Today is the feast of Charles I, count of Flanders (1084-1127), who was murdered in the Church of Saint Donatian in Bruges on March 2, which that year was Ash Wednesday. The murder was the culmination of a plot against him that was set in motion by the Erembald family, who held key positions of power in Bruges and who feared that Charles would take that power away from them. The conflict between Charles and the Erembalds was recorded by Galbert of Bruges, who was the notary of Count Charles. This account is now available in an English translation by Jeff Rider, entitled The Murder, Betrayal and Slaughter of the Glorious Charles, Count of Flanders.
The murder of Charles was met with outrage, and the count was eventually venerated as a saint by the local populace. His cult was aided by Galbert's account, as well as by Walter of Thérouanne's Vita Karoli Comitis Flandrie, which both provided a textual foundation for the legends and the rituals of the cult.
Charles was never formally canonised by the pope. Since he died in 1127, such a canonisation was not strictly necessary for any given saint to be accepted as genuine, it was sufficient that a synod of bishops declared the sanctity of the dead individual. However, Charles death came in a time of transition concerning the role of papal canonisation. In the course of the first decades of the twelfth century, it had become more common to also seek for additional ratification of a saint's cult from the pope. This had been the case for Charles' father, the Danish king Knud IV who had been murdered in Odense in 1086, whereupon Charles' mother Adela had fled to her family in Flanders. Knud had been proclaimed a saint by a synod of the Danish bishops in 1095, but on the urging of Knud's brother and eventual successor Erik Ejegod, a delegation had been sent to Rome to obtain the pope's acknowledgement of the Danish king's holiness in 1100 or 1101. That such an acknowledgement was not obtained for Charles did not affect his standing as a saint in Flanders, as papal canonisation had not yet become obligatory, but it might have limited his cult to a regional importance.
Legendarium Flandrense
Bruges Public Library ms. 403, 75v-76r
The death of Charles resulted, then, in his cult and veneration in Bruges, and it resulted in a production of history-writing. Charles' cult also had an important consequence for the survival of Danish history-writing, and it is because of the veneration of Charles that we today have retained two twelfth-century copies of one of the most important sources to the history of Knud IV of Denmark and his dynasty. The source in question is now known by the title Gesta Swenomagni Regis et Filiorum eius et Passio gloriosissimi Canuti Regis et Martyris, the Deeds of King Svend Magnus, his Sons, and the Passion of the glorious Knud, King and Martyr. Svend Magnus was the full name of King Svend Estridsen, Knud IV's father.
The text was written by Aelnoth of Canterbury, an English priest who served in Odense around the time Knud was murdered in 1086. Its original title, to the extent medieval texts were equipped with titles, is lost to us, and the title commonly used nowadays does obscure the fact that this is first of all a saint-biography, and only secondly does it serve as a dynastic history of the reigning Danish dynasty.
The question, then, is what this text has to do with Charles of Flanders, and how its survival is due to his cult. The answer is simply that because of the veneration of Charles, there was in Flanders an interest in his wider family, and the sanctity of the father was evidently seen as embellishing the sanctity of the son. At some point in the twelfth century, scribes at Flanders obtained a copy of Aelnoth's saint-biography, and they incorporated it in the Legendarium Flandrense, a collection of saints' lives typical of the medieval literary world. There are two late-twelfth-century copies of the Legendarium, and these are the oldest, and to my knowledge, only sources of Aelnoth's text. All Danish copies have been lost. It is from these Flemish manuscripts, then, that the modern editions and translations of Knud's saint-biography have been created, one of the most important sources to Danish history, and widely - albeit incorrectly - regarded as the first history to be written in Denmark. (This honour should in actuality go to the slightly older anonymous saint-biography Passio Kanuti.)
Incipit prologus in passione gloriossisimi karoli flandrie comitis et martiris
Here begins the prologue of the passion of the glorious Cahrles of Flanders, count and martyr
One of the manuscripts of Legendarium Flandrense, Bruges Public Library ms. 403, was in 2017 displayed at the Odense City Museums, as part of the exhibition Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy, and I got a chance to see the book with my own eyes. It is a wonderfully well-preserved document, and the twelfth-century script is a pleasure to read. It is also a clear testament to the fact that it was because of the veneration of Charles that Aelnoth's text made its way to Flanders. This is seen in the layout of the book itself. Legendarium Flandrense follows, as is typical of collections of this type, the liturgical year. Since the feast of Charles is on March 2, the text for his feast is naturally in the volume of the Legendarium that covers the spring months. The opening of this text, which appears to be the vita by Walter of Thérouanne, can be seen in the rubric in the photograph above.
The rubric follows the text of Aelnoth's account, and in this we see that the main concern for the Flemish scribes was to provide material for the history of their sainted count Charles, rather than the Danish king. Because if they had been interested in the saint-biography of Knud for its own sake, they would have placed it in a different volume, one that covered the summer months, since the feast of Knud is on July 10. That the account of Knud is, instead, placed in March is a clear statement as to why some unknown individuals in twelfth-century Flanders sent for a copy of Aelnoth's text: By collecting the account of Knud, the father, they evidently felt better prepared to provide readings for the feast of Charles, and presumably also further evidence to his sanctity, as they would be able to point to his father and claim - as was often done in the Middle Ages - that sanctity ran in the family.
Bibliography
The Legendarium Flandrense version of Aelnoth's text survives in two manuscripts:
Bruges Public Library ms. 403, 74r-83r
Saint-Omer Bibliothèque municipale 716, tomus II, 60r-71r
The exhibition Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy resulted in a recently-published article collection, in which several of the contributions touch on the text of Aelnoth's account. This volume can be found here: https://museum.odense.dk/centrum/publikationer/kulturhistoriske-studier/life-and-cult-of-canute-the-holy.
See also:
Galbert of Bruges, The Murder, Betrayal and Slaughter of the Glorious Charles, Count of Flanders, translated by Jeff Rider, Yale University Press, 2013
Walter of Thérouanne, Vita Karoli comitis flandrie et Vita domni Ioannis Morinensis episcopi, ed. by Jeff Rider, Turnhout, 2006
Myking, Synnøve Midtby, "Ter Doest, Lund, and the Legendarium Flandrense: Danish-Flemish Connections in the Late Twelfth Century", printed in The Journal of Medieval Latin, vol. 28, 2019: 115-40
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