New publication: Arnfastus Monachus

For the past six months, I have worked as a co-editor of the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, hosted by the University of Bergen. This is an encyclopedia containing articles about authors writing in Latin and anonymous texts in Latin composed before c.1530. It was founded in 2008 and last updated in 2012, and is currently being updated as part of the project CODICUM, a collaboration between several Nordic universities.  

The updating process does not only consist of editing existing articles, but also writing new ones that have so far been missing. I have been working on one of these missing articles over the past few months, and thanks to some archival research earlier today, I have now been able to complete it and have it published on the website. The article in question is on the monk Arnfast - or Arnfastus Monachus - who is only known as the author of a hagiographical poem on the miracles related to Saint Knud Rex, the patron saint of Odense. The article covers a range of details concerning the poem, providing an overview of what little we know, and a discussion of some of the conclusions we might draw from the work itself.    

Saint Michael in Lübeck

 

Today is the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, famous in medieval art as a fighter against the Devil and as a weigher of souls. Often, these two roles converge in medieval iconography, such as in the woodcut presented below, where the soul-weighing archangel is lifting his sword to strike at a devil who is climbing into one of the scales. When a person had died, their sins and good deeds were weighed in Saint Michael's scales, and if the good deeds outweighed the sins the person would go to Heaven - if not, they were headed in the opposite direction. In the woodcut below, the good deeds weigh more heavily than the sins, so a devil is climbing into the scale containing the sins of the departed soul in order to weigh it down and ensure that he can take the soul with him to Hell. 

The woodcut is from the first folio of Das Leuent der Heiligen, a collection of saints' legends and other stories pertaining to the Christian year, printed by Lucas Brandis in 1478. Such stories were popular in late-medieval Europe, both owing to the increased literacy rates and because more people could afford books. Brandis' edition appears not to have been a great success as only one edition of the collection is known, and as both the book and the woodcuts were bought by the printer Steffen Arndes who subsequently re-issued the work in 1488 and in several later editions. 

Lucas Brandis, Der Heiligen Leben 

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.1r

A list of published articles

Recently, the website academia.edu updated its terms and conditions to include a clause that would allow the website to utilise all uploaded files and images - including profile pictures - to train AI generators and generate content. This is a serious escalation from an earlier update, in which the website used uploaded papers to generate podcasts. While the previous update could be blocked, the new and much more comprehensive update would allow predatory companies unrestrained access to material that has been carefully and painstakingly composed in order to contribute to the open scholarly discussion through which society moves towards a better understanding of itself and its past. It is completely unacceptable to me that scholarship - just like art and entertainment - should be utilised to generate texts and images that are simulacra of reality but that do not serve any purpose beyond the enrichment of a technological elite. Consequently, I have deleted my profile at academia.edu. Although the website has since walked back on its grotesque overreach of power, I do not wish to return to a place that was once useful for an emerging scholar, but has now become unreliable and less trustworthy than ever. 

There might be other alternatives, but in today's Internet there is always a chance that other platforms will morph into something equally predatory. Therefore, I have put together this list of articles that I have written over the years, with links to those that are available online and in open access. Should you be interested in any of the articles that are not online, please contact me and I will happily send a pdf of the text in question. These articles were written to be accessible, to be read, to be used, and to be part of a wider exchange. They were not written to assist the degradation of knowledge that is currently unfolding through the AI boom. 

List of articles

“Typologies of the medieval cultural border”, in Revista Roda da Fortuna – Electronic Journal about Antiquity and the Middle Ages, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017: 25-54. ISSN: 2014-7430  

“The North in the Latin History Writing ofTwelfth-Century Norway”, in Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (eds.), Visions of North in Premodern Europe, CURSOR 31, Turnhout, Brepols, 2018: 101-21      

“Reformulating the sanctity of Olaf Haraldsson – Archbishop Eystein Erlendson and the ecclesiastical image of Saint Olaf”, in Andreas Bihrer and Fiona Fritz (eds.), Heiligkeiten: Konstruktionen, Funktionen Und Transfer Von Heiligkeitskonzepten Im Europaischen Fruh- Und Hochmittelalter, published in the series Beiträge zur Hagiographie, edited by Dieter R. Bauer, Klaus Herbers, Volker Honemann and Hedwig Röckelein, Steiner Verlag, 2019: 45-71

“Strategies for Constructing an Institutional Identity – Three Case Studies from the Liturgical Office of Saint Edmund Martyr”, in Katharine Handel (ed.), Authors, narratives, and Audiences in Medieval Saints’ Lives, Open Library of the Humanities, Cambridge, 2019: 1-31

“The Odense literature and the liturgy of St Cnut Rex”, in Steffen Hope, Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Anne Hedeager Krag and Mads Runge (eds.), Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy - The first royal saint of Denmark, Odense Bys Museer, published in the series Kulturhistoriske studier i centralitet, vol. 4, 2019: 100-17         

“Spor etter folkeleg kult – aspekt ved helgendyrkinga av Sankt Knud Rex i dansk mellomalder”, in Magne Njåstad and Randi Bjørshol Wærdahl (eds.), Helgener i nord – nye studier i nordisk helgenkult, Novus Forlag, Oslo, 2020: 61-80         

“Thirteenth-century Ivory Crozier from Greenland from the Perspective of Economic History”, in Sullivan, Alice (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages, ARC Humanities Press, 2021

“Byzantine history in the legend of Saint Olaf of Norway”, in Anna Lampadaridi, Vincent Déroche and Christian Høgel (eds.) L’historiecomme elle se présentait dans l’hagiographie, published in the series Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, Uppsala, Uppsala University Press, 2022: 31-59        

“Symbolic crucifixion and royal sainthood – two examples from Benedictine saint-biography, c.987-c.1120”, in Barbara Crostini and Anthony Lappin (eds.), Crucified Saints from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age, published in the series Sanctorum, Scritture, pratiche, immagini, Viella, 2022: 197-22

“Interaksjon med forteljingar som levd religion? – Ei forsøksstudie med utgangspunkt i randmerknader frå Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15”, in Scandia: Tidskrift för historisk forskning, Vol 88, No. 2 (2022): 241-62                  

“Helgenerne i Skive. Deres udvalg i kontekst”, in Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Per Seesko-Tønnesen (eds), Dansk senmiddelalder, reformationstid og renæssance. Spiritualitet, materialitet og mennesker. Et festskrift til Lars Bisgaard, Odense, Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2023: 149-165           

“Urban medievalism in modern-day Odense – thecase of Saint Knud Rex”, in Gustavs Strenga and Cordelia Heß (eds.), Doing memory of medieval saints and heroes in the Baltic Sea Region, De Gruyter, 2024: 113-44            

 

“Saintsand elites on the periphery: an introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 4-42          

 

“Non-native Saints: Introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 51-55

“Native Saints: Introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 211-15          

“The Cult of Saints and the Legitimization of Ecclesiastical and SecularElites on the Periphery: Conclusions”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 439-48

“Legitimizing episcopal power in twelfth-century Denmark through the cult of saints”, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 311-30       

“Holy bishops, papal canonisation and legitimisation of power inthirteenth-century Poland and Norway: the cases of Eystein Erlendsson ofNidaros and Stanislaus of Kraków”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac, in Acta Poloniae Historica, special issue on ‘Languages of Power and Legitimacy on the Periphery: Poland and Norway, 1000-1300’, edited by Grzegorz Pac, Wojtek Jezierski and Hans Jacob Orning (vol. 129), 2024: 143-84 

“The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the MiddleAges and the Early Modern Period”, in Belgrade Philosophical Annual 37.02,2024: 123-38

“Sacral Strongholds in the Twelfth century: Aristocracy, Nunneries, and Parish Churches”, co-authored with Anna Dryblak, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 165-204    

“Patron Saints and the Legitimization of Bishoprics until c.1200”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 205-49        

“Coinage, the cult of saints, and the legitimization of elites in eleventh- andtwelfth-century Poland and Norway”, co-authored with Mateusz Bogucki and Svein Harald Gullbekk, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 289-319                              

“The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose”, in Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, Kingand Martyr, Translation and perspectives, ed. by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Kirstine Haase, and Steffen Hope (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2025), pp. 19-33  

“A comparative overview of Passio II and Gesta Swenomagni” in Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, King and Martyr, Translation and perspectives, ed. by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Kirstine Haase, and Steffen Hope (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2025), pp. 76-94

 

Reading-spots, part 8

 

Earlier this month, I was in Trondheim for a conference and also to perform a kind of personal pilgrimage. I went to university there, and spent seven formative years in the city, and there are numerous places where my own past comes closer and where I notice this release of pain and joy that we call nostalgia, which is memory filtered through our later knowledge of what has been lost and of what might have been.  

Last time I was in Trondheim for several consecutive days was in November 2018, a time in my life when everything seemed uncertain and where I knew I was barrelling towards the end of an era. In some ways, my latest return to Trondheim was marked by several of the same aspects, such as uncertainty, and a sense of loss. But it was also a joyous return, as I met loved ones and walked familiar streets, and as I saw that some of the old places where I left part of my past were still standing. One such place was Baklandet Skydsstation, a cafe housed in the premises of an old house - mainly from the nineteenth century - which has served as a house for manufacture of different kinds throughout its history. It is a quiet and lovely place, with the right kind of old-fashioned atmosphere, namely one that does not feel constructed or contrived.  

In many ways, the quiet, very Norwegian surrounds provided a notable contrast to the book I was then reading, Myriam Moscosa's wonderful novel León de Lidia (Lion of Lydia), which is a reflection on the history of her family and the collective memory of Ladino Jews who migrated from Bulgaria to Mexico in the wake of World War II, a memory that captures a lot of the fissures and faultlines of the twentieth century. Yet as I was there to reconnect with my own past, it also felt like very apposite reading. 

Perhaps a more notable and incontrovertible contrast was provided by the writing which I set out to do after I had finished eating. As I moved to a smaller table in a corner, I sat down to outline a new structure for a co-authored article that deals with the role of violence in medieval and early-modern utopian thinking. The topic is horrifyingly relevant in today's world, but in that particular corner of both the world and of the building in particular, the contrast between subject-matter and place was particularly notable. 

Same woodcuts, different saints – towards a methodology for establishing minor saints

 

One of the several challenges when researching the cult of saints is to assess the relative importance and popularity of any given saint. There are various parameters for assessing whether a saint had a large cult, and in those cases there is often source material that allows us to flesh out some of details concerning the saint’s popularity. For instance, miracle collections teach us where some of the pilgrims came from, which in turn makes it possible to map the extent of the cult, albeit incompletely. Church dedications outside of the cult centre provide similar nodes when tracing the cult, and so do the spread of manuscripts containing legends or liturgy for the saint in question. Calendar entries are likewise important sources, especially when later hands add further information, to the names that indicate which saint is to be celebrated on that particular day.

            In the case of saints that are less well attested in the source material, the questions of importance and popularity become more complicated. Granted, most saints are not universally important. However, some saints might appear more important than they were due to the state of the surviving source material – both for that saint and for other saints venerated in the same church province – and some saints might have been important for certain social echelons rather than for the populace as a whole. Despite these uncertainties, it is relatively easy to ascertain that saints with a widespread cult and a strong cult centre were both important and popular within a particular geographical area or within a particular time frame.      

            The minor saints, however, are even more complicated. These are saints that might be ubiquitous in calendars and might be attested throughout the Middle Ages, but where there was no particular cult centre where their relics were housed and from where their cult was promoted. Or if they did have a such a cult centre, the institution in question did not attempt, or perhaps did not mange, to disseminate their cult abroad. In some cases, these are old saints which are found in later medieval sources because they were introduced into the martyrologies that were copied and expanded from Late Antiquity and into the Carolingian period. In other cases, they are local saints that emerged later and were incorporated into the liturgical year of a diocese or a church province, and were then copied into later calendars or breviaries without much regard for the saint or their legend. Such saints might have been minor, but that does not mean that we can unequivocally say that they were unimportant. Especially local cults with little imprint on the surviving source material might have been far more important to the non-ecclesiastical populace than the patron saint of the diocese – especially of the smaller cult was venerated in smaller villages or parishes outside the episcopal see. Moreover, popularity often comes and goes in waves, there are surges and ebbs, and sometimes there never comes a second surge. Consequently, we need to employ very careful parameters assessing whether a minor saint was, indeed, minor.

 

In the present blogpost, I provide you with one case where the surviving source material allows me to designate three saints’ cults as neither important nor popular, at least not at the time and in the place of the source in question. This source is a vernacular collection of saints’ legends, printed in Lübeck by Lucas Brandis around 1478. Such collections were common in fifteenth-century Germany, and were ultimately modelled on the liturgically organised collection Legenda Aurea by Jacobus Voragine, compiled sometime in the 1260s. Unlike Legenda Aurea, however, which was put together in order to provide preachers with material for their sermons, collections such as Lucas Brandis’ Passionael were printed and sold to merchants and other literate social groups whose livelihood – such as artisans – allowed them to accumulate more money.

Lucas Brandis’ Passionael allowed ordinary citizens to read and listen to the stories of saints, some of whom they knew well while others were no doubt new to them. It is important to note that when Brandis put together his collection, he had to reflect on his audiences and their tastes. In some cases, saints would be included practically out of necessity, since they were expected in such collections – for instance the biblical saints. Moreover, Brandis must have been aware of the cult of saints in Lübeck: which were venerated in the city’s various churches, and which were popular. As for the saints he included in collection, some of them were likely gathered from similar collections elsewhere in Germany, whether in the vernacular or in Latin, which he then had translated into Low German.

The chapters were typically introduced with a woodcut vignette that depicted the saint or saints who were the protagonists of the chapter, or an episode from the legend. In many cases, the woodcuts were made specifically for the saint in question and demonstrate familiarity with their iconography, or reliance on the text which is introduced. In other cases, however, the saint or saints were less well known, and their legend was sufficiently generic to be summarised in the same way as other saints whose legends, or whose basic iconographical features or elements, were similar. For saints like these, woodcuts could often be reused. Such reuse constitutes fairly solid evidence that the saint or saints introduced in this generic way was to all intents and purposes a minor saint.

In Brandis’ Passionael, there are several woodcuts that are used in this way, but for the present blogpost I will focus on three of them, simply because they are placed at the top of consecutive chapters, meaning that the reader leafing through the book will encounter these images uninterrupted by others. We should imagine that Brandis made this decision consciously and was aware of the effect it would have on the reader and on their impression of the saint. That he nonetheless went through with this organisation of the woodcuts suggests that the saints were, indeed, neither popular nor important in Lübeck around 1478. 

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.324v  

The first example comes from folio 324v, which contains the opening of the chapter on Nazarius and Celsus, two saints allegedly exhumed by Ambrose of Milan and venerated there throughout the Middle Ages. Their legend was included in Legenda Aurea, and can also be found in several calendars used in Scandinavia. I have written about their legend here. The legend tells of a pair of male saints who were martyred together. The woodcut summarises the climax of the martyrdom, with both saints placed in a hilly or craggy landscape, shown mid-execution as the head of the one lies on the ground facing the executioner who is preparing to strike the head of the other. It is a dramatic and graphic scene, and it is one that can summarise the fate of several other male martyr-pairs, of which there are quite many in the Latin medieval cult of saints. 

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.325v

The second example is found on folio 325v, introducing the chapter on Simplicius and Faustinus, two brothers whose martyrdom is typically dated to the Diocletian persecution. They were beheaded and their bodies thrown into the Tiber. The legend also includes their sister Beatrice, but she was not beheaded, and she is not always named in the calendar entries for their feast-day, July 29. In Scandinavia, and presumably also in Lübeck, their cult would probably have been overshadowed by that of Saint Olaf of Norway whose feast was on the same day.

Lucas Brandis, Passionael

München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Inc.s.a. 780, f.326r

The third example is found on folio 326r, the page opposite that of the previous vignette, which introduces the chapter on Abdon and Sennen (here written “Sennes”, which is not uncommon). These martyrs were killed during the Decian persecution, and I have written about them here. They were Persians who were brought to Córdoba, from whence they were brought to Rome and killed following the discovery that they were evangelising. Their feast-day was on July 30, and it is likely that they, too, were eclipsed by the feast of Saint Olaf on the preceding day. 

 

The woodcut used for these vignettes are also employed elsewhere in Brandis’ Passionael, but I have not seen them in such an uninterrupted sequence as this one. To use the same woodcut for all of them was a deliberate decision, as there were elements enough in all of these legends to provide something different for the engraver. That no such effort was taken is a fairly good indication that these saints were included because they were expected – as part of the regular liturgical cycle – but that they were also known to be practically unimportant to Brandis’ intended audiences. Consequently, in this one instance we can be fairly certain that these were minor saints, at least for the time and place in question. Often, this is as much certainty as we can hope for when researching the cult of saints. 

Cantigas de Compostela, part 4 - Saint Bartholomew

 

Today is the feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, who - according to Latin medieval tradition - had evangelised in India, where he had been flayed alive as part of his martyrdom. The sensational and macabre manner of his death provided medieval artists of various media with the licence to depict his passion story in varied and inventive ways. To the modern mind, the most famous examples are from Renaissance artists, such as Marco d'Agrate's statue in the Cathedral of Milan, or Michelangelo's Last Judgement scene from the Sistine Chapel, in which Bartholomew - with the face of Pietro Aretino - is holding his empty and dangling skin. These late examples, however, are part of a much longer tradition. One older example can be found from one of the portals of Santiago de Compostela, the Fachada de las Platerías, in which are assembled masonry from various parts of the twelfth-century cathedral. On the side of one of the archways is the haloed and bearded figure, holding his butcher's knife in his right hand and holding his saggy, empty skin in his left, clutching it by the hair. The iconography is immediately recognisable, the masonry is exquisite, and the piece as a whole is a solid reminder of how the iconographical tropes that we often first encounter through canonical Renaissance art have a much older history, and that the Renaissance was a squarely medieval phenomenon. Moreover, it is important to note that there are no straight lines from Compostela to d'Agrate's Milan or Michelangelo's Rome. Rather, these are all dots in an evolving network of ideas and images that connects various places, but where the transfer of influences cannot possibly be mapped or recorded.  

New publications, part 3 - Coinage, the Cult of Saints, and the Legitimization of Elites in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway

 

In the present blogpost, I wish to present the third and final of my three co-authored articles that were published in a recent volume (for the previous two, see here for the first one, and here for the second one). All these articles were written during my previous position, where I was a postdoctoral researacher at a project investigating the legitimisation of elites in medieval Norway and Poland, a collaboration between the University of Oslo and the University of Warsaw. 

This last article is titled "Coinage, the Cult of Saints, and the Legitimization of Elites in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway", co-authored with Mateusz Bogucki and Svein Gullbekk. The article takes as its starting-point the disparity in the use of saints on Norwegian coins compared with Polish coins. From this quandary, we examine how both coinage and the cult of saints could converge in the legitimisation of elites, or - on the contrary - had to be kept separate in order to avoid the legitimisation of the wrong kind of elites.    

Since I am a novice in numismatics, I was greatly aided in this article by my co-authors. The writing process was slow and at times agonising because of the very careful balance needed when trying to say something about general historical tendencies based on little and very uncertain material. But it was also a challenge that greatly expanded my horizon. 

New publications, part 2 - Saints and Legitimization of Bishoprics in Poland and Norway until c. 1200

 

In my previous blogpost, I provided a brief presentation of one of my three co-authored articles published last month. All these articles belong to a volume published as part of a research project hosted by both the University of Warsaw and the University of Oslo, and it was at this project I had my most recent postdoctoral position. 

The second of my contributions is "Saints and Legitimization of Bishoprics in Poland and Norway until c. 1200", co-authored with Grzegorz Pac. This article compares how the cult of saints was used by Polish and Norwegian bishops to solidify their position in society, and how their power and authority were legitimised by the bishop's role as guardian of the cult. The article examines how both bishops and saints' cults related to other social elites throughout the eleventh and twelfth century. One of our main questions - to which I believe we have found a very reasonable answer - is why native cults flourished so strongly at an earlier point in Norway than in Poland. 

The article has been a challenge to write because of the many angles from which we approached our material, but precisely because of the comprehensive examination of Norwegian and Polish medieval society, this article is one of the most rewarding texts I have worked on to this date. 

New publications, part 1 - Sacral Strongholds. Nunneries as Sources of Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway

Last month saw the publication of one of the collections of articles pertaining to the project where I did my previous post-doc. The publication as a whole is in open access, and it is available here. Since I contributed to three of the articles in this volume, I will briefly present each of these here, with a link to the article in question. 

The first of my contributions is "Sacral Strongholds. Nunneries as Sources of Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway", co-authored with Anna Agnieszka Dryblak. This article compares how nunneries were founded in order to strengthen the legitimisation of both secular and ecclesiastical elites in the two polities. The article contains four case studies, two concerning secular elites and two concerning ecclesiastical elites. It was a challenge to write this article, as I started out with much less expertise on the subject than my co-author, but it was therefore a great opportunity to delve deeper into this particular aspect of Norwegian history, and to consider these institutions both in terms of social networks and topographies. 

A saint against lightning - Saint Olaf and the bell at Moster Old Church

 

Today is the feast of Saint Olaf, the patron saint of Norway, who died at the Battle of Stiklestad north of Trondheim in 1030. He was declared holy on August 3 1031 by Bishop Grimkell. The bishop had the king's body translated to the Church of Saint Clement, and at this point in time the authority of a bishop - the only bishop in Norway - was sufficient to proclaim someone's sainthood. The cult of Saint Olaf became a defining feature of medieval Norway, and also spread throughout the North Atlantic and Baltic regions. 

Since the cult of Saint Olaf was in practice ubiquitous in medieval Norway, there are several sources that testify to the veneration of the saint-king - and even more sources that we should presume lost in the passage of time. One of the surviving sources is the oldest of the two bells in Moster Old Church in Southwestern Norway. The church dates to the mid-twelfth century, and is located in the village where twelfth-century tradition claims that Saint Olaf and Bishop Grimkell introduced Christian laws to Norway at the Moster assembly in 1024. The historicity of this tradition is dubious. It is not certain that there was an assembly at Moster in 1024, and it is even more uncertain whether the Christian laws were introduced at such an assembly. When the Norwegian provincial laws were recorded in writing in the second half of the twelfth century, the text of Gulathing law - in whose law province Moster is situated - established this tradition and made it part of the Church's formulation of Norway's history, a formulation in which the course of Norwegian history was guided by divine will and in accordance with a typological pattern found in the Bible. 

Whatever the historicity of the Moster assembly, we do know that Moster was an important village in both the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, as is partly evidenced by the fact that its church was built in stone, a costly and cumbersome material. Sometime in the thirteenth century, a bell was cast for the church, and it is currently located in the church loft. The bell testifies to the veneration of Saint Olaf, as it contains an etching of the saint-king enthroned and holding the axe which had become his main attribute already in the eleventh century. The bell also contains a prayer to the Virgin Mary, perhaps the only saint to gain greater importance in the Norwegian cult of saints than the king. The etching is difficult to see in the pictures below, but it follows an established iconographic pattern and bears resemblance to both wooden sculptures and manuscript illuminations of the period.  

While we cannot say this for certain, it is likely that the figure of the saint and the prayer to the Virgin were both intended - or at least became interpreted over time - as a way to ward off lightning. It is also likely that the figure of the saint-king should be seen as a testament to how the Gulathing tradition - where Moster was the starting-point of the Norwegian Christianisation process - was received in the local community, and we might imagine that the people of Moster in the thirteenth century saw this historical episode as a keystone in their own identity. 

Moster Old Church, April 2024

Covered in a protective net due to restoration works

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.    

New publications, part 1 - Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, King and Martyr

 

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. 

Knutsok - harvest season and the feast of Saint Knud Rex

 

Today is July 10, which is the feast-day of Saint Knud Rex, a Danish king who was killed in 1086. His cult was formally established in 1095 when his bones were translated to a new burial place after being tested in the fire. The feast of Saint Knud Rex was celebrated throughout medieval Denmark, and also reached Norway within a few decades. Although the cult of Saint Knud in medieval Norway is still insufficiently mapped, we know that the feast was important enough to be mentioned as a day of rest in the law of the Gulathing province - one of the four juridical units of twelfth-century Norway. This lawcode was written down around 1160 in the Norwegian vernacular, in which the feast of Saint Knud was known as 'knutsok', meaning 'knutsvaka' or 'the vigil of Knud'.  

July 10 was marked on late-medieval runic calendars with a rake or a scythe to signal the beginning of harvest season. This was when the Julian calendar was still in use, and so this date came slightly earlier in the agrarian cycle than it does today. Even so, the feast of Saint Knud continued to be a marker in the annual round also after the Danish-Norwegian Reformation of 1536/37. Well into the twentieth century, it was customary in my home village of Hyen that July 10 was the date when the cattle and the milkmaids moved to the summer farms - either on the day itself or the weekend nearest that date. (In some cases the milkmaids did not stay at the summer farm but only spent the nights and then returned tot he farms to participate in the harvest in the daytime.) While I never heard my grandparents talk about knutsok when growing up - as opposed to jonsok (Saint John's Eve) or pederstol (cathedra petri) - it is evident that the medieval practice of connecting harvest season with the feast of the saint-king was still alive several centuries after the formal introduction of Protestantism in Norway. 

In our time, the summer farm in my part of the village is mostly used as a recreational space. None of the byres that still stand are used for keeping animals, and the cattle are now mostly moving about freely in certain parts of the valley. The summer farm is a beloved space, and much of my childhood was spent here, learning about the natural cycle in this part of the village. Today, I went to the shieling that belongs to my family. I did this as an homage to the old ways, even though we only stay at the shieling for a few days at a time, and then only for the sheer pleasure of it. A few sheep were grazing in one of the nearby fields, and the scent of pines, ling and bog filled an air rich with moisture. It felt right to maintain this connection - however flimsy, tenuous and construed - with a tradition that is now lost to all but a vague collective memory deciphered by scholars, and it was a pleasant reminder that some things are worth doing if only symbolically. 

A lesson in similarities - reflecting on a memoir by Scholastique Mukasonga

 

There is always more that unites the individuals of the human species than what separates us. This is one of the basic lessons I always try to teach my students, and it is one of the most important lessons that the humanities can provide, whether it is through history, religion, or literature. I am reminded of this very fundamental truth time and again, and last week I was reminded more forcefully than I have been in a long time. Last week, I was finishing Scholastique Mukasonga's memoir La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman) in Agnete Øye's Norwegian translation Den barbeinte kvinnen. Scholastique Mukasonga grew up in Rwanda and provides a wonderful and heartbreaking insight into life in a village of exiled Tutsis in the 1960s. This book is a testament to the blood-soaked legacy of colonialism, a witness to the long roots of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, and an overview of the myriad nuances and details that make up life for exiles who have to balance tradition with what is available in their new situation. 

Among the many vivid description of Mukasonga's childhood and upbringing, I was most immediately struck by the descriptions of the agrarian cycle. The plants grown in the Rwandan countryside are for the most part very different to what I am used to from my own upbringing on a Western Norwegian farm. The seasons, too, follow a different pattern than what we have to contend with in the fjords. Even so, despite the differences in climate and the foodstuffs, I recognised immediately the care that went into the preparation of a new harvest, the joy at the sequence of different produce ripening at different times, the worry about an unfortunate and unexpected alteration in the weather pattern, the celebration of the successful completion of the various stages of the agrarian cycle. The emphasis on community also struck a strong chord, as any agrarian life is dependent on the help of one's neighbours and is comprised of deals, quarrels, agreements and compromise throughout the year. The circumstances might differ, but the fundamental elements are the same. 

It was difficult to read The Barefoot Woman. It is an unvarnished account, but told with both poetry and simplicity, and it contains many details that showcase how brutal the conditions were in Rwanda in the 1960s. What is being described is a world strange and in practice completely unknown to me, as the fears and the uncertainties that presided over Mukasonga's childhood are aspects I can only intellectually understand, never physically or emotionally. But through those common touchstones that are so typically and universally human - the cares and joys of farming - I could easily feel the kinship that exists between humans across vast distances in both time and space. And this lesson, that farmers on whichever part of the planet have a shared sense of the yearly round, is yet another piece of evidence that there is more to unite us than to separate us. Reading this book, therefore, is an antidote to the kind of nationalism and racist worldview that insists on humans belonging to separate categories due to the colour of their skin or their geographical location. For me, a son of farmers, I easily feel a stronger affinity with the exiled Tutsis described by Mukasonga than with anyone who is so detached from the world as not to understand that such bonds exist. 

Scholastique Mukasonga, Den barbeinte kvinnen

The measure of a man's work - or, the insufficiency of numbers

He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only 

- William Blake, There is No Natural Religion

Tomorrow, my status as guest researcher at the University of Oslo is at an end. This was a status I was given after my contract was concluded, in order to allow me to carry out some duties to which I had committed myself even though I was no longer employed by the university. It was a kind extension of grace, and not the first one I have encountered in the winding pathways of academia. As this period has come to an end, however, I have recently been transferring files that have accumulated in the course of the four years since I was employed as a postdoctoral researcher. This is a liminal stage, and one where I am compelled - perhaps even forced - to take stock of what the preceding period of my life has entailed. This stock-taking reached its perhaps most poignant moment when I realised that the two memory sticks that I had used to transfer my files provided a very concise measure of my work in those four year, namely 52.7 gigabytes. That is what it all comes down to, and to have this period and all it has entailed summarised so neatly in cold numbers is a brush with mortality and pointlessness at the same time. Such a summary feels like cliometrics taken to its most extreme and perverse end. 

However, despite the coldness of those numbers, I am also compelled to reflect more closely what they envelop and how insufficient they are for providing an accurate measure of the work and worth of those four years. These gigabytes include the files for numerous articles, some of which have been published in the course of this four-year period, some of which are in various stages of completion or publication, while yet others might never be published at all. There are slides and scripts from numerous presentations at various conferences or public events. There are downloaded texts, some of which I have even managed to read. There are pictures, screenshots, drafts, applications, reimbursement forms, a whole range of items that represent possible and realised pathways that together make up my time as a postdoctoral researcher in Oslo, and the subsequent six months as a guest researcher. It is a multitude and a depth that numbers cannot accurately capture. There is some comfort in that insufficiency of numbers as I am settling into a different pace and as I am organising the paperwork of this period that is coming to a close. And it is a good reminder in an academia increasingly obsessed with numbers and measurements that numbers are only signifiers and summaries, they do not contain the complete picture. 

Reading-spots, part 7

 

For work-related reasons, I am currently thinking back to one of my favourite reading-spots from the past few years, namely the restaurant Taiga in the neighbourhood of Lista in Madrid, where I spent many evenings in April and May of 2023, reading, writing, thinking, and just enjoying existence. One of the reasons why this reading-spot has such a strong place in my memory is partly that the two weeks I spent in Madrid that spring were two of the best weeks I have had in the past decade, and from my sidewalk table I could enjoy the feeling of being in a familiar and beloved place - feeling at home, of sorts. Another reason why this particular reading-spot is so important to me, is that it was here that I took a huge step in a new professional direction. 

This spring, I had started focusing more on researching utopian literature, a field in which I had long been interested, and which I was now able to pursue with more concerted effort thanks to a friend and colleague with whom I began collaborating. On that sidewalk outside the restaurant, I spent long evenings reading Gabriel de Foigny's utopian novel La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land, Known) in David Fausett's English translation. I spent much time thinking and writing fervently on a draft that provided an important foundation for future writing. It felt already then like an intellectual turning-point, and this feeling has since been proven correct. 

But this sidewalk table was also the spot for other types of reading, and other types of thinking. It was a busy spring, and I was also preparing a conference presentation to be held in Rome in a month's time, as well as a speech to be held in a fortnight's time in my home village. Looking back, this table was the nexus of my effort to be a man of the world yet remain a village boy at one and the same time, two roles that I try to connect through my intellectual work. It was also a place where I enjoyed the verses of my friend Raquel Lanseros, one of my all-time favourite poets, whose words have given me so much to be thankful for in this life. 

In short, this was a reading-spot, a writing-spot, and a thinking-spot where much happened, at least in my brain and on paper. It is a place I will always treasure.   

A ritual for fishing

 

Earlier this month, I went with my parents to set out fishing nets in a lake. This is an old practice, and a way by which we have harvested food for generations. There is a lot of skill involved, and as I am quite rusty I need to practice so that the mechanics of the various steps become engrained into my muscle memory. Several things can go wrong. For instance, it is important to start near land where the water is shallow, so that the fish is less likely to swim behind the end of the net. For the same reason, when the rower is moving the boat away from the shore, it is important to let the net slip off the hook swiftly and without too much tugging, lest the stone that weighs down the net in the shoremost end is dragged further away from land. 

Setting out fish nets is a practice that goes far back down the earlier generations, and this kind of continuity is part of what grounds me deeper in my native village. There is a timelessness to it, even though the nets we use today, as well as the boat, are both of a type that is decidedly modern, made with modern technology and from modern materials. In other words, fishing with nets is one of those things that remind us that we are always closer to the ways of the past than we are to the ways of an imagined, high-technological, techno-utopian future. 

We had five nets to set, and my father set the first one in a spot of his choosing. He stood in the aft end of the boat while my mother rowed, and he let the net slip off the hook with practiced ease. As the hook itself was the last part remaining, my father spat on it before sending it into the water. This is an old superstition meant to bring good luck, and people also do this with the fishing hook before casting it into a river or a lake.   

The next four nets were set by me while my mother rowed the boat straight ahead. As I am out of practice, I focused intensely on making sure that I didn't drag the net or the net didn't get caught in itself, as it sometimes does when it is a net that is old and frayed. But as the first of my four nets was about to leave my hand, I also leant forward and spat drily and unpreparedly on the hook before releasing it. I did the same with the other nets, and each time I felt an odd satisfaction. This is a ritual, a marking of a transition from one stage to the next, the releasing of the hook a liminal state, a threshold. As so many things in the current historical epoch is entangled in emptiness and destructive fantasies, this kind of ritual felt deeply satisfying, indeed wholesome, as it was an odd but harmless way to mark an important shift in the labour of the evening. I do not believe in such superstitions, but I do believe in the importance of rituals for human beings, however constructed they are. Some rituals are good to have, to retain, to construct, to invent, because these rituals are brief moments that ground us in reality and make us come closer to the interconnectedness of it all. 

I do not believe in such superstition. But the net that my father set was the one that caught the greatest haul.  

Saint Martin and the birds in Salamanca

From the Middle Ages, we have numerous stories about saints and animals. Some of these stories are about animal companions, such as Saint Hugh of Lincoln and his swan. Others are stories of protection (Saint Giles and the wounded hind), stories about healing and recovery  (Saint Thorlak and the lost cow), or stories about control over the animals (Saint Francis and the singing locust, or Saint Edward the Confessor and the nightingales). Regardless of the shape of these stories, they all serve to demonstrate the holiness of the saint in question because of their care for animals or their owners, or because of their miraculous communication with them. These stories also convey the hierarchy of Creation, according to Christian theology, in which humans were set above the beasts and were commanded to be custodians of the earth.  

The various topoi of animals in saint-stories provide a useful background for appreciating a symbolic convergence in the Church of Saint Martin in Salamanca. I went past this church a couple of times when I last visited Salamanca earlier this year, and I happened to note that there is an extensive avian symbolism in both the decoration and the use of the church - all of which has nothing to do with the legend of Saint Martin, but serves to highlight how such coincidences can reinforce pre-existing associations. 

 

One of the entrances to the church was easily accessible as I walked between my hotel and the university area, and I was entranced by the beautiful carvings on the Romanesque portal, a nice - if partial - survival of the twelfth-century stone church, which has been expanded and renovated at various times. The figure of Saint Martin seen above the portal is most likely form the renovation campaign of 1586, but the figures in the arches of the portal show the typical design of the twelfth century, and also has the wear to be expected of carvings that old. In capitals between the pillars and the arches are several winged creatures, including what appear to be sphinxes, long-necked birds (possibly storks), and harpies. These figures are stock characters in Romanesque art, possibly signifying the wild and chaotic world beyond Christian civilisation which the church visitor leaves behind when entering the hallowed space beyond the doors. 

These figures have nothing to do with Saint Martin and his legend. While there is an avian episode from the story of Martin of Tours - in which he hid among geese to avoid being elected bishop - these particular carvings are part of the portal because they were typical figures of their time. Despite not pertaining to Saint Martin's legend, however, these winged creatures do bring a certain symmetry, not so much to the legend itself, but to the Salamancan church of today. Above the church bell, a pair of storks have built a nest and were flying back and forth across the neighbouring streets. As storks are common in Salamanca, there is nothing uncommon about this sight, nor does it have any particular significance for the legend of Saint Martin. Nonetheless, there is something pleasing about the coincidental convergence of iconography and reality when storks settle on the building dedicated to a saint who hid among birds, and which building is also decorated with several avian creatures, including what might possibly be storks. These are coincidences, serendipities, happenstances - but they do converge in a wonderful way to show how life and art sometimes line up, and when you know the art you can also appreciate this convergence more strongly. And we should expect that medieval venerators of Saint Martin would do just that in case they saw birds nesting on this church in the Middle Ages. 

The Loon - a poem by Robert Bly

 

This morning, a pair of loons were frolicking in the lake behind the house of my late grandparents. While I am used to hearing their ghostly cry in one of the lakes higher up in one of the valleys - where their plaintive sound is more naturally at home - this was not the first time I have seen them in this little bay of the lake. And as always happens when I see or hear loons, I was reminded of Robert Bly's wonderful short poem.

The Loon 

From far out in the center of the naked lake

the loon’s cry rose…

it was the cry of someone who owned very little 

- Robert Bly

Lost stories - a possible example from Santiago de Compostela

 

As a historian predominantly concerned with texts, I am keenly aware of how important stories are to the shaping of societies, identities - indeed, of history in general. The way our understanding of the world is shaped happens through stories, often in ways we do not notice. This is why it is so crucial to get at the narrative drive behind people's actions, and also why it can be so difficult to make certain people understand that their understanding of historical reality is not built on solid ground. 

My research deals with stories practically every day. I analyse them, compare them, keep track of their variations, and try to examine how they have shaped the historical context of any given period, and - mutatis mutandis - how the historical context has shaped the stories. The stories that I research are usually well known, if only within a specific field of history or literature, and it has never happened that I have encountered a previously unknown story. (I came close once, but that is a tale for another day.) However, sometimes I do come across stories in images which I do not recognise. For instance, several of the full-page illuminations of the so-called Rothschild Canticles - a fourteenth-century religious florilegium - depict scenes that I do not know, and that I cannot decipher. Although these stories are unknown to me, however, I am certain that there are experts who will be able to recognise them.

Last year, when I visited the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela, I was struck by a series of carved pillars displayed there. The pillars date to the twelfth century, and are from an early stage in the cathedral's building history. They are exquisitely carved and testify to the skill and craft that went into decorating and constructing the cathedral. Along the winding grooves of each pillar are figures and floral forms that seem to depict episodes from stories - perhaps even consecutive episodes from one and the same story. And even though I looked at them carefully while I was there, and even though I have looked at them even more carefully since, I cannot identify the story or stories they represent. The Compostelans who passed by them in the cathedral, however, most likely understood exactly what these carvings meant. They might have heard the stories from sermons, or they might know the stories on which the related sermons were based, or they might have talked to the masons who carved them once they had received instructions from the cathedral clergy. Perhaps pilgrims from all across Latin Christendom were likewise able to recognise these figures. After all, several individuals, both masons and clerics, who were active in twelfth-centuy Compostela came from France and might have brought stories with them from their native places. To us, or at least to me, these stories are lost. 

The loss of stories is a colossal barrier to our understanding of the past. Without catching the various references that remain in the surviving source material, we are unable to understand parts of the storyworlds of the people in a specific period - storyworlds whose stories might have influenced how they made certain decisions, for instance through fear of becoming like the fool in a story, or through a desire to become like the hero of a particularly beloved story. As an example of such a story that might not be altogether lost - I hope those who know it will tell me - but very much lost on me, I give you a sequence of figures from one of the twelfth-century pillars. 

From the top and downward in a spiral, we see a devil standing behind a mermaid, while holding the tale of a snake which is coiling itself around the rightarm and shoulder of the mermaid. The mermaid is clutching her tail with her righthand and holding her tailfin with her left. From under her tail emerges the serpent's head, and it seems to spew a jet - probably of poison - arches its way behind a pair of human figures. The figure closest to the serpent's head is a man who might be hooded. In his right hand is a knife whose blade lies flat along his right thigh. The other figure has a headdress which suggests that it is a woman, and she has seductively placed her right hand on top of the man's right thigh while the left is equally seductively placed on the inside of the man's left shin. The hem of the man's dress - possibly a monk's habit - can be seen flowing behind the woman's head, suggesting she has free access to the man's body.    

What is the story? From these details, it might appear some kind of clerical warning against the sins of the flesh. The mermaid, or siren, is a typical symbol for lust - always blamed on the women - and the devil holding a serpent might be a reference to the temptation of Adam and Eve. The two figures, however, are clearly not Adam and Eve, because they are already dressed - at least partially - and the man is holding a knife. Is he about to castrate himself in order to avoid the temptation of carnal congress? Perhaps in recollection of Christ's words in Matthew 18:9 about cutting out the eye that tempts you to sin? Or is he about to kill the woman, just as we read in stories about some saints to whom the devil appeared as a seductress? The story unfolding along the pillar might draw on all these references mentioned here - after all, they were part of the Latin Christian storyworld. But even if my interpretation of the individual elements is correct - and it might not be - the story itself is no clearer. Are we dealing with a legendary episode? Or perhaps something from Galicia, something even witnessed by those who commissioned the carvings to be made? Or is it more a collection of semiotic signs that together are meant to remind clerics of key aspects of their supposedly chaste way of life, rather than a story as we commonly think of it? It is easy enough to ask these questions, but the story that is likely to be behind this sequence of carvings is lost to me.