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. 

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. 

Battle in the bench-end - a glimpse from Erfurt cathedral

 

This blogpost provides yet another detail from the glorious late-medieval choir benches in Erfurt cathedral. The scene itself is familiar from the corpus of Latin medieval art, namely the duel between to figures who are not knights, yet behave as if they were. This motif appears in various media, not only carved in wood but also drawn in manuscript illuminations. While I do not know how exactly to read this motif, it appears to be a variant of the reversion of the world, by which the roles, customs and ideals of the real world are turned upside-down and inside-out. We see women fighting instead of men, we see, possibly, a funnel being used as a helmet, and we see a hog being used as a rider. Perhaps we should also understand the landscape, the branches of a grapevine, as a contrast to the field of battle where tournaments normally are held. 

This detail from one of the bench-ends in Erfurt cathedral provide an excellent example of the masterful carvings made my medieval artists, and reminds us that the medieval visual world was immensely rich in detail and content.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Erfurt cathedral

 
Earlier this week I spent a few days in Erfurt, Germany, for a conference. It is one of the most beautiful cities I have visited, and I left rich with impressions and a desire to return at the first opportunity. While I still need to read more about the city to be able to provide lengthy blogposts of all the things I encountered there, I will provide a few glimpses of particularly noteworthy details from the many important historical buildings or the cityscape. 

The first glimpse is of this bench end in the choir of Erfurt cathedral, carved sometime in the late Middle Ages, these choir benches are covered in figures and scenes that both speak of high quality craftship and the florid medieval imagination. This bench end was of particular interest to me, in part because it depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria - recognisable by her wheel by which she was threatened to be tortured - who is a saint I always appreciate encountering. Secondly, this bench-end intrigues me because of the squirrels running along the sides of Saint Catherine. Squirrels are not necessarily rare in medieval art, but this might be the first time I have seen them in the context of choir benches, and they make for a lovely contrast to the pairs of wyverns at the top and the bottom. 

New article - Reformulating the sanctity of Olaf Haraldsson

Last week I received the happy news that a book to which I have contributed was published, when I found the physical copy waiting for me on my desk. The book is Heiligkeiten - Konstruktionen, Funktionen und Transfer von Heiligkeitskonzepten im europäischen Früh- und Hochmittelalter, edited by Andreas Bihrer and Fiona Fritz and published by Franz Steiner Verlag. It is a collection of articles touching on the shaping, application and uses of sanctity in the Middle Ages, and contains contributions in English and in German. My own contribution deals with the way Saint Olaf of Norway was reformulated from the eleventh to the twelfth century under the auspices of Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson of the newly established Norwegian metropolitan see of Nidaros.

I do unfortunately not have the pdf to share, but here are the details of the volume to show what the volume can offer, and my general recommendation is to buy it and enjoy the scholarship.

Changing images of Saint George, c.1100-c.1340

One of my several ongoing scholarly obsessions is to emphasise that in the medieval cult of saints, one saint could be depicted differently at various points in time, in various geographical regions, and also at one and the same point in time - to mention just a few factors - and through this variety demonstrate and remind people that the iconography, the reception and the veneration of saints is not something static, but something that is continuously adapted through history, for instance by expansion of the legend, abbreviation of the legend, and through the emphasis on different aspects of the saint's story.

Yesterday, February 21, I was reminded of this when I saw the first of this blogpost's images tweeted by @red_loeb. This image is the initial for the opening of the passion of Saint George contained in a Cistercian passionary from Weissenau in the Diocese of Constance, Germany. We here see George placed on a wheel of knives - a method of torture nowadays most famously associated with Sainth Catherine of Alexandria. This was one of several stages in his passion story, and it emphasises the willing sacrifice and martyrdom which signifies George's imitation of Christ, and which was perhaps the most important marker of his claim to sainthood.

At the time the image from Weissenau was drawn, the legend of George was well-known in the Latin West and his feast was celebrated in calendars throughout Latin Europe, but it was before the image of George as a knight had become widespread in this part of the world. It is generally thought that George's chivalrous iconography was brought to Latin Europe from the sphere of the Greek church in which the cult of warrior saints had by the early twelfth century had a long-standing popularity (see White 2013). It is not known when the image of the knightly Saint George gained a foothold in the Latin West. In England, the earliest known depiction of this kind is a wall-painting dated to the twelfth century in the church of Saint Botolph, Hardham, which also features George's torture on the wheel. While dated to the twelfth century, the idea that the painting is from the earlier rather than the later end of the century is possible but not an inevitable conclusion.   

The martyrdom of George

Weissenau Cod. Bodmer 127, f.48r, twelfth century

(Courtesy of @red_loeb and e-codices, virtual library of Switzerland)

That the image of George on the wheel had a strong tradition in the Latin West can also be seen in the picture below from a Cistercian psalter from Rhineland, dated tothe middle of the thirteenth century, several decades younger than the Weissenau passionary. While the emphasis on the image in the psalter is on the angelic help that stopped the wheel from killing Saint George, rather on the executioner setting the wheel in motion, the main focal point of the image is the same in both cases: George wrapped among blades with only a loincloth to cover him, given over to the sacrifice that proves his willingness to die for the sake of Christ. It is the passion story that is being conveyed, not his life, his deeds or miracles performed for him by God.

Martyrdom of George

Besançon - BM - ms. 0054, Cistercian psalter, c.1260

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Roughly contemporary to the image from the Cistercian psalter is one from a gradual - a liturgical book containing songs for the mass - from the Abbey of Notre-Dame in Fontevraud, home of the Fontevraud Order founded in the early twelfth century. Here, we see Saint George as a knight ready for battle, carrying the cross of Saint George as his standard. This image is found in the initial for the chant Protexisti me Deus in the mass for George's feast day of April 24. It is in every respect a different formulation of the image of Saint George: He is shown both alive and prepared for battle, not at anyone's mercy, and with his militant role emphasised rather than completely omitted as in the two images shown above. In other words, in the Cistercian psalter and in the Fontevraud gradual we have two contemporaneous representation, albeit from two different geographies, of the same saint that displays him in two markedly different ways.

St George 

Limoges - BM - ms. 0002, f.129, Graduale, Abbey of Notre-Dame, Fontevrault, c.1250-1260

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

When comparing the images from the psalter and the gradual, it is important to keep in mind the many contextual differences that prevent us to draw any more wide-ranging conclusions from the comparison.

First of all, while both images are from liturgical books, they do not play the same role in their respective codicological contexts. In the psalter, the entire page is dedicated to the martyrdom of Saint George, giving it a prominent role that was meant to be easily seen and recognised. In the gradual, however, the image much smaller and appears to serve first and foremost as a visual reminder of the saint for whom the mass is being sung. While it is likely that the initial would have been seen by several of the singers who could view the open page, its function as a mnemonic device is less prominent than George's martyrdom of the Cistercian psalter. In other words, while George in the psalter seems to have as its purpose to command focus and precipitate the beholder's meditation on the saint's imitation of Christ, the mnemonic function of the initial is more practical or mechanic, he is depicted to remind the beholder for whom the mass is being sung. This might also have to do with the fact that the chant in question is taken from the common of one martyr, a repertoire of chants that could be used in the liturgy for any martyr.

Secondly, it is important to keep in mind that the two books come from two different religious orders. I do not know enough about the order of Fontevraud to comment on their use of Saint George, but as for the Cistercians they were a conservative order. It is therefore possible that their use of the martyrdom has to do with the conservative nature of the order, and that we cannot take this appearance of the martyrdom motif in the iconography of Saint George as evidence for the widespread endurance of this motif in mid-thirteenth century Latin Europe as a whole.

Thirdly, aside from the differences between the orders and the codicological contexts, it is important to keep in mind that the psalter is from Rhineland while the gradual is from France. These geographical locations might have their own traditions from which they draw, and we must therefore be careful in drawing conclusions when comparing them.

However, one case demonstrates that the two images of Saint George - the martyr and the knight - were in use side by side in the thirteenth century. We turn now to a martyrology from Abbey of Notre-Dame des Prés of Douai, dated to the last quarter of the thirteenth century.

Martyrdom of George

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.078v, Arras, last quarter of the thirteenth century

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

George the knight

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0838, f.078v, martyrology, Abbey of Notre-Dame des Prés de Douai (Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

The two images above are from the same page in the martyrology of Notre-Dame des Prés, showing three images of Saint George: The standing soldier, the charging knight, and the unhurt, victorious martyr sitting on top of his would-be torture device. This shows clearly that by the end of the thirteenth century, both the martial and the christological image of Saint George was in use and had become established in the saint's iconography. It is here of particular interest that the abbey of Notre-Dame des Prés is a Cistercian house, and we see that this order has embraced the idea of George as an armed knight, a development possibly influenced both by the crusades of Louis IX of France earlier in the century and the ongoing efforts to have Louis IX canonised as a saint. Another point of interest is that the representation of the martyrdom has changed radically. While the images from the Rhineland and the Weissenau books emphasised George's complete lack of control on the wheel - his hands thrown out, in the first image at the mercy of the executioner, in the second image helped by angels - the image from the Cistercian martyrology is that of a triumphant matyr. He is still naked, but sitting atop the instrument of his passion with his arms stretched upwards in prayer or thanksgiving in front the pagan ruler and his priest, he appears undaunted and unafraid. Saint George is not unharmed as we see bloody cuts on his thigh and leg and his imitation of Christ is therefore clear, but he is not helpless, he rather appears to be petioning for divine help of his own strength. It is tempting to see this triumphant martyrdom as belonging to the same tone set by the two other - militant - depictions of George on the same folio. In other words, both George the knight and George the martyr are examples of triumphant Christians.

The two depictions of Saint George shown in these images demonstrate how one and the same saint can be presented in different ways, even on one and the same page, thus invoking different aspects of the saint's qualities - both the soldier and the martyr. Moreover, the different representations of one and the same motif - the martyrdom - also testify to the non-static nature of the iconography of saints.

The question then naturally becomes: How do we explain these changes in Saint George's iconography? Naturally, the present blogpost is not the right forum for drawing any conclusions, but I do want to point to some of the factors that must be taken into consideration when dealing with this question, namely that of the religious order for which the image was produced, the geographical location in which it was produced, and the time period in which it was produced. Here we have seen three examples of Cistercian representations of George's martyrdom from the twelfth to the late thirteenth century and from the German sphere as well as from France. Together they might show a chronological development from Weissenau to Rhineland to Douai, thus allowing us to follow the development of the image in time. However, the three images represent two different geographies and are too few to allow for any conclusions regarding the trajectory. It is possible that we see here two different traditions rather than one tradition developing over time.

I would like to see a more overarching, thorough, detailed examination of the available iconographic source material for the cult of Saint George in Germany and France from the twelfth to the thirteenth century. What I have shown in this blogpost is not nearly sufficient for anything but a pointer to a potential interesting development. The overall question here is whether, and if so when, the popularity of the image of George the martyr was replaced by the image of George the knight. The material I have gone through here point towards a change happening in the course of the thirteenth century, culminating in the fourteenth as suggested by two examples shown below. However, this is insufficient data for drawing conclusions, and it might be that the image of George the knight had been present in France much longer than seen in these examples.

By the end of the fifteenth century, however, the image of George the knight seems to have more or less completely replaced the image of George the martyr, both in France, in England and even in Italy. Why this is, and when we see the break with the depiction of the martyrdom, is something that remains to be argued and remains to be discovered, and I hope to be able to return to this at some future point.        

St George

Paris - Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève - ms. 0588, f.113, Vie de saints, c.1290-1310

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

George and the dragon

Auch - BM - ms. 0020, f.001, Ruralium commodorum opus by Petrus de Crescentiis, c.1330-1340

(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

 

Similar blogposts

A carol for Saint George

A liturgical chant for Saint George

A nineteenth-century Hungarian imitation of George and the dragon

On the cults of George and Edward the Confessor in England

Saint George in the Old English Martyrology

Two depictions of Saint George in Odense

Bibliography


Gaposchkin, Cecilia, The Making of Saint Louis, Cornell University Press, 2008

Good, Jonathan, The Cult of Saint George in England, Boydell & Brewer, 2015

Riches, Samantha, St George - Hero, martyr, myth, Sutton, 2000

White, Monica, Military Saints in Byzantium and Rus, 900-1200, Cambridge University Press, 2013

The apocryphal saint-king and the king who never was

When researching the cult and literature of saints, one is very often dealing with figures whose historicity is doubtful, and sometimes even figures that clearly have not existed. In some cases, the non-existent figures were not the saints themselves, but instead people featuring in the stories about them. These secondary figures of historical non-existence very often contribute to obscuring that kernel of the saint's legend which does seem to have some historical basis. This is the case with Saint Richard and King Otto of England.

In my research I recently came across the story of Saint Richard in an incunabula housed at the university library of the University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek). According to the front matter of the book, replicated by hand after the original printed front matter was somehow lost, the book is a collection of saints' lives in German called Dat Leuend der Hÿlghen, or The Lives of the Saints, printed in Lübeck in 1492.

Saint Richard, son of King Otto of England

Dat leuend der hÿlghen, a collection of stories about saints, Lübeck, 1492

Incunabula RARA M 15, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

I was quite intrigued to see this story of Saint Richard. I had never heard of him, and since I have been working quite a bit with English saints I was excited to learn of one more. As the vignette to the story indicates, Richard was noted as a pilgrim, shown by the pilgrim's hat and the pilgrim's badges of the scallop, which is the symbol of Santiago in Compostela, but which is also seems to be used as a shorthand for denoting the pilgrim in medieval iconography. I was, however, very surprised to read that he was the son of King Otto of England, because there has never been any such king in the history of the kings of England.

As for the historical nature of Saint Richard, this is, according to David Farmer, a name that is given to the father of Saint Willibald, Saint Winnibald, and Saint Walburga, three figures whose historicity is certain, and who were Anglo-Saxons pilgrims who became important ecclesiastical figures in Germany. The story of their pilgrimage were written down by the nun Huneberc of Heidenheim (fl.780) in the book Hodoeporican, and Reginald of Eichstatt (d.991) appears to be the one responsible for introducing Richard as their father. According to the legend, Richard died at Lucca where his relics were venerated "at least from the twelfth century" (Farmer 2004: 454).

Accordingly, Saint Richard is a figure of dubious historicity, woven around the possible fate of the historical father of the three Anglo-Saxons who became saints in their turn. It seems clear, however, that Richard was not at any point a king. What then, of the mystical King Otto of England?

It is possible that Otto is here the result of an intended German translation of Offa. This is a name of two historical kings, the eldest being a king of the East Saxons who was active around 709, the youngest being the more famous king Offa of Mercia (d.796). Chronologically speaking, if Otto is indeed Offa, it is likely to be Offa of the East Saxons. But even if this is the intended identity of Richard's father, it is safe to say that Richard himself does not appear to have ever been the son of Offa, and that this is rather a product of later legends accrued around the cult of Saint Richard who was venerated not only in Lucca but also in Eichstatt where Reginald wrote his legend.





Bibliography

Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

Huneberc's Hodoeporican:  https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/willibald.asp

Dat leuend der hÿlghen, a collection of stories about saints, Lübeck, 1492 (Incunabula RARA M 15, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek)

Narrative and Saints' Lives, part II - Saint-collectives and their figureheads

 In a previous blogpost I wrote down some reflections on the structuring of the narrative in stories about saints. This post was prompted by a reading group I've been arranging at the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense where I work, in which we've read excerpts from Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine. The present post follows in the same vein, but while the previous post considered narrative in stories which were very brief, I here wish to consider what happens to the narrative when the story contains a great multitude of characters. The post in centred on the story of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, parts of which legend we translated in the last reading group session of the semester.

I'm also happy to know that the reading group inspired my colleague Alaistair Matthews to blog about his thoughts on the Ursula legend and medieval German literature, which can be read here.

Ursula shielding the virgins in her cloak
Amiens - BM - ms. 0203, f.045, book of hours, use of Rome, 15th century
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

The Legend of Ursula

The legend of Ursula has been long in the making, and the story has received elaborating impulses at various points over a long stretch of time. The earliest evidence for a veneration of the virgin martyrs of Cologne is found in an inscription in an old basilica which states that a certain Clematius built this chapel in honour of the martyred virgins of the city. The inscription is believed to be from the fourth, or possibly the fifth, century, and is the foundation for the rest of the legend, although it provides neither names, dates or numbers.

The next step in the development of the legend came in the ninth century, when a sermon was written in natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum, for the birthday of the holy virgins of Cologne. This birthday refers to the day of their death, considered in the theology of sainthood to be the heavenly birthday of the saint, the day when the saint entered, or was reborn in, Heaven. In this sermon we are for the first time given names and numbers, and it is stated that there were several thousand virgins, foremost of whom was the virgin Pinnosa. The high number of virgins is repeated in the martyrology of Wandalbert of Prüm, c.850, where it is said that there were several thousand of these virgins. This source might have been the Sermo in natali, for the martyrology of Usuard, c.875, only gives the names Martha and Saula and adds that there were several others, and this suggests that the high number of the Sermo had not yet become consensus. However, only a few decades after Usuard the number is set at eleven thousand and this became consensus for the centuries to come.

It was during the course of the tenth century that prose narratives emerged in which the basic story was established: The daughter of a Christian English king, Ursula, is asked for her hand in marriage by a pagan prince. Ursula wants to avoid the marriage, so she asks for a delay of three years, and in this time she summons ten fellow virgins and each of these eleven have a retinue of thousand virgins. They set off in a ship and are borne by the winds to Cologne, and from there they undergo circuitous route which takes them via Basel and Rome back to Cologne again where they are martyred by the Huns. This story is probably derived from an old legend, a version of which is also found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the British Kings, where we find Ursula, eleven thousand noble virgins, and their retinue of sixty thousand young women. 

The ships sailing to Cologne
MS Egerton 3028, f.7, Wace, Roman de Brut, 14th century
Courtesy of British Library

By the thirteenth century, in the time when Jacobus was compiling the Legenda Aurea, the legend had become very elaborate. In the version recorded by Jacobus, Ursula demands that her bethroted is baptized, and she wants to bring the non-Christian virgins of her retinue to baptism as well, thus giving Ursula a more active and apostolic role. As in the above-mentioned legend, Ursula demands ten virgins to follow her, and a retinue of thousand virgins for each of the eleven. The virgins are then brought in from all over the world, and a special mention is made of Gerasina of Sicily who joins Ursula - though not herself a virgin - and brings her five children with her. This is a crucial point in the story, that in addition to the eleven thousand virgins there is a multitude of followers of both sexes who, as it is said, joins this new knighthood of Ursula, all bent on martyrdom.

The virgins and their followers then set out on the route described above and when they arrive in Rome they are greeted by Pope Cyriacus who is British and also fictional. Cyriacus joins up with the virgins and they all leave for Cologne, together with a number of other bishops who had held offices in cities as diverse as Ravenna, Lucca and Antioch. In addition, we learn that Ursula's husband-to-be, Ethereus, is also compelled by an angelic message to leave Britain where he has been residing and go to Cologne to meet his martyrdom.

At this stage in the story we are introduced to the first antagonists of the story, two scheming pagan commanders of the Roman army called Maximus and Africanus. They are concerned that this massive array of Christians "would make the Christian religion flourish overmuch", and so they plot to bring about the death of Ursula and her companions. They therefore communicate with their kinsman Julius, who despite his name and familial relations is the chief of the Huns, and he agrees to march on Cologne and slaughter the Christians. When all the groups of people finally converge on Cologne, it is Justus who plays the role as the traditional tempter as we find it in the classical accounts of virgin martyrs. For as the Huns are slaughtering the Christians, Justus becomes so dazzled by Ursula's beauty that he asks her to marry him. She refuses, and Justus shoots and arrow through her.

The last section of the legend as recounted by Jacobus tells of one virgin, Cordula, who had hidden in the ships during the massacre, but gave up herself and was martyred on the next day, leaving her outside the celebration of the martyrs.

Ursula's martyrdom by a Hun's arrow
Mans (Le) - BM - ms. 0688, f.028, book of hours, c.1435-1440
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Narrative and characters

The account in Legenda Aurea reads more like a chivalric romance rather than a saint's life, and this has been the case since the earliest prose narratives about the virgins of Cologne. The level of elaboration, however, the numerous characters, the profusion of sub-plots and the gathering of people from a wide-ranging geographical spectre, all these are typical of the chivalric romance as this genre came about in the twelfth century, the century which also saw a new surge in the cult of the eleven thousand virgins.

It is interesting to note the strategies employed to make the narrative more accessible to the reader or the listener. The various sub-plots of Gerasina of Sicily, Pope Cyriacus, the Bishop of Greece and his widowed sister, and others, all contribute to make the narrative more episodic. This in turns creates a different curve of suspense than what we find in most other narratives of Legenda Aurea, where the trajectory is more straightforward, more formulaic. Ursula and her companions, however, do not follow the typical trajectory, but rather a trajectory which might be said to bear greater resemblance to that of errant knights in the romances - except that the journey of the virgins are guided by divine power and angelic messages.

Another aspect which emphasises the similarity between chivalric romance and the Ursula story is the wide geographic scope. Ursula's followers come from all over Christendom, from locations which are both exotic and more familiar, at least to the continental audience. Ravenna, Lucca, Sicily, Antioch, Britain, Greece, all these are place-names thrown in seemingly to provide that blend of familiar and exotic which is so typical of the chivalric romance. For example, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, written in the early 13th century, we find figures like Morholt of Ireland, Lot the king of Norway, Count Lanzidant of Greenland, Kingrisin king of Ascalon and Ipomidon of Babylon, to mention only a few of the most exotic members of the cast. This wide-reaching geographic blend is a staple of the chivalric romance, and in the abovementioned History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, we read how King Arthur subdued a wide range of kingdoms, as illustrated in the chronicle of Peter Langtoft, seen below.

Arthur standing on the crowns he has conquered
MS Royal 20 A II, f.4, English miscellany, c.1307-c.1327
Courtesy of British Library

It is of course natural that a narrative containing such a multitude of characters is in dire need of figureheads and focal points. This explains for instance the various sub-plots of the story, which I suspect should be seen as a sign of inspiration taken from the numerous chivalric romances written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Through these sub-plots, Ursula maintains her role as the architecture of the grand scheme, but it also allows for some pauses from the main action and the introduction to new characters which adds faces and thus personality to a massive blob of around seventy thousand persons marching on Cologne. However, it is worth noting that Ursula is the only protagonist character who is featured throughout the story. Eutherius, her husband, appears twice but is largely inactive, while Gerasina, Cyriacus and the unfortunate Cordula are given their time in the limelight and then never mentioned again - with the possible exception of Cyriacus who is mentioned leaving Rome, but as he has also been featured in the preceding paragraph it might still be said to be a continuous sub-plot. In this way, we are given a long list of names which allow us to create some mental images of the characters involved, but they are treated very briefly. However, since Ursula is the only properly recurring character, she is the one most easily imprinted on the mind of the audience. In a way, it seems like the secondary character are there to lift up Ursula as the main protagonist, like a choir is meant to bring out the soloist more strongly in a musical performance. In this way, the multitude is given several heads but only one figurehead.

Another explanation for the various characters might be to add some verisimilitude to the story by mentioned geographical localities which exist in the real world and which therefore act as guarantors of the account's veracity. To such a strategy it is of no significance that in the temporal setting of this narrative - which Jacobus argues must be set in the mid-fifth century, there was no queen of Sicily, and there was no pope called Cyriacus.

Regardless the explanation for the multitude of secondary characters, the need for a primary protagonist is evident. We can ask ourselves why Ursula ended up as this figurehead rather than Pinnosa mentioned in Sermo in natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum, but ultimately it is only to be expected that an unwieldy mass of virgins needed at least one named figurehead so that the faithful can direct their prayers more easily, or so that the story is lifted out of mere myth, which is what happens easily when no names are attached to such a massive body of saints.

Ursula and Gerasina
Châteauroux - BM - ms. 0002, f.376, breviary, use of Paris, c.1414
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Ursula and the virgins
MS Royal 13 A IX, f.4, Francesco Roseti of Verona, before 1547
Courtesy of British Library

Concluding thoughts

In the medieval calendars and collections of saints' lives we find several feasts which commemorate groups of saints, men and women grouped together because they had shared eminence in their holy works. In the Legenda Aurea alone we find for instance chapters titled "The Seven Brothers", "The Seven Sleepers", "Saint Adrian and His Companions", "Saint Cyriacus and His Companions" (not to be confused with the character in the Ursula legend", "Saint Hippolytus and His Companions", "The Four Crowned Martyrs", and a few more. In most of these stories there are some saints who are more prominent than the others, and the often low number of companions makes it easier to accept these groups, yet even they have their figureheads.

The need for such figureheads can be exemplified not only by the fact that Ursula has become the leader of the group even though hers is not the oldest name featured in the legend. Another instance can be found in a Norwegian legend most likely based on the story of Ursula. This legend is that of Sanctorum in Selio, the holy of Selje. This legend tells of an Irish princess who escaped marriage to a pagan prince by fleeing to Norway. They were brought to the coast of Selje, which is a small portion of the the Western Norwegian coast. When the pagans came after them, Sunniva prayed for deliverance and the holy were buried in an avalanche of rocks. We don't know exactly how old this story is, but we know that the story was known in the mid-eleventh century from references in Adam of Bremen's History of the Diocese of Hamburg. The name of this princess, however, was not given until the twelfth century, when the relics of these men and women were translated to Bergen. She was then called Sunniva, and she is now one of Norway's four saints. That Sunniva emerges as the leader for the group as a late development in the legend is similar to what we see in Ursula, and points to the need for a figurehead in a group of saints as a phenomenon not limited to the legend of the virgins of Cologne.

This need for figureheads is probably not limited only to the medieval cult of saints, especially since there are plenty of postmedieval collectives of saints that are officially recognized. We have for instance the forty martyrs of England and Wales, or the martyrs of Nagasaki in 1622, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with these cases to know whether any figureheads emerged. It will, however, be interesting to see the development of the collective of saints canonized by the Armenian church earlier this year. In commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians in 1915, the Armenian church canonized all 1.5 million victims of the persecution, and the question is whether anyone, and if so who, will emerge as leaders and figureheads of the possibly biggest saint-collective in Christian history.

Ursula and the virgins in the most traditional depiction
Mâcon - BM - ms. 0003, f.003, Jacobus de Voragine, Légende dorée, c.1470
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Literature


Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2005

Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, translated by A. T. Hatto, Penguin Classics, 1980

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15225d.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/armenia/11559613/Armenian-Church-makes-saints-of-1.5-million-genocide-victims.html

Mary in the Wood of Thorns - a German folksong for Christmas

One of my favourite aspects of Christmas is the singing of carols and hymns in commemoration of the birth of Christ, and - perhaps on account of me being a historian - I usually prefer the older songs. Here in Norway, we have a rich tradition of Christmas songs in both our official variants of Norwegian (bokmål and nynorsk), and some of these are translation of songs from other languages, most notably German, Danish and Latin, with a few from English as well.

In previous blogposts I've posted links to some of my favourite English carols, such as the Herefordshire Carol or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. In this blogpost I wish to present a favourite from the German tradition, Maria durch ein Dornwald ging. This was originally not a Christmas song, but a song of pilgrimage which came about in Thüringen and the bishopric of Paderborn during the 19th century. The oldest printed source can be dated to 1850, and this edition contained seven strophes. In the early 20th century, a new edition with three strophes became the standard edition and this is currently the rendition most frequently performed. The author or authors of this song are unknown to us and so are the composers of the music, and it is perhaps chiefly this trait which allows us to label this song a folksong. (Information is taken from this website.) The text is found below taken from Edition B, and an English translation follows at the end.

Thomaner Chor, Leipzig

Maria durch ein Dornwald ging

Maria durch ein'n Dornwald ging
Kyrie eleison

Maria durch ein'n Dornwald ging
der hat in sieben Jahr'n kein Laub getrag'n
Jesus und Maria

Was trug Maria unter ihrem Herzen?
Kyrie eleison
Ein kleines Kindlein ohne Schmerzen
das trug Maria unter ihrem Herzen,
Jesus und Maria

Da haben die Dornen Rosen getrag'n
Kyrie Eleison
Als das Kindlein durch den Wald getrag'n
da haben die Dornen Rosen getrag'n
Jesus und Maria

Sandro Botticelli, Madonna with child and singing angels
c.1477, currently in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Courtesy of Wikimedia

Mary through the thornwood walked

(My translation)

Mary through the thornwood walked
Kyrie Eleison
Mary through the thornwood walked
Which had not borne for seven years a leaf
Jesus and Maria

What bore Mary underneath her heart?
Kyrie Eleison
A little child withouten pain
that's what Mary bore underneath her heart
Jesus and Maria

Then the thorns were bearing roses
Kyrie Eleison
As the little child through the wood did walk
Then the thorns were bearing roses
Jesus and Maria