A macabre coincidence - pen trials and the guts of Saint Erasmus

History is full of macabre coincidences, and I encountered one such case over a week ago, as I was doing some research in the special collections at the University of Southern Denmark. I returned to look at a copy of the 1492 edition of the Lübeck Passionael, a collection of texts on the various feasts in the Latin Christian liturgical calendar, which was ultimately modelled on the thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine. This book has been a recurring fascination for me ever since I first set eyes on it nine years ago, and this time I had come to take pictures of those woodcut vignettes that I had not yet photographed. Previously, I have focussed on a particular set of saints, while allowing my curiosity to direct me towards other saints that might be relevant for my research, or which might simply catch my eye. The book in question is comprised of 419 leaves, making 838 pages in total, and several of these pages contain one or more woodcuts. No wonder it has taken me years to photograph them all.

Since I was paying more attention to every woodcut missing from my collection, I suddenly noticed a very curious and macabre coincidence on the page containing the woodcut for Saint Erasmus. According to legend, Erasmus was martyred during the Diocletian persecutions in the early fourth century. Because he was killed by having his guts pulled out by a windlass, he is often depicted with the windlass in his hands, and sometimes with the guts rolled around it. The cutter who prepared the vignettes for the Lübeck Passionael made the most of this arresting and recognisable image, and prepared a woodcut for Saint Erasmus which depicted his passion. This choice is particularly notable because not all of the woodcuts in the 1492 edition are made specifically for the saint in question, and several woodcuts are used for several saints. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.33r

The copy now held in the special collections of the University of Southern Denmark was once in the possession of the library at Herlufsholm School, a boarding school in Næstved on Sjælland for young boys. The copy contains marginalia from several readers interacting with the book, but most often these seem to be products of boredom rather than engagement with the actual content. On this page - folio 33r - the interaction had been of a more practical kind. A young pupil had decided to test his quill to see if it was sufficiently well sharpened. This is a common type of marginalia in premodern books, and they are known as pen trials, probatio pennae. In this case, these trials consisted of s-like figures, a shape probably chosen because it would easily reveal whether the quill would need adjusment. As a consequence, the shapes of the pen trials are very similar to how the guts of Saint Erasmus often appear in late medieval art. Granted, in the book itself, the gut is pulled out in a straight line, so there is no reason to think that the pupil would be aware of this similarity, or that it is a conscious decision. As a consequence, the macabre connection needs a third factor aside from the image and the pen trials, and that factor are the eyes of a viewer sufficiently familiar with the iconography of Saint Erasmus to see the similarity. And in this case, I happened to be such a viewer. 

Saint Olaf in Aarhus, part I - the altarpiece of the Church of Our Lady

 

Some day I will go to Aarhus 

- Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man 

Last weekend I was in Aarhus, and this was a trip I had been looking forward to for more than ten years. I have been in Aarhus twice before, but on those two occasion I was not able to explore the city, being once confined to the university area and once to the train station as I was changing trains on a journey from Northern Jutland. This time, however, I had set aside enough time to get to see some of the sights that I had been wanting to see for professional reasons. As it turned out, along the way I learned about more things to see, and this prompted a very felicitous discovery that I had not anticipated. 

The Church of Our Lady, Aarhus 

One reason for going to Aarhus was to visit some of the important medieval sites, especially the cathedral. Since I have been working a lot on the cult of Saint Olaf of Norway, and since I am currently very interested in his cult in Denmark, I had also included a trip to the ruins of the now-lost church that was dedicated to him (and about which I will write another blogpost). En route through some of the sights of Aarhus, I learned about the Church of Our Lady - formerly the Church of Saint Nicholas and the first cathedral of the town - whose medieval crypt was still intact. The church was nearby, and, despite some modernised features, proved to be full of interesting vestiges of its medieval past. The one that made me most excited was an altarpiece which featured a full-figure rendition of Saint Olaf of Norway.

The altarpiece is dated to the early sixteenth century, just a few years before the Danish Reformation of 1536/37. It is attributed to Claus Bjerg, an artist mainly based in Odense and Fyn. Typical of altarpieces of the period, it can be opened on particular feastdays, but when I was there the wings were shut and displayed the exterior paintings. The central doors depict fthe enthronement of the Virgin Mary with Mary sitting next to Christ - whose feet are resting on a model of the spherical earth - and this scene is flanked by six saints. Beside the Virgin is Mary the Magdalen with her pot of balm, and beside Christ is Anthony of Egypt, accompanied by the pig who serves as his attribute (a common feature in church art from late-medieval Denmark, owing to the rise of his cult in this period). The four saints below the enthronement scene are - from left to right - Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, Christopher, and possibly John the Evangelist (due to his appearance as a young man holding a book). On the left wing of the altarpiece are Saint Anne with the Virgin and the Christchild, and on the right wing is Saint Olaf with his halberd - which by this time had replaced the long-shafted axe of earlier centuriers - who is trampling a dragon with a crowned human head. He is also holding what appears to be a pot of balm, which might signify the salved king.

The representation of Saint Olaf is typical of its time, and a very interesting rendition of a figure common in Nordic medieval church art. Olaf appears like a contemporary king, dressed in armour of the time, and serves as a reminder that saints are believed to transcend time, being forever contemporary and relevant. Since Olaf was a popular saint in medieval Denmark, his appearance on this altarpiece is unsurprising, but nonetheless an interesting testament to his importance in Aarhus. Indeed, from the evidence familiar to me so far, it is possible that Aarhus was the most important centre of the cult of Saint Olaf in Denmark. It remains to gather enough evidence to test this hypothesis, and also to suggest explanations for why this is the case. And thanks to this serendipitous encounter in the Church of Our Lady, I am now better placed than ever to get a better understanding of the history of Saint Olaf's cult in medieval Denmark, a long-standing ambition of mine that goes all the way back to my time as a PhD candidate. 

An annuncation from 1492

Today, March 25, is the feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the Archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would be the mother of God. This is one of the most important feasts of the liturgical year in the Latin Church, and medieval calendars typically mark this date in red ink to demonstrate its high liturgical rank. 

Last week, I was looking through the 1492 edition of Passionael, printed by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck, which is a collection of texts on the various feasts of the Catholic liturgical year. The collection is modelled on the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine (c.1260), but it is also adapted to the interests of the Lübeck audience. (For instance, a number of Scandinavian saints were added, and these can be read about in this article by Iliana Khandza.) In 1492, Arndes issued an updated second edition of the book - the first edition came in 1488 - which included new chapters and new woodcuts. 

The chapter on the Annuciation runs from folios 384r to 387r and is introduced by a lovely and curious woodcut vignette. The Annunciation is a common theme in medieval art, and in numerous renditions Mary is depicted as reading from a book or performing her devotions. the Archangel Gabriel is usually standing a few feet away, although sometimes touching Mary with its hand. This 1492 rendition, however, is the first instance I have seen of Gabriel touching Mary with a staff, as if to rouse her out of her pious meditations. The woodcut is expertly done and contains a lot of details for such a small space, and it captures Mary's surprise very well.  

I am very fond of these woodcuts, as they represent a form of art that is not often as appreciated as the large wooden panels or frescoes so commonly associated with the fifteenth century, but which captures contemporary iconography in an effective and interesting way. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.384r

 

A thousand years is not that long - an example from Aarhus

 

The past is not as unfamiliar as is often presumed. Those who work on history-related subjects know this well. In the present day, however, this knowledge is often overshadowed by a pervasive sense of progressivism, by which I mean the idea that human history is constantly progressing, and often towards some specific goal. The most forceful form of progressivism nowadays is that which touts the blessings of artificial intelligence, colonising Mars, and other technological wonders that will change our relationship with earth, with knowledge, with ourselves, and so on ad nauseam.  

For me, however, raised as a son of farmers in the Western Norwegian fjords, elements of the past often resembles things from my own background. These resemblances are not due to the fjords being particularly backwards - although I suspect a lot of urban Norwegians would protest that this is exactly what it means - but rather that certain technologies are perfected very early in their history, and a lot of such technologies pertain to farm life. As a consequence, the solutions offered by these early technologies are still in use. 

I was reminded of this longue durée history of technology when I was visiting the Viking Museum in Aarhus this weekend. (Not to be confused with the famous Moesgaard Museum a bit south of the city.) The museum is small, but contains a lot of interesting archaeological finds from the centre of old Aros, the tenth- and eleventh-century city which was located in what is currently the centre of Denmark's second largest city. The items displayed in the museum are typical of such trading hubs as Aarhus was in that period - typical, but no less interesting for that - and include cooking pots of soapstone, nails from boats, weights from a loom, and whetstones. One of the items that caught my eye was a sinker, a rounded stone used to weigh down a fishing net so that one of its ends is dragged down into the water and prevents the net from just floating on the surface. 

Fishing with nets remains the best method for catching large amounts of fish on a lower scale, and in my family we are always paying attention to when the ice will break on one of the lakes back home, so that we can begin the season. Moreover, when I am out walking with my parents and we are traversing rocky ground, my father will often keep an eye out for rocks that might be suitable as sinkers. They are not as rounded and polished as the one found in the archaeological layers in Aarhus, but in order to serve as sinkers a stone only needs to be heavy but not too much, a bit thin and elongated so that it is possible to tie a cord around it, and shaped in such a way that it is easy to carry.  

The sinker is a technology that need not be improved upon, and I am not sure that it can be improved upon either, only altered in various ways that might give the illusion of improvement. There are several such technologies, and I think it is healthy to be reminded that due to their longevity, they connect us to the past in useful ways - useful because it is good to realise that some solutions have been perfected early, and also useful because modern people do sometimes need the reminder that a thousand years is not that long ago in certain respects. 

A stranger to someone - a view of Norway from Salamanca

 

los raudos torbellinos de Noruega 

- Luís de Gongora, Soledades 

In the library of the University of Salamanca there are four globes, donated in the eighteenth century. They are known as the "round books", and the story goes that they were called that because the library would only accept donations in the form of books. They are displayed in the main room, available to visitors, and last year I was able to see them again when I was visiting Salamanca for a conference. 

Whenever I see early modern globes or maps of the world, I am naturally drawn towards Norway. Over the years, I have seen a lot of different premodern and early modern depictions of my native country, and I am always fascinated how these depictions deal with the rather complicated outline of the Norwegian coastline. The degree to which the map fits the terrain is an interesting starting-point for understanding what kind of cartographical information existed about Norway at the time, and very often it will become evident that to a lot of continental cartographers Norway was not very well known, at least compared to what one might expect given the relative proximity between the big map-making centres and Scandinavia. 

These maps are sources to Norwegian history, at least as long as we ask the right questions. On a non-academic level, the maps also serve as good reminders that one will always be a stranger to someone, that our known world will seem alien to someone else. In our own age, when information - if not necessarily knowledge - is easy to come by, it can also be easy to forget that our ideas about other parts of the world rarely fit with reality. And to see oneself from the outside, to see Norway from Salamanca through eighteenth-century eyes and map-making hands, is a useful reminder of the gap between perception and reality. And this is a good thing to keep in mind, both for academics and for non-academics alike. 

Saint George in Stokkemarke

In the later medieval period, i.e., from the late fourteenth century onwards, the cult of Saint George underwent a remarkable surge in Denmark. This surge can be explained by several impulses, but a key reason for the popularity of George was that he often figured as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a changeable set of saints which became popular in Germany in the same period. Due to extensive contact between Denmark and German-speaking areas in the period, especially through trade, a number of religious trends from Germany were absorbed into Danish society.  

The popularity of Saint George resulted in the commissioning of a number of artworks - typically from German-speaking areas or the Low Countries, but also several local ones as well (see here, and here) - and they all provide fascinating glimpses into medieval Denmark. These tend either to show George and the dragon as a standalone pair, or to depict the battle against the backdrop of the city which the dragon terrorised. The scenes including the city always serve as compressed narratives of the legends, and they tend to be crammed with details drawn from the narrative or that seem to be included for the sake of decoration or curiosity.  

One of the most delightful aspects of these depictions of Saint George is how they contemporise him, making him appear in garb from the period in which the artwork was made, so that the dragonslayer appears like a man from the same society of those who behold the scene, and those who see the depicted story unfold in that combination of static unchanging presence in wood or paint and moving mental imagination that brings all kind of art to a deeper form of life. 

One of these glorious examples of the past brought into the - now historical - present is this wooden relief once displayed in Stokkemarke Church in Lolland, and now housed in the National Museum in Copenhagen. The relief is from around 1500. It is most likely produced in Germany, the city which is about to be liberated - on the condition that they receive Christianity - looks like a typical Northern German town of the turn of the fifteenth century. It would no doubt have made the scene appear more relevant and accessible to those parishioners who saw this work of art when it was new and painted in vivid colours. 

Saint George from Stokkemarke Church, Lolland

National Museum, Copenhagen, D1267

 

The cult of Saint George in Denmark remains in need of its monograph study. Until such a time, however, these small snippets have to do. 

On the eve of Saint Peter's Chair - a pattern breaking?

 

Five years ago, I was living in my native village and I wrote a blogpost on how the feast of Cathedra Petri, or Saint Peter's Chair, on February 22 was regarded as a seasonal turning point in Norway. This year, I am once again living in my native village, and just as I did five years ago, I have been noting how climate change causes the old patterns to break. These were the patterns that allowed for such seasonal rules of thumb, where the deviations from year to year were not sufficiently significant that the pattern could be said to be incorrect. This year, however, winter has been unusual in the fjords. For a month - from early January to mid-February - we had no precipitation. The absence of snow caused waterways to freeze and huge ice formations took shape along the roads, where roadwork had cut through subterranean trickles and exposed them to the cold air. 

Yesterday, on the eve of Saint Peter's Chair, my youngest sister, her dog, and a mutual friend went for a walk on the ice during two hours of waning light. Recently the weather had changed and we got a few days of snow, followed by a downpour which turned the ice atop the lakes into slush. So far, this was according to the old pattern. It was said that Saint Peter would cause lakes and harbours to thaw, and this belief was illustrated by the saying that he tossed warm stones into the water to unfreeze it. For this reason, both the date and Saint Peter himself were referred to as Per Varmestein, Peter Warmstone.  

Walking on the ice after such shifts in the weather proved to be an odd experience. Before the rain had set in, strong winds had blown the dry snow into small drifts, meaning that some parts of the ice were covered in snow - which then turned to slush - while other parts were uncovered, leaving the rainwater to freeze into a top layer of the already thick lake ice. Consequently, when we walked on the ice, the top layer cracked - either rapidly or in a slow-yielding motion like a fleshy membrane, depending on how cold that part of the lake was - and it did sometimes feel like we were constantly on the verge of falling into the water. Then we would occasionally drill a hole into the ice to measure the thickness of the old layer, and this proved invariably to be somewhere between 40 and 50 centimetres. For reference, ten centimetres of ice is usually sufficient for walking safely.  

What made the experience even more atmospheric was that in the three-day period before the rain set in, the snow had caught the tracks of crossing animals - mostly foxes - and the rain had essentially fossilised these proofs of lives otherwise unseen. At one point, we could even smell the rancid, sickly stench of a fox - they are in heat at the moment, as one of them loudly made clear a few days ago - and the world around us was closer. This is also part of the old pattern. 

Today, as I write this, on the feast of Saint Peter's Chair, the weather has again changed. The thaw and rain we were promised has turned into snow, and I have recently been shovelling the driveway in anticipation of much more to come during the night. As I was shovelling, I met a friend and neighbour, who is also a fellow medievalists, and she remarked that she had not been on the ice because according to the old runic calendars, this was not a day when you could expect to be saved from the water if you went onto it. Normally, I would agree, but yesterday's experience combined with the ongoing snowfall made me hesitate. It does not look like we are losing access to the ice just yet. The question is whether this is the pattern breaking in a rather unexpected way, or whether we are just within that margin of deviation which means that the old pattern is still in place.