The Stiklestad sanctuary ring

This week, I have been in Stiklestad and Trondheim for work, since this is the Saint Olaf festival which culminates on July 29, and which is celebrated in both these places. The festival celebrations at Stiklestad included several very interesting talks, one of which concerned a door ring which was most likely produced locally in the twelfth century. Such rings are often referred to as sanctuary rings, since those who held on to the ring and asked for sanctuary had the right to receive it. 

The iconography of the ring is typical of the period, but the exact meaning of the various components remains uncertain. The serpents that have latched on to the crossbeam by which the ring is fastened to the plate with serrated edge are common representations of evil. However, they also represent the kind of cunning that Christ adviced his disciples to imitate in their preaching, so that they would know when to leave a place due to hostility. The human head with its cleft beard might be seen as representing those that seek sanctuary, captured as it is by the evil of the temporal world. Yet the head might also represent uncivilised, evil people, as long beards are often found among the so-called beard-pullers, which are humans representing heathendom in medieval art. 

The ring is, in short, at one and the same time legible and illegible to us. We understand its function, we are familiar with the individual iconographical elements, but we do not have the knowledge to put those elements into the kind of semiotic totality that would have been well-known among those who might one day have need of such a ring. This beautiful piece of metalwork and craft is, therefore, another reminder that some types of understanding lie just beyond our reach because those things we seek to understand are no longer part of our everyday world. 

The importance of Saint Olaf - the case of the Skjervøy altarpiece

Today, July 29, is the feast of Saint Olaf. He was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, in an attempt to regain his kingship of Norway after two years in exile. The following year, he was proclaimed a saint on episcopal authority, and Olaf become one of the most widespread and popular saints in the Norse North Atlantic and in the Baltic region. The cult underwent several surges of popularity and cult activity, as is the case of all saints. However, because the veneration of Olaf spread far and wide, and because this dissemination happened early and at a point in time when no single cult centre or ecclesiastical authority could control it, the surges of Olaf's cult developed differently at different parts of Latin Christendom. For those of us who research the cult of Saint Olaf, this complexity is both exciting and exhausting, as we have several parallel strands of development. 

Measuring the popularity and importance of a given saint is always difficult, because the surviving source material will rarely provide us with much information. And if there is information, it is usually limited to a specific time period, or it favours the perspective of a particular societal class, or it might do both. In the case of Olaf, the surviving sources allow us to attest to the wide geographic reach and broad societal appeal of his cult. But although he was venerated from Greenland to Estonia, this does not mean that he was always and everywhere equally important. Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, for instance, were cultural geographies with their own native saints. In some cases, Olaf remained more important on what we might call a geography-wide level, but within the different parts of those geographies - landscapes, counties, however you want to call it - a different saint might be more important.  

In the case of Olaf, there is a particularly interesting altarpiece which serves as a very good demonstration of Olaf's importance in the hierarchy of saints. This is an altarpiece from the now-lost Skjervøy Church, located in Troms in Northern Norway. The altarpiece was most likely produced in Northern Germany or the Low Countries and commissioned by the parish priest and probably also high-ranking laypeople of the community. In the centre of the altarpiece is a depiction of God lifting up or supporting the dead Christ, which at the same time communicates the dual nature of Christ - both God and man - and the primary, central position of God in the holy hierarchy of Christian cosmology. On God's right-hand side is the Virgin Mary carrying the Christchild, shown as the second-most important figure in this hierarchy. On God's left hand we find Saint Olaf, holding a ciborium and clutching a now-lost axe (which was his main attribute). The saint-king is standing atop a human-faced dragon, a common aspect of representations of Saint Olaf in medieval art, and its exact meaning is still a matter of debate. 

The Skjervøy altarpiece (after 1515)

Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, C3000

 

In this altarpiece, the importance of Saint Olaf is communicated very clearly: He ranks third in the hierarchy of Heaven, which puts him as the most significant and effective saint in all Creation next to the Virgin Mary, who in turn was regarded as the intercessor above all others. The importance is clear, but we are left with the following question: Importance for whom? Should we infer from this very clear depiction of the top tier of the holy hierarchy that Olaf had a similarly high rank throughout all of the Norse world? Throughout all of Norway? Throughout the diocese? Or just for the parish community in Skjervøy? 

We know from the Breviarium Nidrosiense, a liturgical manual printed in 1519 that set the standard liturgy for the entirety of the Norwegian church province, that Olaf had a high rank. But this standard was set at the metropolitan see of Trondheim, which was also the saint-king's cult centre. Throughout the church province itself, other saints could - and did - rank more highly. Similarly, within Norway, as well as within the diocese of Trondheim - which included the Skjervøy parish - there were communities who turned first of all to other saints. Perhaps the dedicatee of their parish church, or the diocesan patron - such as Sunniva in Bergen or Hallvard in Oslo - or any other saint to whom the a given community felt particularly attached. 

The top of Heaven's hierarchy as depicted in the Skjervøy altarpiece is probably only reflective of Skjervøy and its community. They had commissioned the altarpiece, which meant that they had most likely specified which figures to include. Even within the Skjervøy community, however, we should expect that there were individuals who might accept that Olaf was an important saint, but who turned more readily to other saints for reasons of personal attachment, for instance.  

In short, the Skjervøy altarpiece tells us a lot about Saint Olaf's importance, but only for a very specific community, and at least for the leaders of that community. In this way, the altarpiece is a good example of why the question of importance needs to be approached with great care, lest we exaggerate how popular a given saint actually was. 

A woodcut for the Nativity of John the Baptist

I should be in bed, but since it is a summer's night I am staying up longer than is sensible. This night, moreover, is the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, one of few saints in Latin Christianity whose earthly birthday is celebrated, and moreover as his main feast. The eve of Saint John is an important time in European folklore, and there are numerous traditions associated with the night between June 23 and June 24.  

Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, John the Baptist was a famous and popular saint, mainly due to his appearance in the Bible and his important role in the life of Christ. Several churches were dedicated to him, and his iconography made him a recognisable figure in medieval art. He is typically depicted as a wild-haired man dressed in a camel hide, usually holding an image of the Lamb of God, being, as he was, a forerunner for Christ.  

Due to this iconographical tradition, I was rather surprised to come across a rather different representation in March, when I was researching a collection of saints' lives printed in Lübeck in 1492, namely the Passionael by Steffen Arndes. This was the second edition of Passionael, and the printer had commissioned a new set of woodcuts. For the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, the woodcut does not depict the desert hermit typical of medieval iconography. Rather, it highlights the birth of the saint, or rather his childhood. His sainted mother, Elizabeth, is lying in bed while the holy child is bathed by a maid, a situation that neither maid nor child seems very happy about. It is a sweet domestic scene, perhaps reflecting the secular audience of the collection, namely the merchants and artists of Lübeck. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael (1492)

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.44v

While I was surprised by this iconography, it was not completely novel the world of late-medieval Latin Christian art. The birth of John the Baptist was recounted in the Bible, and it was part of an expanded narrative commemorated through liturgical celebrations in the Middle Ages. From the late fourteenth century onwards, the Latin Church put greater emphasis on the feast of the Visitation of Mary (July 2), and it was established a compulsory feast at the Council of Basil (1431-49). The Visitation commemorated her visit to John's mother Elizabeth while they both were pregnant. According to tradition, John gave a joyful leap in his mother's stomach when he sensed the approach of the coming Messiah. Consequently, the scene depicted in Passionael fits well within the development of the cults of both Mary and John the Baptist in the later Middle Ages. 

One curious thing about the woodcuts in Passionael, however, is that this particular scene was also used for the chapter on the birth of the Virgin Mary, Nativitas Mariae, on September 8. The viewer is only asked to imagine that the mother who has recently given birth is Anne rather than Elizabeth, and that the baby boy in the bath tub is rather the baby girl who would grow up to become the mother of God. The reuse of this woodcut is perhaps primarily due to practical matters, an opportunity to pay for one less item, or perhaps to save time. But it is also a reminder that the reception of iconographical information is flexible. The readers and viewers of Passionael would eventually encounter both these woodcuts and recognise them as the same - after all, these two feasts are not that far apart in the liturgical calendar - but they would have no problem letting this image represent one occasion on one day and another occasion on a different day. The identity of mother and child changes as the occasion changes, but the scene remains the same because that scene encapsulates what is being celebrated on both occasions, namely the birth of a figure central to the life of Christ. This kind of flexibility requires a kind of pragmatism and iconographical literacy that is often overlooked by modern viewers, inculcated as we are that art needs to be individual and unique. As a consequence, we often underestimate the artistic understanding of the people of the Middle Ages. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael (1492)

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.142r

Saint George the kneeling knight - recycling images in the 1492 Lübeck Passionael

 

Today, April 23, is the feast of Saint George. He is a widespread figure in late-medieval iconography, and he is most famous for his battle with the dragon which he subdued and later killed once the city he had saved converted to Christianity. The dragonslaying motif became dominant from the thirteenth century onwards, and - as I have outlined in this blogpost - the most common depiction of Saint George in the twelfth and late eleventh century was of his elaborate passion narrative.  

A few years ago, I was leafing through a collection of texts for the feasts of the liturgical year printed in Lübeck in 1492 by Steffen Arndes. The collection, known as the Lübeck Passionael, was a typical work of its time, as it offered vernacular translations of stories most commonly found in Latin. A response to increased literacy and extra-ecclesiastical religious gatherings - such as the guilds - these books were highly popular. When I made my first forays into this work, I was a bit surprised to see that the woodcut vignette that introduced the chapter on Saint George did not contain the typical dragonslaying motif. However, by that time I had already noticed that other scenes did occur and I did not think much of it. Last year, however, as I had an opportunity to examine the woodcuts more carefully, I noticed that this same image was used for two other saints: Longinus, and Quirinus of Neuss. 

Saint George 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.6v

Saint Longinus

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.379v

Saint Quirinus

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.383r

The Lübeck Passionael contains several images that are recycled for several legends. This was a common method in the making of such collections. Presumably, the main reason was to save on time, effort and money, especially as a work the length of Passionael could consist of close to three hundred chapters. Moreover, because several minor saints were tortured or killed in the same way, one decapitation or torture scene could accurately reflect the climax of several different stories. What surprised me, however, was the image used for George was shared by two saints who were relatively minor figures in Northern Germany at the end of the fifteenth century. Granted, they were not unknown. Longinus was the soldier who had pierced the side of Christ with his lance and was later healed from an eye condition when Christ's blood came into his eyes. Quirinus was a Roman tribune who appears in the story of Pope Alexander I and Saint Balbina, and whose relics were translated to Neuss in the eleventh century. While he appears to have undergone something of a surge in popularity in Northern Germany and Scandinavia from the fifteenth century onwards, he never attained the status and ubiquity of Saint George. 

That three such different saints - two soldiers and a tribune, each from a different century in the Early Christian past - should be represented by the same image appears strange to modern eyes. After all, why pass up on the opportunity to depict the eye-catching and famous dragonslaying scene? Similar scenes do after all appear in the Lübeck Passionael, such as in the chapter on Saint Martha (f.85r) who is shown defeating the dreadful Tarrascon by pointing her cross towards it. However, the recycling of this image, and the choice of saints who share it, might reveal something about what the artist or the commissioner sought to emphasise by this scene. In all three legends, we see a military figure who chooses to die for the faith. His military affiliation differs - George was known more as a knight than as a soldier on par with Longinus, and as a tribune Quirinus was not in active battle - but he is shown to be martial a man on account of his full-body armour. They represent the literal Christian soldier - not the original, spiritual one formulated in the epistles of Paul - and as such demonstrates a military ideal of the late Middle Ages.  

We are still left with the question why the artist or the commissioner decided not to depict the dragonslaying scene. And we cannot possibly say whether the kind of connecting logic I have outlined here reflects the decision making process that led to this recycling of images. Most likely, the motive cuts no deeper than that the image fits an aspect found in all of the stories and has been recycled for practical reasons. What is interesting, however, is that once we divest ourselves of expectation - or the desire to see a dragon in my case - we are left with the result of that editorial and artistic decision. Once we take this as our starting point, we approach the historical source on its own terms, and from there we might start to ask new questions. For instance, given that this image was shared by these saints, what - if anything - can this tell us about how these saints were understood and viewed in late-fifteenth-century Lübeck? Maybe there were other concerns rather than the slaying of a dragon that drew some of the Lübeckians towards George? Ultimately, we do not know, but reflecting on these questions might make us think more carefully about the late-medieval cult of saints. 

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

 

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. 

A stone for Saint Agnes

Today is the feast of Saint Agnes of Rome, who was killed during the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century. She was one of the first Christian virgin martyrs to gain a substantial cult outside of Rome, and it is possible that she might have more of a claim to historicity than some of her fellow virgin martyrs like Catherine of Alexandria, Lucy, Agatha, or Barbara. Her cult spread throughout Latin Christendom, and she was - and remains - typically associated with the lamb which is her main iconographical attribute. 

The main centre of her cult is the Church of Saint Agnes Outside the Walls, located in Rome. Its position outside the old city walls point to its origin as a Christian place of worship from before the legalisation of Christianity during the early reign of Constantine, although the church building itself is younger. At this church is found one of the surviving catacombs from the early Christian period, and it is a marvellous place for coming close to the everyday realities of Christian worship in this part of history. 

The church itself has undergone several changes in the course of the centuries, and like most churches in Rome it is a blend of different historical periods and styles. I was there for the first and so far only time in the early summer of 2023, when a friend and I co-presented at a conference. We had set aside one day for sightseeing and being both medievalists we went to Sant'Agnese Fuori le Muri to see one of the oldest of the surviving Roman churches. Unfortunately, our visit coincided with the funeral of a dignitary from Thailand, so there was limited opportunity for photography. However, we did get to see the old basilica, the catacombs, and one archaeological jewel that I came to appreciate greatly. The jewel in question is an old stone fragment, ostensibly part of a grave slab or a stone covering. Although it is broken, the words 'S[aint]' and 'Agnes' are still legible, and provide a quiet testimony of the craft and skill that has gone into furnishing the cult of Saint Agnes with various paraphernalia. The stone, although unassuming, is an important testament to the material dimension of the cult of saints, and it has been displayed in front of a marvellous apsis fresco which shows the cross of Christ standing atop a summit from whence the four rivers of Paradise burst forth. This combination of iconography also reminds us that like the Church of Saint Agnes itself, Christianity is a mish-mash of different ideas, different images, different impulses that more or less cohere into some sort of unity - which is what makes studying its history all the more interesting.  

Saint Catherine in Bergen

 

Today is the feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, one of the female saints who achieved broad veneration in the Nordic countries at a very early stage in the Christianisation process. In the law of the Gulathing province of Norway - which is roughly coterminal with the south-western seaboard and the western fjords - her feast was included in the list of holidays whose observation was required by law. This law was committed to writing around 1160, but it is likely that the feast of Sainth Catherine arrived much earlier in Norway. The evidence from the Gulathing law is particularly interesting because we have few other sources to the cult of saints in Norway prior to the mid-twelfth century, especially female ones. (One other example is Saint Cecilia, whose name was given to Cecilia Sigurddotter, born c.1155-56, but that is another story.)  

The cult of Saint Catherine gained even more popularity following the dissemination of Legenda Aurea, a collection of saints' legends and texts on liturgical feasts composed by Jacobus de Vorgaine around 1260. The dramatic events of Catherine's life and memorable details - such as her christomimetic debate with fifty philosophers and the torture wheel that miraculously broke into pieces - made her easy to depict in medieval art, and also easy to recognised. One of the surviving depictions of her from medieval Norway is the altarpiece of the Church of Saint Mary in Bergen. The altarpiece was made in Lübeck in the late fifteenth century, and its main saint is the Virgin Mary, but she is flanked by - going anti-clockwise from the top left - Saint Olaf, Saint Anthony of Egypt, Saint Dorothea, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. She is wearing a crown, as she was believed to be of royal stock, and two of her main attributes - the wheel with which she was not tortured and the sword with which she was killed - make her easy to spot among the saints of the altarpiece.  

The altarpiece was commissioned by the Hanseatic merchants in Bergen, for whom the Church of Saint Mary was the main religious hub. Its selection of saints is neither particularly German nor particularly Norwegian, but rather reflective of saints whose popularity was high throughout the Baltic and North Sea region in the course of the 1400s. Saint Catherine's cult also benefitted from her frequent inclusion in the malleable collective of saints known as the fourteen holy helpers - the configuration of which was changeable according to local tradition - and she was one of the most important universal non-biblical saints of the Nordic Middle Ages.

The restored twin towers of the Church of Saint Mary 

The oldest part of the church date back to the twelfth century

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.  

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

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. 

Pain in stone - the Deposition of Christ at Aguilar de Campoo

There is a narrative about modernity that presupposes that people of the past did not have the same kinds of emotions as we do today - that they were harder, more toughened by high death rates and statistically low life expectancy. There is a variant of this narrative - once uttered by a friend of mine who is an early modernist - where medieval art is said to have been static and without emotion, in contrast to the glorious geniuses of the Renaissance. Both narratives come from the same place, namely the identity-construction of the Enlightenment and its latter-day versions promoted by capitalists, industrialists and techbros. The basic purpose of this idea is to argue that we as humans are evolving, becoming more civilised, that we are more elevated than the people of the past, especially the Middle Ages. Both these narratives are pure nonsense, and there are plenty of sources that provide evidence against them. 

Since today is Holy Saturday, I will take the opportunity to provide one of my favourite examples of such sources, namely the Deposition of Christ as depicted on a capital in the church of the monastery of Aguilar de Campoo in Northern Spain. The capital, along with others from the same church, are currently kept in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, and it is one of the many masterpieces of Spanish Romanesque art.  

These pictures were taken in the spring of 2024, and I viewed this capital from every possible angle. The pain carved into these figures is breathtaking, and would have been even more powerful in their original locations as they would likely have been painted, meaning that the death-closed eyes of Christ had provided an even more powerful contrast to the Virgin Mary's eyes shut in the pain of weeping. This capital is a wonderful, painful, amazing reminder that the pain of love - in its myriad manifestations - is universally human and not something that came about in modernity, or something that is typically modern. 

The Crucifixion in Ål stave church

As today is Good Friday, I take the opportunity to share a scene from one of the most stunning survivals from the wealth of art created in medieval Norway, namely the ceiling of the ciborium of Ål stave church. The ciborium, a barrel-valuted structure placed above the choir, was painted in the thirteenth century, and provides a compressed version of the salvation story, beginning with the Creation and reaching its climax with the Resurrection. The ceiling is currently housed in the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, where the paintings are accessible to the general public. 

The crucifixion scene is a good way to assess the level of biblical and apocryphal knowledge available in medieval Norway in the thirteenth century. In our times, there is a pervasive myth that medieval Norway was out of touch with Christian traditions and Christian knowledge elsewhere in Europe, which in turn has led to several unfounded claims about the continuity of paganism, at least on a popular level. By the thirteenth century, Norway had been Christian for three centuries, and although urbanisation was limited and there were few monasteries, the network of parish churches ensured that at least the most important feasts of the liturgical year were celebrated throughout the country, despite its rather difficult topography.  

The crucifixion scene shows that there was a familiarity with Christian iconography in thirteenth-century Norway, and also that the artists behind the ceiling at Ål stave church were just as adept at compressing information as artists elsewhere in Latin Christendom. The scene also reminds us of the abiding and pervasive evil that is antisemitism. 

The central feature of the scene is, of course, the crucified Christ, bleeding from his pierced side, his head drooping in the typical manner of the Gothic style, emphasising the suffering and human Christ. Above him, we see two symbols of the evangelists, namely the angel of Matthew and the eagle of John. Six figures are standing at the foot of the cross. The most recognisable are perhaps John the Evangelist on the left (or the viewer's right), depicted as a young, clean-shaven man, and identifiable as an evangelist thanks to the book he is holding, and the Virgin Mary on the rightmost end, clutching her hands in pain. Next to the Virgin Mary, a woman, probably Mary Magdalen, is raising aloft a chalice. This chalice is strongly laden with symbolism, but it is difficult to assess how it is meant. It might be that the chalice represents the jar of alabaster which is Mary Magdalen's saintly attribute. It is possible that the chalice refers to Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, where he asked God to let the chalice pass him by, meaning that he would not have to go through with the ultimate sacrifice. A modern audience will probably connect the chalice to the vessel that gathered some of Christ's blood, which is part of the developing grail mythology - but this is unlikely given the stage at which this story had developed in the thirteenth century. 

Beyond the Virgin and the Magdalen, two male figures are located. The one closest to the cross is the Roman soldier Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with his spear. According to post-biblical tradition, the blood of Christ got in the soldier's eye - to which he is indicating in the scene - and thereby healed it. The miracle promptly converted Longinus to Christianity, and his feast was celebrated in calendars until the twelfth century - at least that is as far I have been able to trace it. As part of this story, Longinus' spear became the holy lance, which was claimed by Ottonian emperors and became part of a long register of Christ-related relics in the Middle Ages. 

Beside Longinus, we see a beard-puller, a typical figure of otherness in medieval art. It is likely that the beard-puller represents the unbelieving Other, the non-Christians who refused to accept Christ as Messiah, and it is possible that this figure represents both pagans and Jews. 

The final figure, placed between the cross and John the Evangelist, is another and indeed more forceful reminder that Christian iconography is, tragically, saturated with antisemitism. This figure, appearing as a royal harlot, is most likely a figuration of the Synagogue, a figure demonising and attacking all Jews. The crown askance might be understood as the imminent loss of sovereignty - being replaced by the Christian faith - and the bared breasts and the goat held by the horns might be interpreted as lasciviousness or unfaithfulness. 

The antisemitic imagery in this picture is part of an artistic tradition that fuelled Christian antagonism against Jews throughout the Middle Ages, and which continues to do so today. We are therefore reminded that it can be intensely difficult to untangle the heritage of Christian antisemitism from the commemoration of the mystical climax of the Christian liturgical year, and indeed the history of salvation. In our own times, antisemitism remains deeply rooted in many groups of society - including many Christian groups - and for Christians the season should be a time of reflection for how Christians have persecuted Jews throughout the centuries, all in contradiction with Christ's commandment of love and tolerance. 

Saint James the Elder in Skive

 

These days, I'm preparing for an upcoming talk at a conference in Spain, where I will once more delve into the history of the cult of Saint James the Elder. The cult of Saint James is one of the most remarkable iconographical metamorphoses, as the apostle became a pilgrim and then became known as such throughout the entire medieval Latin Christendom. The signature hat, staff and scallop shell are all part of a recognisable iconography that continues to resonate to this day, and that can often be found in small places far away from the cult centre in Santiago de Compostela. One such place is Skive in Northern Jutland. 

Saint James the Elder

Skive Church

In my upcoming talk, my focus is on the cult of Saint James - as Santiago, which serves as a useful shorthand for the Compostelan iteration of the saint - and his medieval cult in the Nordic sphere. One of the examples of his cult is a wall-painting in the Church of Our Lady in Skive, which is part of a fresco cycle that was completed in 1522. The cycle consists of several saints, some of whom I have written about in other blogposts. Saint James appears as his pilgrim self on the side of the archway that separates the choir from the nave. This archway and the choir are dedicated to the Trinity and the apostles, except Saint Matthias who for some reason is not included.  

That Saint James the Elder appears as a pilgrim is only to be expected, given that saints were depicted in ways that would make them recognisable. It is, however, a fascinating testament to the flexibility of medieval temporal imagination that a saint is placed in a distinctly biblical context, yet is depicted as what would be a post-biblical figure representing the later development of his cult. There is no contradiction in this, at least from the point of view of medieval venerators, since once a saint entered Heaven they were atemporal and existed in all time periods postdating their deaths. What we see here, therefore, is not so much anachronistic a achronic - an example of how time exists on a different plane than mere history, at least within the perspective of the medieval cult of saints. 

The River Jordan in Denmark - a baptismal font from Fiskbæk Church

 

In the Latin Middle Ages,  meaning the part of the medieval world where Latin was the liturgical language, people understood themselves as belonging to a divinely created pattern where contemporary elements were reiterations of similar elements from biblical history. To put it differently: people, events and iconography of, say, the twelfth century interpreted their role in Creation according to patterns and references laid out in the Bible. This typological connection could be iterated in many different ways, such as by drawing on biblical passages in descriptions of persons or in narratives, or by presenting persons or events as new iterations of episodes in the Bible. This connection provided a keystone in Latin medieval identity-construction. 

In this short blogpost, I present to you one of the vestiges that point to this typological thinking, which also shows how this way of thinking was disseminated to every nook and cranny of Latin Christendom. The vestige in question is a Romanesque baptismal font from Fiskbæk Church in Northern Jutland. The font is most likely twelfth century. I have not yet encountered any suggestions about its origin, but it could very well be from Gotland where the production of baptismal fonts was common in this period. 

The font is beautifully carved with a row of trees circling the bowl, and these trees provide the key to the nature of the typological connection represented by the font. While it is always difficult to assess exactly which tree is represented in these highly stylised renditions, it is safe to assume - based on the shape - that the middle tree in the picture is intended to be a palm tree. The palm tree is a symbol of the Holy Land, and pilgrims to Jerusalem returned with pilgrim badges in the shape of palm leaves to commemorate their journey.     

Given that this is a baptismal font, the evocation of the Holy Land is particularly interesting. The trees are lined up in a row as if on a river bank, and we know that beyond the trees - so to speak - is the water in which people are baptised into the Christian faith. In the Bible (Mark 1:6-9), John the Baptist baptises Christ in the River Jordan to mark the start of Christ's ministry on earth. The font in Fiskbæk Church serves as a reminder that every Christian who is baptised imitates Christ, and in the moment of baptism the little church in Fiskbæk Northern Jutland is mystically transformed into a new iteration of the River Jorden. This is the logic of typology, and such connections with the biblical past could be done simply, effectively, and very poetically. A row of stylised trees in stone sufficed to evoke one of the key elements in the history of Christ and, by extension, the history of human salvation, as viewed by Christian eyes.  

Cantigas de Compostela, part 3: Saint Sebastian

 

Around 1450, a chapel was built in the cathedral complex of Santiago de Compostela, dedicated to the Holy Spirit. The chapel contained stone statues of various saints, one of whom was Saint Sebastian. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Sebastian was one of the most ubiquitous figures of the collegium of holy men and women venerated in Latin Christendom. According to tradition, he was a Christian soldier who was arrested for preaching the Christian faith, tied to a pillar and shot through with arrows. He survived, and was healed back to life by Irene, a fellow Christian. Later, when he had resumed his preaching activities, he was clubbed to death. This was part of the Diocletian Persecutions, c.300-c.303.

The cult of Saint Sebastian appears to have emerged in the late fourth century, but it is uncertain whether he was a historical figure or one that was retroactively imagined or created after Christianity had become legal and had undergone some institutional solidification in places such as Rome and Milan. Sebastian's popularity, however, was not steady until the late thirteenth century, and then surged significantly in the fourteenth century. One of the main factors in this development was the inclusion of his story in Legenda Aurea, a collection of legends by the Dominican friar Jacobus de Voragine, later archbishop of Genoa. The collection was disseminated across Latin Christendom, and appeared in numerous translations and vernacular adaptations and imitations. Another main factor for the surging popularity of Sebastian was that Legenda Aurea identified him as a saint who was particularly effective when praying against plague.  

The statue in Compostela, perforated and blood-soaked, followed a typical contemporary iconography established in Italy, where Sebastian is muscular, beardless, and shot trough with arrows. It is uncertain whether the artist operating in Compostela was familiar with the Italian tradition, or whether the similarity in execution is due to indirect influence mediated through workshops in Catalonia or Burgos, for instance. In any case, for the artisans working on this chapel around 1450, it was a modern, trendy rendition of the saint that was taking shape.  

Cathedral museum, Santiago de Compostela