Today
is the feast of Saint Alban, protomartyr of Britain, who was killed some time
in the third century, when Britain was still a Roman colony. The earliest surviving
textual testimony to his cult is the inclusion of his legend in Bede’s Historia
ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, and His cult reached its zenith in the
course of the twelfth century with the increasing power and wealth of the Abbey
of Saint Alban’s.
In addition to the importance of Saint Alban in England, his cult was also
introduced into Scandinavia through different routes. In Norway, a Benedictine
monastery at Selja was dedicated to him around 1100, and his cult became connected
with that of Saint Sunniva of Selja, one of the three main Norwegian saints of
the Middle Ages. The Breviarium Nidrosiense from 1519 contains three
lessons for his feast, which summarised his legend. In Sweden, his feast
appears in a number of surviving calendars, several of which were produced in
England, and a church was said to have been dedicated to him at Säby by the
turn of the eleventh century.
In Denmark, however, his cult appears to have been particularly important in
the diocese of Odense on the island of Fyn, which is the focal point of this
blogpost. By 1086, a wooden church had been jointly dedicated to Saint Alban
and the Virgin Mary, and it was in this year that King Knud IV, later Saint
Knud Rex, was murdered by a mob of insurrectionists on July 10. In the
saint-biographies written in the span of 1086-c.1120, the description of his
martyrdom commonly includes a mention of the relics of Saint Alban, which were
toppled in the tumult when the mob broke into the church. These relics were
said to have been brought from England by Knud himself. Several of the priests
who served at the Church of Saint Alban’s appear to have been English, possibly
brought to Denmark in order to maintain the cult at what was then also the cathedral
of the city.
In the course of Knud IV’s relatively short reign, the foundations for a new
church in stone was begun in Odense. This work was left incomplete by the time
of his death, but it is likely that it was intended to be dedicated to Saint
Alban, as a replacement of the old-fashioned wooden church. (Such replacements
were common across all of Denmark in the period.) As it happened, the new stone
church, which took over the role as the cathedral of Odense, was consecrated to
Saint Knud, as Knud was canonised in 1095 and his relics placed in the crypt of
the church. The cult of Saint Alban, however, was still maintained at the old
church, which appears to have been replaced by a stone church in the course of
the twelfth century, as per the ongoing trend of such replacements. This parish
church, in turn, became defunct in the course of the sixteenth century, and was
eventually dismantled.
The Church of Saint Alban appear in various sources from medieval Denmark, but
it is difficult to ascertain the extent of his cult and its popularity in
Odense. The best testimony to the importance of Saint Alban can be found in Breviarium
Othoniense, which was printed in three editions, in 1482, 1497, and 1510.
This breviary provides a window into the liturgical practices of the diocese of
Odense in the Middle Ages, although it must be examined with methodological caution.
In the 1470s, the cathedral church of Odense, which had been a Benedictine
community, was reformed to a community of secular clerics, and this entailed a
change in the liturgy. While liturgical practice previously had followed the
monastic use, it was now changed to the secular use, which is shorter. This
means that the liturgical offices as they survive in the printed editions of Breviarium
Othoniense are reduced from their former size, and therefore only imperfectly
reflect the liturgy of previous centuries. Even so, it is in this breviary that
we find a best source for the veneration of Saint Alban in medieval Odense.
The office for the feast of Saint Alban can be found on folios 369r-371v in the
1482 edition. This abbreviated, secular office contains materials for Vesper,
Matins, Lauds and Second Vesper. The lessons are taken from Bede, and it is
likely that the chants are similar or identical to those sung at Saint Alban’s,
England, although I have not yet been able to track down any source to this.
Breviarium Othoniense, 1482, f.369r
While the office for Saint Alban as it survives in Breviarium Othoniense is an abbreviated version to what was performed in, say, the twelfth century, it nonetheless gives a very good idea of the story and image of the saint which was rehearsed by the clergy of Odense every year on his feast day. This liturgical repertoire is especially interesting when comparing to the Norwegian repertoire as found in the near-contemporaneous Breviarium Nidrosiense, where, as mentioned, only three lessons with corresponding responsories are included. This suggests that Saint Alban did indeed enjoy significant popularity throughout medieval Odense, at least among the clergy. This can also be glimpsed from Breviarium Othoniense, if we compare with the materials that precede the feast of Saint Alban, namely those for the feast of SS Gervasius and Protasius (June 19). Here, only three lessons are included, which suggests, again, that Saint Alban was venerated more than just perfunctorily in medieval Odense.
Since this is an introductory blogpost to my reflections on the place of Saint Alban in Odense, I will not be going into detail about the liturgy itself, as this is something to which I hope to return in later blogposts. However, I will include two images from the 1482 edition of the breviary. From these images, we get a sense of the celebration itself, as these images show the materials for the first Vesper service, usually celebrated around six in the afternoon. The chants are from the office of Saint Alban, and not from the common of martyrs, a repository of liturgical material that could be performed during the feast of a martyr when materials unique to that martyr were lacking. To put it differently, we therefore know that in Odense, Saint Alban was sufficiently important that chants from his own repository were being sung. We also see a rubric specifying that in Saint Alban’s own church, his own hymn was to be sung, whereas outside of this church, the hymn “Deus tuorum”, which is from the common of one martyr, should be performed instead. This is interesting, as it suggests that the cult of Saint Alban was not of the highest rank, or rather that his veneration was not widespread beyond the Church of Saint Alban’s, even though his importance at his own church in Odense is unquestionable.
More information remains to be extracted from the office of Saint Alban, and eventually I hope to get around to this. But for the present, I will leave this as an opening into the role of Britain’s protomartyr in the history and cityscape of one of Denmark’s largest cities.
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