricus' use of French sources introduced the suggestion that Saint Olaf had been baptised in Rouen, not in Norway as was held by the vernacular tradition. This made its way into Olav's vita which was being compiled at the time and founded the Ecclesiastical tradition in the question of Olaf's baptism.


Passio et Miraculi Beati Olavi

This work has been compiled in several redactions, and the most recent scholarly suggestion is four, the final one being overseen by Archbishop Eystein, who himself dictated one of the chapters in which we learn of a miracle that healed the archbishop himself. This captivating passage – narrated in the first person and with great emotional intensity – led early scholars of the Olaf cult to the conclusion that Eystein had written the entire book himself, which we now know is far from the case. The book is comprised of a short passage of Olaf's passio, and this section might be the oldest and most well known. After that there follows a catalogue of Olaf's miracles which were performed mostly in Norway but also in Ireland, in Russia and as far away as Byzantium where the Varangian guard ensured Saint Olaf's presence also in Constantinople. Some of these miracles are probably from the eleventh century and are referred to in a poem written by the Icelandic cleric Einar Skulasson in 1153 for an assembly of ecclesiastical and secular magnates in Nidaros. The poem is a celebration of Saint Olaf, and is today referred to as Geisli, the Sun-ray, being one of Olaf's many names in the poems.

Passio Olavi was probably compiled from old stories and miracle-reports written down at the shrine in Nidaros cathedral (as suggested by Lars Boje Mortensen). That Archbishop Eystein inserts himself in the narrative shows how deeply invested he was in the project, and it also suggests that many of the other miracles have been reported in Eystein's lifetime. Since Eystein was such a key figure in this compilation, the terminus ante quem for Passio Olavi should be set at 1188, or possibly a few years after, but its end result appears to have been envisioned and orchestrated by Eystein, who may or may not have lived to see it completed.


Officium Olavi

The Passio Olavi was the foundational text for the new liturgical office for Saint Olaf. This was not the first liturgical text to celebrate Olaf – that one is found in an eleventh-century English document known as The Leofric Collectar – but it was an important part of the renewed cult under Eystein. We don't know exactly when the office was written, but surviving fragments tell us that it was in relatively wide circulation around 1220, and given the intensity of veneration under Eystein it is likely that the office was at least begun during his archiepiscopacy. The text is a more or less verbatim rendition of the Passio and the music – as shown by Roman Hankeln – is taken from the office of Saint Augustine, which points to a strong connection to the order of Augustine friars with whom Eystein had come into close contact during his student days in Paris.

Saint Olaf the king

Wooden sculpture from Överselö Church in Sweden, date unknown

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Ágrip af Noregs konungasogum

Extracts from the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings is the modern, academic name given to a vernacular history written c.1190. Little is known of its author or where it was written, but it is possible that it was written in Denmark by a monk belonging to the retinue of Archbishop Eirik Ivarsson, Eystein's successor, who was driven into exile after a quarrel with King Sverre of Norway. The book is a short vernacular account, but it owes its debt to the Latin literature and although it does not go into the specifics of Olaf's baptism, it does belong within the ecclesiastical literature rooted in the archbishop's see at Nidaros.


The Old Norwegian Homily Book

The last example here is like Ágrip only part of the Nidaros literature by extension as it was written in Bergen around 1200, possibly connected to the Augustinian monastery. The book is a collection of sermons or exempla for sermons, and there is still no consensus about whether it was compiled as a guidebook on homiletics or whether the sermons included were actually preached to the lay public. The homily book is written in the vernacular, and it also includes a selection from Alcuin of York's De Virtutibus et Vitiis. For its sermon on July 29 it borrows from Passio Olavi and next to the extract from Alcuin it is the longest text in the collection. This text, too, follows the ecclesiastical tradition by placing Olaf's baptism in Rouen, and from its dependence on Passio it belongs to the wider Nidaros literature.

The Fall of King Olaf ("Kong Olafs fald")

Drawing by Halfdan Egidius for the 1899 translation of Snorri's Heimskringla

Courtesy of Wikimedia

 Concluding remarks

As we see, the literature that grew up around the cult of Saint Olaf at the turn of the twelfth century is quite wide-ranging and numerous, especially considering that Norway was a country whose Latinity very much was in its early stage and where there had only been an archiepiscopal power structure for a few decades. I have here emphasised how various texts have treated the baptism of Olaf Haraldsson, since this is the feature which allows us to see that these texts are connected and form part of the ecclesiastical tradition which in this respect differs from the older, vernacular tradition which is supported by for instance Snorri Sturlusson. This list is also a way of showing that there is much more to Norwegian medieval literature than the sagas of Snorri. 

For similar blogposts, see:

A nineteenth-century hymn for Saint Olaf

A brief history of the twentieth-century church of Saint Olaf in Trondheim

The Chill of the Hunt - hunting tips from the classical and medieval peripheries

In a previous blogpost I talked about the appearances of bearded women on the peripheries of the medieval world, and I lingered a bit on their mention in the encyclopedia De Natura Rerum, compiled by Thomas de Cantimpré (d.1272). This encyclopedia is a treasure-trove of medieval knowledge, and a great window into how the world was understood by the learned of the Christian west. One recurring feature in the learned litereature of the Middle Ages is of course the weirdness of the world's peripheries, the monsters and hominids of the far north and far east, perhaps best known to modern readers through Marco Polo's Il Millione or The Travels of John Mandeville. This weird world in earth's remote corners - figuratively speaking, because as we know, people in the Middle Ages did NOT believe the world was flat (see here, and here) - was a source of wonder to lay and learned alike, and make great reading even today.

One of the many delightful entries in Thomas de Cantimpré's De Natura Rerum deals with how the elephant is hunted, as shown by the illumination below. It was believed in the Middle Ages that the elephant had no knees and could therefore not bend down or lie down when sleeping. To make up for this defect, it was said, elephants spend their nights leaning against a tree where they slept. To hunt the elephant, therefore, you had only to chop down the tree, either before the elephant went to bed or while he was sleeping (although in the illumination below he seems to be wide awake). When the tree was sawed in two, the elephant would have no support, lose balance and fall helplessly to ground where he could be killed. 

Elephants hunted by saw
Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.051v, De Rerum Natura, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

This belief in the jointless animal sleeping against a tree is a very old one, and the perhaps most famous instance is perhaps the description of the moose in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, which is also said to be hunted by the same method: Hunters follow the tracks to the moose's sleeping-tree, and when this has been found they undermine the roots or cut into the tree so that it can't support the weight of the mighty moose.

The two motifs are most likely connected, but how I do not know. Both these texts, however, have that in common that their respective authors are writing about their peripheries. Caesar wrote about the Gaul and Germania, a transalpine world which he had visited and in which he had held battle, but about whose nature and history he was ignorant and had to rely on local stories and tales, some no doubt exaggerated or invented, perhaps knowingly pulling the Roman imperator's leg while laughing behind his back.

When Thomas de Cantimpré applies this motif to his encyclopedia, he becomes part of a long tradition, repeating only what is well known about elephants in learned circles, supported by classical authority and the conviction of repetition rather than any eye-witness stories. Few learned men in the Middle Ages had ever seen an elephant, but of Thomas had seen one, he might have changed his mind about its appearance, as did his contemporary Matthew Paris, when he saw the elephant of Henry III in the Tower of London.

Edmund Spenser's cruel panther

This month has been a very busy month, which is reflected in the lack of posts for July. I have made a point to keep up a minimum of four posts each month, so in such busy times I turn to a never-failing source for material: poetry. As regulars will have noted, I usually go to a handfull of my favourite poets for these filler-pieces, mostly because I know these poets well, but sometimes because I find works unfamiliar to me which compel me to share them.

In this case, I have chosen one of the possibly lesser-known sonnets from Edmund Spenser's cycle Amoretti, little love songs. This sequence comprises 89 sonnets in the Spenserian stanza - a scheme far superior to the Elizabethan sonnet in my opinion - and they portray Spenser's courtship of his bride-to-be Elizabeth Boyle in the course of 1594. The sonnets shift in tone throughout and give the impression of being written day by day in the course of the courtship, as if it were a lover's diary, although this might be a mere fiction constructed by Spenser.

Like many of the poems, Sonnet LIII employs animal imagery to describe Elizabeth Boyle's responses to Spenser's courship, and in many cases - such as here - Elizabeth seems indeed to be the active, courting part, while the courted poet finds himself subject to forces beyond his mastery. The idea of the panther as a beast capable of attracting animals goes back long into the Middle Ages, whose bestiaries explained the panther as an allegory of Christ. Like Christ, the panther's sweet voice drew animals from the desert, as can be seen in the illumination below. Spenser's panther is different - some might say more modern, although that should be said carefully - and a seducer with evil intention. Moreover, in Sonnet LIII, the attraction of the panther is its spotted hide, not its mellifluous voice.

The text is taken from this website.

Amoretti LIII

The panther, knowing that his spotted hyde

Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray,

Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide,

To let them gaze, whylst he on them may pray.

Right so my cruell fayre with me doth play;

For with the goodly semblance of her hew

She doth allure me to mine owne decay,

And then no mercy will unto me shew.

Great shame it is, thing so divine in view,

Made for to be the worlds most ornament,

To make the bayte her gazers to embrew:

Good shames to be to ill an instrument!

But mercy doth with beautie best agree,

As in theyr Maker ye them best may see.

Panther leading the animals 

Chalon-sur-Saône - BM - ms. 0014, f.088v, bestiary, Northern France, c.1280 

Courtesy of Enluminures

Where the Wild Women Are - bearded women in medieval geography

To the human mind, faraway places have always held a vague promise of wonder. In the Middle Ages, these places were predominantly located in the east and the north, places were few of their own had gone and places of which the ancient authorities spoke of with enchanting but incredible certainty. Writers of natural history from Herodotus to Pliny the Elder included in their works great narratives of the marvels of the east and the north, the homes of wild peoples and monstrous races. The fictitious Letter To Aristotle, purportedly written by Alexander to his old tutor, and other accounts of the Macedonian conqueror captivated the medieval imagination and achieved a wide dissemination in languages as diverse as Georgian, Greek, Old Norse, Old English and Old French.

Several writers throughout the medieval centuries dealt with the marvels of the world's periphery, and it was not only the east but also the north which served as the setting for tales about strange and weird creatures and phenomena. When these stories were set in the north, they often received an additional dimension by reference to the passage in Jeremiah 1:14 where the Lord says to His prophet that from the North, evil will break out. In a future blogpost I hope to expand more on this.

For the time being, however, I simply want to address the appearance of bearded women in the medieval periphery as described by two medieval writers, Thomas de Cantimpré (1201-72) and Adam of Bremen (fl. c.1070). 

Bearded women in conversation
Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290
Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

Among the many wonders of the east, we find a selection of wondrous and often monstrous women. The most famous are probably the amazons whose masculine ferocity had troubled male minds since the time of Homer. There were also others, and first I will present some which are found in Thomas de Cantimpré's magnificent encyclopedia Opus de Natura Rerum.

Thomas de Cantimpré was born in modern-day Belgium and received his education at Liége and later at Cantimpré. He entered the Dominican order in 1232 at Louvain and the next year he went to Cologne where he went to study under Albertus Magnus. After a while in Cologne, he went to Paris. Thomas was a very learned man, and he wrote a big encyclopedia of the known world which was called Opus de Natura Rerum. One section of this work - in which the marvels of Creation are expounded - is dedicated to the monstrous races of the east. It is in this section we find the mention of the bearded women, among a number of other typical marvels of the eastern periphery, such as women with infected glands and women giving birth to toads.

Women with inflamed glands

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

Woman giving birth to a toad

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr

The appearance of these weird and, perhaps most importantly, subversive women are part of a monstrous kaleidoscope through which the east is seen as a kind of mirror of the west, and its peoples are held up as a way of emphasising the normalcy of the Christian world. The east is a world of heathendom, of monstrosity and of women who transgress the natural order by growing beards or giving birth to amphibious creatures.

We also see women inhabiting the same role in Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, written in the 1070s. The fourth part of this history deals with the faraway north, a description of the northern islands, i.e. Scandinavia, Greenland and Iceland. Adam himself was never north of Denmark, but received his information at the court of the Danish king Svein Estridsson. However, although Adam might have heard a great deal of fantastical tales about Norway in Denmark, parts of his description probably owes to commonplace descriptions of the wild periphery.

This can be seen for instance in his presentation of the women of Norway, chapter 30 (my translation):

In the wildest mountains which are there [in Northern Norway] we hear about women who are bearded, and men who hide in the forest and rarely are seen. 

This is part of a lengthy exposition of the weirdness of the north, which includes references to anthropophagi, oxen that live in the sea, white bears and islands inhabited by cyclops, several of which we also find in Thomas de Cantrimpré's Opus de Natura Rerum. Small wonder, since these are features of the imagined periphery, a place of contrariness whose topography rests on centuries of writings of natural history.

Anthropophagi and cyclops

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.045, Opus de Natura Rerum, Thomas Cantimpre, c.1290

Courtesy of Enluminures.cultures.fr