Today, November 20, is the feast of Edmund Martyr, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869, and whose cult became one of the most important native cults in medieval England. His cult also spread to the Nordic sphere, most likely as a consequence of both deliberate dissemination and frequent contact between the Nordic polities and medieval England. The history of Edmund's cult in the Nordic world is still incompletely mapped and insufficiently understood in its totality, and there are several tantalising clues to suggest that Edmund was perhaps more important than we have hitherto ascertained.
In October, I was reminded of one such source when I was doing research in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and I was leafing through the 1482 Odense breviary, or Breviarium Othoniense. This was the first commissioned printed book in the Nordic world, and the second to have been printed - since a pamphlet was finished before the breviary - and it was later superseded by two new editions in 1497 and 1510. The breviary reflected recent changes in the ecclesiastical scene of Odense, as King Christian I had dissolved the Benedictine abbey of Saint Knud, which had served as the cathedral chapter of the Odense bishop. Since the liturgy was no longer performed by monks, it had to be abbreviated to suit the more restrained length of secular offices (nine lessons versus twelve for the most important feasts). As a consequence, the Breviarium Othoniense is a challenging source to the liturgical history of Odense diocese, since it represents a recent rupture in the historical practice. The evidence provided by the liturgical material in the breviary must therefore be weighed carefully before being used to suggest historical trajectories.
One of the notable aspects in the 1482 breviary is Edmund's placement in the litany, a list of saints placed according to rank within the diocesan church, to be invoked for their intercession. The litany begins on the previous page and opens with prayers to the Virgin Mary, the angels, the apostles, and then the martyrs. The order of the martyrs is an interesting testament to the popularity of the different saints, and one of the big questions concerning this order is whether it reflects an older ranking or more recent changes. It is, for instance, remarkable that Saint Mauritius comes before Saint Olaf, but that is a different blogpost.
The page shown below, folio 91v, begins with Saint Alban, who was the patron saint of one of the churches in Odense, and whose cult had been brought to the city in the eleventh century - by Saint Knud Rex himself, if we are to believe the hagiographical tradition. His relatively high position among the martyrs is therefore ot surprising. After him comes Saint Olaf of Norway, one of the most important saints in Denmark, but one whose fame appears to have been less intense in the diocese of Odense than in Lund, Roskilde, Ribe, Aarhus, or Børglum. Then comes Thomas, which is Saint Thomas of Canterbury, whose cult in Odense appears to have developed independently of the diocesese of Lund and Roskilde. Then we come to Edmund Martyr. Interestingly, he is before Oswald of Northumbria, whose relics had been brought to Odense alongside those of Saint Alban, according to the hagiographies of Saint Knud Rex.
The main clue about Edmund's standing in the diocese of Odense is his placement before Oswald. The veneration of Oswald is, as mentioned, well attested in sources from the late eleventh century onwards, but no such evidence can be found for Edmund. In the breviary, his feast is celebrated with six lessons, making it a feast of medium importance, and in the 1497 edition the feast has been largely overshadowed by the feast of Saint Elizabeth (see this blogpost). That Edmund was placed between Thomas of Canterbury - whose cult spread quickly and whose fame rose to phenomenal heights, also in Denmark - and a saint whose relics were an important part of the local religious history of Odense, suggests that there also was a veneration of Edmund going back to the twelfth century, since this is the period in which his cult is most likely to heave undergone a new vogue in Denmark. No churches dedicated to Edmund are known from medieval Denmark, and I do not know of any relics of Edmund in the Odense diocese. The large trove of relics in Sanderum Church, for instance, which is situated close to Odense, does not include such relics (although some of the labels are illegible).
The evidence of the litany is not extensive and must be treated with caution. The six-lesson office of Saint Edmund points in the same direction, however, namely that before the overhaul of the cathedral liturgy in the 1470s, the veneration of Edmund in Odense was more significant than other available evidence would suggest. It is perhaps time to envision an even greater impact on religious life in Odense from English ecclesiastics.
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