Unexpected consequences of saint scholarship

 

Most of my professional life revolves around saints and the imprint of their cult and veneration on society. As a consequence, I easily notice cultural expressions that contain some reference to saints, and as such cultural expressions are plentiful around the globe, I sometimes embark on very unexpected detours into cultural terrain that is new to me. With very few exceptions, these detours tend to be rewarding and to broaden my horizon in new directions, regardless how tenuous the link to saints actually turns out to be. 

One recent case came shortly before Christmas when I noticed the title of a collection of poems by Indonesian poet Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated into English by Tiffany Tsao. The title, Sergius seeks Bacchus, jumped out at me because Sergius and Bacchus are a pair of fourth-century soldier saints. Their popularity in early medieval Christendom is perhaps best demonstrated by the church dedicated to them which was built during the reign of Emperor Justinian (r.527-65), which is still standing in Istanbul and colloquially known as Little Hagia Sophia. The title does indeed refer to these saints, as they have become iconic figures among gay Christians, and the title thereby reflects Pasaribu's Christian background and his sexual orientation. 

The collection of poems is an unexpected consequence of my saint scholarship, but without that scholarship it is possible that this book would have completely passed me by. I am very glad I caught it, however, because the poetry is rich, rewarding, and, as seen already in the opening poem which recounts Pasaribu's coming out, it is devastatingly and beautifully heartbreaking. 

Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Sergius seeks Bacchus (translated by Tiffany Tsao)

Some brief reflections on canon and genius

Among the many bees in my professional bonnet is the issue of canon formation: how some works become singled out as being of particular value and worthy of preservation and perpetuation through subsequent generations. The mechanisms of canon formations are usually shared by whatever type of art we are talking about, whether it is pictorial art, the art of writing, or the art of music. There are several factors that can contribute to a work's entry into a given canon, and there are also several factors that contribute to a work's continued place in that canon, because the canon is also changing. 

In all cases, at least as far as I have seen, canonical status is achieved through patronage and from the decisions of individuals in relevant positions of power and decision-making. The reasons for elevating a work to canonical status, or at least pursuing an attempt to elevate a work to canonical status, can be many and varied. However, in many instances it appears most likely that someone's attempt to elevate a work to canonical status has a lot to do with that person's self-fashioning. In order for that person to be seen as well-read and cultured, the works that they promote to canonical status are expected to reflect some of the grandeur of that status back onto the promoters.  

For a work to achieve canonical status, and for a work to have sufficient canonical lustre to reflect it onto the self-fashioning promoter, the person behind the work must also be elevated. The usual trick in this process is to turn to the idea of genius, the idea that some individuals, seen as working on their own, are so brilliant that they deserve a place in the pantheon provided by the canon. Whether the genius in question is dead or alive is immaterial. What matters is that the declaration of genius serves to generate enough brilliance that it is reflected on those that profess to know about this person's works, that profess to love the work, or who use that work as a prop to appear grand and cultured to an audience. For instance, having the complete works of Leo Tolstoy in the room where you receive guests has a very different meaning that having those works placed somewhere where they are not easily seen. The same goes for hanging Edvard Munch's Scream on the wall where you receive your guests, or playing a recognisable tune from Mozart or Beethoven during a party. To do all these things are not necessarily done without some measure of affinity for these works, and it is not a bad thing to appreciate the works in question. The issue is that genius and canon serve self-fashioning. 

However, because the literary canon, for example, is often constructed with a view towards self-fashioning, there is often very little interest in acquiring understanding beyond the canonical work itself. Every work is engendered in a specific historical and cultural context, and many canonical literary works are somehow related to other literary works. If a literary canon had served to augment our understanding of literature and not just augment the status of the work and those who claim to read it, this relationship between works would have inspired the perpetuation and dissemination of those other, less known, works. 

If the literary canon served as an inroad into the wider-reaching threads of intertextuality and literary connections and genealogies - and to some people the canon does do that - then we would also have urged for the preservation of those other, less well known works. There are two particular examples that come to mind when trying to illustrate how the navel-gazing functions of a literary canon works in practice. The first example is the chivalric romance Girone il cortese, romanzo cavalleresco by Rustichello of Pisa. Rustichello is widely known as the writer who recorded Marco Polo's account of his travels in the East. The canonical status of Marco Polo's Travels is well established, and its impact on later culture is immeasurable, but includes such highlights as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972) and the name of a spaceship in the Norwegian science fiction TV series Stowaway (1978). If the canonical status of the Travels had kindled curiosity and desire to understand - at least among those in positions of power and decision-making - we would also have translations and editions of Rustichello's romance. And while such editions have been produced in Italy, there is, for instance, no such edition in some of the most globally impactful canon-formers such as Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics. The latter publishing house has, on the other hand, issued several editions and translations of Marco Polo's The Travels. 

My second example is Don Quijote, a work that satirises and would perhaps not exist without the romance Amadis of Gaula by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. Yet aside from editions produced in Spain, the romance of Amadis is not, at least to my knowledge, translated into other languages in recent times, and certainly is not included in Oxford World Classics or Penguin Classics. This lack of interest is perhaps especially surprising in the case of Amadis of Gaula, since it is heavily referenced in Cervantes' novel, and since the intertextuality and literary connection is both overt and very strong. If those in position of editorial and financial power sought to enhance our understanding of Don Quijote, for instance its jibes against Amadis of Gaula, they would finance the editing and translation of the work for a wider audience. That this work is not being done is, to my mind, a good example of how ideas around canon and genius tend to be very shallow affairs, usually tightly bound up in issues of self-fashioning and snobbery.      

The Svingerud stone - the world's oldest dateable rune stone

 

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo to buy a book, and also to check whether the world's oldest dateable rune had already been put on display. To my luck, this proved to be the case, and I was able to have my first encounter with the recently-excavated Svingerud stone. 

News of this find broke on January 17, when the museum publicised that excavations in Ringerike had yielded a rune stone found in layers from the first two centuries of the common era. The excavations were carried out in 2021, and for the past years runologists, linguists and archaeologists have examined and interpreted the stone and its several inscriptions. Runologist Kristel Zilmer provided a thorough and fascinating overview of the research process in a thread of tweets (in English), and another overview (in both English and Norwegian) was published on the website of the University of Oslo. A description of the exhibition is found on the museum's website.

The main inscription reads "idiberug", which is interpreted to be a woman's name, although the date of the inscription and the lack of comparable sources mean that is impossible to speak in certainties on this matter. The Svingerud stone - named after the location where it was found - also contains other human-made markings, but these are more difficult to interpret.  

idiberug

The exhibition is located in one of the smallest rooms in the museum's third floor, and it only contains the stone in its two fragments, a poster, and a video running on a loop. The video can also be seen on the museum's website. The smallness of the room is perfect for an exhibition of this kind, and as I entered I could note the excitement among the visitors gathered around the glass case, visitors ranging from around eight to around eighty. A member of staff was on site to answer questions, and as I stood and took it all in, I noted how several of the visitors turned to the guide or talked among themselves, both in Norwegian and in English. (It was especially heartening to learn that an American and his grandchild just happened to be in Oslo in time for the exhibition and had taken the opportunity to go.)  

It was a marvellously joyous occasion, as the buzz in the room was an almost tangible reminder of how much fascination and interest can be found among the members of the public, and how valuable such exhibitions are since they provide both an outlet and a focal point for this enthusiasm. I walked about the room taking photographs, listening to the video and the guide, and seeing the stone from various angles while letting other visitors close to the exhibition case as well. I was smiling stupidly behind my face mask, because I was reminded yet again how much interest people have in the past, and how energising that interest can be.  

The coming years will be very exciting, and I look forward to read the studies coming out from the team working on the Svingerud stone. We are presented with a chance to learn more about a part of Norway's history about which very little is known, and we are able to put our existing knowledge in a much wider context. The fact that this stone pushes the date for the carving of runes in what came to be Norway even further back in time means that we have to expand our chronological frame when thinking about the historical development of this geography. We - scholars, members of the public, the world at large - have an opportunity to learn and broaden our horizon, and this is in and of itself wonderful. 

The joy, the immense joy, in all of this is nonetheless tinged with some bitterness. While new finds are emerging from excavations and studies, while we have a large number of experts in relevant fields, and while we have an unprecedented level of knowledge about conservation, excavation, locating and interpreting the new materials that are found throughout Norway, we are also living in a time when jobs in the relevant fields are cut, funding is reduced, and money and monetisability remain the guiding stars for the people in charge. As a consequence, we are squandering our opportunities to make the most of the combination of expertise and materials, of enthusiasm and a public that is open to the news and the knowledge concerning these finds. I can only hope that we are slowly able to turn this trend and ensure that the requisite research is being done. 

Saint Margaret's in winter

Last Sunday, two friends and I took a trip to a lake called Maridalsvann north of Oslo to visit the ruins of the Church of Saint Margaret. This is a thirteenth-century church located close to the lake shore in the northwestern quadrant, and must once have been the religious centre of a wide remit of farms in the hinterland of Oslo. The church has a small but relatively spacious nave and a small square-walled choir.

To my knowledge, no surviving medieval sources provide any detailed knowledge of the history of the church, and the traditional dating to c.1250 appears to be largely on architectural grounds. Its dedication to Saint Margaret of Antioch is attested in later sources, but it is unclear whether this was the original dedication. If the church was dedicated to Saint Margaret already around 1250, this would be a remarkably early attestation of her cult in medieval Norway. While Saint Margaret was probably known by name in Norway since the official conversion of the country to Christianity in the eleventh century, she was not widely famous until the fourteenth century, when the joint impulses of Legenda Aurea and the cult of the fourteen holy helpers improved her standing. In comparison, the altar of Saint Margaret in Oslo cathedral is first attested in 1329 in a letter of property exchange (although the altar was probably established earlier than that).  

Sufficiently much of the outline of the church remains today that it is possible to get a good impression of its place in the landscape, and of its original splendour. Small though it is, it would probably have been a magnificent building in its prime, visible to travellers between Oslo and the hamlets further north. The ubiquitous snow made for a particularly atmospheric view. 

A model that provides a good estimate of how the church once looked

Somewhere beyond the mist and the lake lies Saint Margaret's Church

A year in reading - 2022

 
My last blogpost for 2021 was an overview of some highlights from my year in reading, as well as a few other book-related moments. For someone like me, whose life must seem terribly boring to those not living it, my adventures by page and pen remain the most interesting aspects that are worth sharing, and I also confess to finding a great deal of joy in sifting through my notes and pictures from the past year in order to distil those adventures into a reasonable digest. Consequently, I have decided to provide another overview of this year’s reading as well, largely following the template of last year.           

The selection of books included in this blogpost is aimed to provide a representative overview of the range in my reading, as well as the reasons behind those choices. As I explained in some detail in a previous blogpost, my reading is in large part guided by various lists, but also by the vagaries of my professional life, where research for articles and presentations, as well as preparations for teaching, provide significant impetus for specific choices. 

Moreover, a year in reading also encompasses other forms of reading than what is in focus in the present blogpost. For the most part, this selection is comprised of books that I have finished reading in the course of the year. By books I here mean individual, standalone works, either published as a unit or written, disseminated or transmitted as a unit. Consequently, individual articles that are part of a volume or an issue of a journal, are not included in my list of the year. Likewise, the reading of drafts of texts, either my own or those of colleagues, and the reading of page upon page of student dissertations, essays or exams consume a lot of my reading life, especially in a year of much teaching such as 2022, but these pages are never counted. Reading comes in different forms, in other words, and the current blogpost is neither complete nor meant to be particularly impressive or boastful, but merely an attempt to accurately represent my year in reading.   



Travelling by page    

Although I do a lot of travelling for work in the course of an academic year, my main form of travel remains through the vehicle of books. This year I have continued to seek out books from various parts of the world, and I continue in my quest – inspired by Ann Morgan’s 2012 project A Year of Reading the World – to read one book from each country. As is the case each year, my selection does not follow a particular pattern, and depends on what books I can get hold of, as well as which countries that remain unread. Sometimes, however, patterns do emerge, and this year I found myself gravitating towards books from the Arabic-speaking world. One of the joys of the forming of such patterns is that stories from within the same linguistic and/or religious sphere tend to have shared points of reference, even though the cultures and countries are different in many aspects. These similarities make it easier to gain a sense of understanding, and also to pick up on references that might be explained in one work but only obliquely mentioned or applied in another. Consequently, although Syria, Oman, The United Arab Emirates and Jordan are countries with unique histories and cultural configurations, it was also immensely rewarding to read them within the same year so as to note those shared features and gain a better comprehension of the wider cultural context of each country.   

Adunis, Mihyar of Damascus: his songs
(translated by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard)

Jokha Alharthi, Celestial Bodies 

(translated by Marilyn Booth)

Fadia Faqir, Pillars of salt

Maha Gargash, The sand fish 

As much as I appreciate patterns in my reading, however, I do easily get a bit bored if the pattern becomes too dominant or insufficiently interspersed with variations, so I was also glad to visit Belize, Zambia and Zimbabwe by page this year.  

Kayo Chingonyi, A blood condition

Zee Edgell, Beka Lamb

Chenjerai Hove, Bones 
(translated into Norwegian as Knokler by Mona Lange)

New places for reading        

Although the most far-flung of my travels take place on the page, I also enjoy broadening my horizon physically speaking, and it gives me a great deal of joy to travel to new places, be it a new city or a new country, or simply a place in my local area or my native village that I have not yet sought out. For me, reading in such a place becomes a way of connecting myself to that place in a much stronger way than would otherwise have been the case. It is as if the act of reading weaves the location more strongly into my memory. This weaving means that seemingly insignificant places, or places where I only spend a brief period, take on a greater place in my memory than it otherwise would have done. Moreover, this connection through reading means that many small places visited once become much more firmly lodged in my memory than larger places visited several times. 

This year saw a change from my usual approach to seeking out new places, in that I did not spend much time in my native village this summer, and because of the weather a lot of the time I did spend here was not spent seeking out new locations for reading. As a consequence, the new places in which I did some reading in the course of the past year entered into my list of such places more by accident than deliberation, but this does not mean that the experiences in these places were any weaker or less valuable. For instance, in the middle of February I dedicated most of a Sunday to explore the menu of a café I had been meaning to try for some time, and this culinary exploration was done in conjunction with reading most of the Norwegian translation of François Mauriac’s novel Le Nœud de vipères. I have since returned to that café on several occasions, for instance on one memorable rainy, dark autumn afternoon to escape the rain and fortify myself with a cup of coffee and a read of the Norwegian translation of Siri Hustvedt’s A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. That first Sunday, however, stands out. Among other such highlights among the new places of 2022 is a café in Warsaw where I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland, the café at Hovedøya outside of Oslo where I read the Norwegian translation of J. M. G. Le Clézio’s debut novel Le Procès-verbal, and the café at the Gothenburg Central Station where I passed my time waiting for my train back to Oslo by reading Toni Cade Bambara’s short-story collection Gorilla, my love.       

In other cases, my reading was done in transit, and sometimes the entry into a new region or new geography by train or bus makes the reading more noticeable even though you are technically not reading in a specific place, but travelling through a row of different places. Yet as I had the chance to explore the hinterlands of Oslo by train this year, some moments of reading have stood out, such as the reading of Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection The Colossus while travelling into the flatlands and forests north of Oslo along the river Glomma. 

François Mauriac, Le Nœud de vipères 
(translated into Norwegian as Slangeknuten by Fride Friestad) 

J. M. G. Le Clézio, Le Procès-verbal 
(translated into Norwegian as Rapport om Adam by Karna Dannevig)

Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women 
(translated into Norwegian as Kvinne ser på menn som ser på kvinner by Knut Johansen)

Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, my love

Reading by lists         

Throughout the year I have also made sure to maintain my self-imposed goal of reading three books of each of the fixed categories by which I navigate my reading. This goal is easy to achieve since my categories are fairly broad, and several categories can apply for one and the same book. Among the highlights this year was Dracula, read during rainy summer evenings while a three-month-old puppy kept trying to get into my room, thus creating a very suitable atmosphere to Bram Stoker’s descriptions. I was also happy to finally get around to reading Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart, especially because my copy of the book carries a piece of memorabilia from my own past, namely a price tag from the campus bookshop from my alma mater, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Both these books were included on the list I drew up for my future reading in the spring of 2008, a list from which I aim to at least read three books each year.

Chinua Achebe, Things fall apart 

Bram Stoker, Dracula 

Another highlight belongs to the category of scholarly books, a category meant to rectify the unfortunate situation that although I very often read scholarly texts, I often have to either mine them for specific information or references, or I start reading them without finishing. The highlight in question was the article collection St. Sunniva – irsk dronning, norsk vernehelgen, edited by Alf Tore Hommedal, Åslaug Ommundsen and Alexander O’Hara. This collection articles about one of the very few native saints from medieval Norway was a joy to read, and it was especially gratifying because such a collection has been needed for a very long time.

Alf Tore Hommedal, Åslaug Ommundsen and Alexander O’Hara (eds.), St. Sunniva – irsk dronning, norsk vernehelgen (Saint Sunniva - Irish queen, Norwegian patron saint)  


Another pleasing item from one of my fixed categories, that of Nobel laureates, was the play The death of Tintagiles (La Mort de Tintagiles) by Maurice Maeterlinck. What made this read particularly memorable and pleasing was not so much the play itself, although it is very atmospheric. Rather, it was the physical book, which had been donated to Oslo university library by Carl Burckhardt, possibly the Swiss historian. The book also contained an inscription from 1918, where the book had been gifted to someone addressed as “Apollo” by someone describing himself as ‘the least of his satellites’. Who these people were is not clear, but it adds a wonderful layer of bibliographic history to the book as an object, and it is a good reminder of the kind of treasures often housed by university libraries. 

Frontispiece from the collection Three little dramas by Maurice Maeterlinck

(translated by Alfred Sutro)

Dedication to Oslo university library by Carl Burckhardt

Not reading but writing        

Some of the highlights of my literary adventures in 2022 were not strictly speaking related to reading, but rather to writing. This year saw the publication of two scholarly articles on which I have worked extensively back and forth for the past couple of years. What made these publications even more gratifying was the reception of the physical copies of the books containing these articles, and although I have not yet read neither the books nor the articles in question, they stand out as important milestones in my personal literary landscape, and they have been instrumental in making 2022 such a great year for me in literary terms.  

Barbara Crostini and Anthony John Lappin (eds.), Death, Sanctity, and the Cross

Anna Lampadaridi, Vincent Déroche and Christian Høgel (eds.), L’historie comme elle se présentait dans l’hagiographie 



Added to the joy of these texts were a couple of other, smaller publications, such as a brief article I was asked to write for the in-house student journal of my department. As stated in the blogpost I wrote about this publication, I am also greatly appreciative of such smaller outputs that do not register in the publication lists sought by hiring committees or other such bodies, but which provide outlets through which I can disseminate some of my own interests. 

'Helgenkult og institusjonell identitet i mellomalderen - Sunnivakulten i Bergen'

('The cult of saints and institutional identity in the Middle Ages - the cult of Saint Sunniva in Bergen')

A related highlight came in the form of a lecture I gave to MA students, a lecture on palaeography that focussed on manuscripts from twelfth-century Norway. I was able to give the lecture via Zoom, so I could enjoy the scenery of an April fjord while digging into the material aspects of the Kvikne psalter, one of the oldest surviving books from Norway. This lecture required a lot of preparatory reading, and while I did not finish a single volume in the process, the reading culminated in a very satisfactory way that reminded me of how much sheer pleasure I find in talking about books. 

Similar blogposts (from 2022) 

Reading by lists 

How to choose a book 

The biggest book so far 

Contrasts in a reading life 

Assembling my Oslo library 

For Oslo Pride 2022 

Finding nuggets - the rewards of reading widely  

How I learned to love reading - redux 

Outdated materiality in the library 

A brief appreciation for the pathetic in literature 

Saint Stephen and Saint Knud Rex - the typology of martyrdom in twelfth-century Odense

 
Today, December 26, is the feast of Stephen Protomartyr, one of the relatively few Christian saints attested in the Bible, and one of an even lower number whose death is recounted in a biblical narrative (Acts) as opposed to various apocryphal narratives which is typically the case for the apostles. The story of Stephen is one of the most widely known saint-stories in Latin Christendom, both because he inhabits the important role of being the first martyr, the first blood-witness for Christ, and because his story was disseminated in the Bible and narratives that conveyed stories from the Bible, such as sermons, figurative art, ballads and saint-biographies, most of which are tinged with horrific anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery. 

Due to Stephen's powerful symbolic importance as the first martyr, he also became a widely used point of reference in the regions where Christianity was newly introduced or at least still a recently-established social force, and especially in the first stories about saints emerging from these younger members of Latin Christendom. For this blogpost, I will provide one example from Denmark, found in the material pertaining to Saint Knud Rex (d.1086). 

Knud Rex was king of Denmark from 1080 to his death in Odense in 1086 following an insurrection. The death of the king was recounted in several texts produced by the clerics of Odense who were attached to the episcopal see, and with the establishment of a Benedictine community in the late 1090s the textual production also came to include a liturgical office to be celebrated on Knud's feast-day, July 10. In this liturgical office, we find one of the most striking examples of how the hagiographers in Odense sought to connect their dead king with the first martyr of Christianity. The example comes from a responsory, a liturgical chant performed after a prose reading in the liturgical office. The chant survives in a late source, the printed Odense breviary from 1482, but we have good reasons to date the composition of the chant to the early twelfth century. The text runs as follows (text and translation taken from my PhD thesis):   


Cum furit exterius
trans execrabile uulgus
interius precibus
dux uacat eximius
misteriisque sacris
munitur spiritus eius
[V] Ut stephanus sanctus saxorum sustines ictus 

When outside rages,
The standing detestable mob
Inside with prayers
The excellent leader is undisturbed
And by the holy mysteries
His spirit is fortified
[V] You sustained the blow of stones, like holy Stephen 


The scene described is the interior of the Church of Saint Alban, to where the king and his retinue retreated when the mob had surrounded the royal manor. The insurrectionists sought to break into the church space, and the saints' lives note that they hurled stones and spears through the apertures in the church wall. What eventually killed the king was a spear through his side, which served as an imitation of Christ. But since the image of a saint is usually composed of features meant to imitate other saints, not just Christ, the composer of the office spelled out in clear words what earlier texts had already noted, namely that as the first martyr of the Danes, Knud Rex shared an affinity with Stephen. The typological link between Knud and Stephen is presented in the verse of the responsory, which is the line before the repetition of an earlier line in the chant. 

The purpose of spelling out the link between the two protomartyrs was twofold. First of all, the performers of the liturgy communicated to the saint in Heaven that they were aware of this link, and that they venerated Knud for this reason as well. To show knowledge about a saint's qualities is, basically, a matter of politeness: to ensure that the saint will continue to serve as their representative in Heaven, the venerators need to demonstrate their worthiness, and this demonstration comes through a spelling-out of saintly qualities. 

Secondly, by spelling out the typological link the office serves to educate younger members of the community of Benedictines  in Odense about the nature of their patron. Making sure that the community knew and understood its patron served both to contribute to the maintenance of institutional identity, as well as ensuring that the saint was properly venerated.  

The case of Stephen and Knud is typical for such areas where there were no previous martyrs, or where reports about previous martyrs were sufficiently uncertain as to allow for the claim that this particular saint was the first martyr of a recently-christianised people and a recently-christianised region. This function of typological guarantor was one that Saint Stephen frequently inhabited during the Middle Ages.  



     

New publication: Randmerknader som levd religion?

Earlier today I was notified about the publication of the article "Randmerknader som levd religion?" (Marginal notations as lived religion?" in the latest issue of the Swedish journal of history Scandia. This was a special issue dedicated to the subject of lived religion in premodern Northern Europe, guest edited by Sara Ellis Nilsson and Terese Zachrisson of the project Mapping Lived Religion hosted by Linnaeus University and University of Gothenburg.

I was kindly invited to participate in this special issue, which led to the writing of my most speculative article yet, an article that aims to make a case for interpreting marginal notations as expressions of lived religion. My case study was a late-medieval Catholic legendary housed at the Protestant school Herlufsholm in Denmark at the turn of the eighteenth century. The article is in Norwegian, but an abstract in English can be found here. Abstracts of the other articles of the issue can be found here. The articles will become open access late in the spring of 2023. 

The article gave me a chance to explore some books familiar to me from previous projects, but from a new angle. Hopefully, this pilot study will contribute in some way to new knowledge being extracted from the book collection of Herlufsholm, which is currently kept in the special collections of the University of Southern Denmark.