New publications, part 2 - The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose

 

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am deligted to announce the publication of a volume containing an edition and translation of an anonymous hagiography about Saint Knud Rex of Denmark (d.1086 in Odense), as well as a handful of academic articles. The volume, published by Museum Odense, is in open access and can be downloaded here. I was fortunate enough to be included among the editors of the book, and I am very happy to have worked on a volume that provides a important contributions to scholarship. 

In the previous blogpost, I wrote as a co-editor. In the present blogpost, however, I write as an author of two of the contributions in the volume, especially the article 'The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose'. In this article I examine the anonymous hagiography in order to provide a reasonable assessment of its date and the reason why it was composed. The Younger Passio Kanuti is largely a copy of the earlier Gesta Swenomagni by Aelnoth of Canterbury, composed at Saint Knud's cult centre in Odense in the 1110s. The anonymous text nonethless contains original material and, perhaps just as importantly, rearranges the content of Aelnoth's vita in such a way that we cannot dismiss it as a mere copy. In my article, I therefore examine the internal evidence provided by the text to assess the likely chronological frame of the Younger Passio Kanuti, and also to suggest where it was intended to be used.  

The volume also contains a second contribution of mine, which is a comparative overview of the content of both Aelnoth's Gesta Swenomagni and the Younger Passio Kanuti. While containing some analytical commentary, this article is mainly inteded as an aid to understanding the analysis of the anonymous text and to demonstrate how the anonymous author used and engaged with his primary source. 

Both these contributions were gerat fun to write, because they represent the cumination of several years  of research on the cult of Saint Knud Rex, and they also help to provide a starting-point for future scholarship on both this cult in particular and on the cult of saints in medieval Denmark more generally.