For the past two years, I have been collaborating with some colleagues in Odense, Denmark, on the publication of a new edition and translation of a medieval Danish hagiography. The text in question is an anonymous vita of Saint Knud Rex of Denmark, who was killed in Odense in 1086 following an insurrection. Knud Rex was one of the most important native saints of medieval Denmark, and his cult resulted in a lot of early texts that have been the subject of much scholarship in our own times. However, the anonymous Passio Sancti Kanuti regis et martiris - a title shared by an earlier and much better known vita - has been largely neglected since it was published in Martin Clarentius Gertz' landmark edition on Danish hagiographical material, Vitae Sanctorum Danorum.
I was invited along on this project by my Danish colleagues, and the work resulted in a volume that contains both a translation and an edition of the text - both executed by Francis Young - and a selection of articles on both the anonymous vita and topics related to the cult of Saint Knud Rex. The volume is now published in open access, and can be downloaded from the website of Museum Odense. I am very thankful to my colleague that I am credited as co-editor, because I should emphasise that my actual contribution to the volume have not been as significant as the bibliographical information of the volume suggests.
The publication is a valuable contribution to scholarship, both on the cult of Saint Knud Rex and the history of medieval Denmark more broadly, as it has already allowed us to rethink some of the aspects of the cult's history, and also some aspects of Danish medieval ecclesiastical history.
As I am very proud to see this volume published, I will wrote more about my own contributions to this book in the next blogpost.
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