As today is Christmas Day, I was reminded of a scene depicting the Christmas story in the vaults of a Danish parish church at Sanderum, a small village to the north of Odense. The church is from the twelfth century, and has featured in several previous blogposts, but the church space was enlarged in the fifteenth century and covered with an extensive wall-painting programme, some of which has now been heavily restored. The central vault of the church, as seen below, fixes the eye of the churchgoer as soon as they enter into the nave, and the central view is Christ in majesty. On the vault on the left-hand side is a judgement scene, showing the just entering into Heaven, and below that, on each side of the vault, is a summary of Christ's nativity.
On the right-hand side of this vault is the centre-piece of the Nativity, namely the manger with the Christ-child, the Virgin Mary standing above, and the ox and the ass in the background, who, although they do not feature in the gospels, were expected features because of the popular Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and because they feature in the prophecy of Isaiah. On the other side of the vault we find the sleeping or contemplative Joseph, surrounded by a coiling vine. Together, these two separate pieces convey to the onlooker the most important elements of the Nativity. In this way, those in the parish who could not read were nonetheless familiar with the Christmas story, both from the paintings and the vernacular sermon of the parish priest - the first illustrating the words of the second, and the seoncd giving context to the first in an interplay that was integral to how the medieval church conveyed biblical and historical narratives to its audiences.
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