Saint Edmund the protector - an example from medieval Norway

 

Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund Martyr, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869/70. His cult became one of the largest cults of a native saint in medieval England, and in the eleventh and twelfth century it was also notable in the Nordic sphere. Since I wrote about the cult of Edmund for my PhD, and how the formulation of his characteristics changed over time, I take the opportunity of today’s feast to connect one of the main iconographic features of Saint Edmund with a reference found in a Norwegian twelfth-century source. If my interpretation of the evidence holds, it suggests that the image of Saint Edmund as it was reformulated at Bury St Edmunds in the late eleventh century was also sufficiently well known in twelfth-century Norway to be a point of reference. 

Towards Hovedøya

The iconographic feature in question is Edmund’s efficiency as a protector and guardian of his territory, who could resort to violent means to carry out his protective role. While the clearest formulation of Edmund the protector first came about in the late eleventh century, the first vita of Edmund, Passio Sancti Eadmundi written by Abbo of Fleury around 985, includes a miracle story that might provide the basis for the later reformulation. This miracle story tells of how a group of thieves broke into Edmund’s resting place at Bury in order to steal the valuables housed there. As the thieves went to their business, they eventually discovered that they were unable to move, and so were discovered the next day by the clergy who served at the shrine. The thieves were subsequently executed by hanging on the orders of the bishop. Abbo remarks that the death of the thieves was an unnecessary tragedy, and the violent aspect of Edmund had apparently not become part of his image at that point. What is important, however, is that it was through Edmund’s merits that God prevented the thieves from moving, and Edmund was then able to protect his property.  

In the late eleventh century, during the abbacy of Baldwin (r.1065-97), Herman the Archdeacon compiled a collection of miracles which also served as a history of the abbey, and especially the period preceding the reform of the church into a monastic house in 1020. Herman recorded a story of how King Svein Forkbeard, the leader of Danish raiders who demanded heavy tribute from the church at Bury, was killed in his bed by Saint Edmund. The killing of the Danish king convinced the raiders to relinquish their demands. With this story, recorded close to sixty years after it supposedly happened, the image of Edmund as a protector had taken a new form. Or, perhaps more accurately, this aspect of Edmund had now been committed to writing and could therefore have a much more tangible impact on the later cult. This impact is notable, both for its early implementation and its longevity. For example, when an office for the vigil of Saint Edmund was added to the already-existing office for the feast-day itself, the story recounted in the four lessons for Matins was that of Edmund’s killing of Svein. The materials for the office were taken from Herman’s account, and although the earliest source of this office dates from the 1120s, it is likely that the office was composed already in the eleventh century. The longevity of Edmund’s reputation as a protector is evident from the wide range of church art that depicts his killing of Svein, but this development is another story, one that is addressed in the two best studies of the cult of Edmund to date, namely Rebecca Pinner’s The Cult of St. Edmund in medieval East Anglia (2015) and Francis Young’s Edmund – in search of England’s lost king (2018).

Towards the abbey church at Hovedøya

In twelfth-century Norway, the cult of Edmund was known, although to what extent is still an unanswered question. The knowledge of Edmund’s cult was due to the close contacts between the Norwegian church and the English church, a contact that had played a signification role in the conversion period of the early eleventh century, and which continued to have an impact on the cult of saints in Norway throughout the twelfth century. One example of this impact is the Cistercian abbey of Hovedøya – Head Island – outside Oslo, which was dedicated to SS Mary and Edmund. The abbey was established in 1147, and became a significant landowner in the Oslo region. It is in relation to this abbey we find our source to the knowledge of Edmund’s role as protector in medieval Norway.         

The source in question is the Registry of Akershus from 1622, an inventory of the records and charters kept at Akershus fortress (see Regesta Norvegica vol. 1, no. 157). One of the records is a letter of donation to the abbey at Hovedøya from the period 1170-78, signed by King Magnus Erlingsson, Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson, Bishop Helge I of Oslo, Earl Erling (the king’s father) and Orm Ivarsson, all of whom were powerful men of the Norwegian kingdom. The letter states that the manor of Frogn, situated north of Oslo, had been given to the abbey of Hovedøya. Moreover, the letter includes the warning that whomever would infringe on the rights and the ownership of the abbey should beware the anger of God and Saint Edmund.

What makes this letter notable is the warning, and the reference to the anger of the saint. To this date, I have not come across a similar formulation in the Norwegian medieval material, and although this does not preclude that it is a common detail of such letters of donations, it is remarkable for how it fits with the image of Saint Edmund that was well established and common by the end of the twelfth century. Granted, that saints could punish those who offended them or who sought to encroach on their territory or their domain is a feature of the cult of saints that was established very early in its history. Punitive miracles are attested early in the literature pertaining to saints. Moreover their role as protectors is often formulated as battle-helpers who provide victory against the enemies of the saint’s clients, and this variant goes back to at least the early fifth century. In Norway, the protective saint was also known in the figure of Saint Olaf, whose role as battle-helper was recorded in the 1150s, and whose punitive miracles were recorded in the 1180s at the latest. There is, therefore, no guarantee that the threat of a saint’s anger in the donation letter should be linked to the image of Edmund the protector as formulated at Bury St Edmunds in the late eleventh century.

The interior of the Church of SS Mary and Edmund, Hovedøya

However, the anger mentioned in the letter is precisely the anger of Saint Edmund. Considering that the Cistercians at Hovedøya were familiar with the legend of their patron saint, and considering that Archbishop Eystein also is likely to have known about it, it would make sense to see this threat as an expression of the knowledge of Edmund’s violent guardianship whenever his territory was threatened or challenged. We do not know of any manuscripts containing the legend of Saint Edmund from twelfth-century Norway, but that absence of evidence is almost to be expected considering that the vast majority of Latin texts produced and/or kept in medieval Norway have been lost. There is, however, one important survival that suggests that Edmund’s role as guardian was known to the Norwegian clergy, at least at the diocesan churches. The survival in question is a fragment from an antiphoner written in Bergen in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. This antiphoner, whose fragments have been digitally collected by scholars at the University of Bergen led by Åslaug Ommundsen, contains an excerpt from the office of Saint Edmund, an excerpt that earned this antiphoner its current name, namely “the Saint Edmund antiphoner”. Pleasingly, at least from the perspective of my argument here, the fragment (NRA Lat. fragm. 1018) contains one of the antiphons for Lauds which recounts the episode of the thieves who broke into Edmund’s shrine. While this miracle antedates the violent version of Edmund’s protective qualities, it is nonetheless a concrete piece of evidence that points to the knowledge of Edmund and his characteristics in medieval Norway. The threat of Edmund’s anger in the donation letter should, therefore, be seen as a manifestation of the idea of Edmund as a violent protector, and that this idea was sufficiently familiar in late twelfth-century Norway to be used in such an official document as a letter of donation.