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. 

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

Edmund Martyr and the curious case of the black cross

 

Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund Martyr, king of East Anglia, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869. His cult was one of the most popular and widespread native cults of medieval England. The foundation of the cult’s success was established in the course of the eleventh century. The church at Bury St Edmunds was reformed into a Benedictine abbey in 1020, and due to the patronage of successive kings throughout the century, the abbey became a centre for text production which bolstered the its institutional identity with Edmund as the identity’s focal point.            

 

The rise of Edmund’s cult coincided with a period in which English ecclesiastics were closely involved with the establishment of church organisations in Scandinavia, especially in Norway and Denmark. Since these burgeoning organisations had not yet developed the infrastructure with which to produce their own books, English ecclesiastical centres provided the Scandinavian churches with liturgical material, including calendars. This English influence continued throughout the twelfth century, even after the establishment of native book production. Calendars and books were still given as gifts or purchased as the expansion of ecclesiastical infrastructure necessitated more liturgical material. Due to the influx of English liturgical material, the cult of Edmund also became a part of the religious life of medieval Scandinavia.        

 

One example of Edmund’s presence in medieval Scandinavia is a calendar fragment, that also opens up for a discussion about the degree to which Edmund was a mere import or someone who was more actively venerated outside of England. The fragment in question is from a thirteenth-century calendar that was produced in England and used in Sweden, most likely in Strängnäs diocese. (For more information about this fragment, please visit the Mapping Saints database.)        

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596 

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596

The fragment, Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25596, contains the feasts for the month of November, and Edmund’s name and titles are written in black ink. The colour of the ink suggests that in the centre where the calendar was produced, Edmund was not regarded as particularly important. Those feasts that were important – such as Martin of Tours on November 11 or Catherine of Alexandria on November 25 – are marked in red. This high liturgical rank meant that during the liturgical celebration, more time was spent singing and reading aloud from their legends in the course of the office for Matins, which was performed in the middle of the night.           

 

However, in the fragment that has come down to us, a black cross has been added to the entry for Edmund’s feast. This black is something of a mystery, because it opens up for many possible interpretations. What we can say for certain, however, is that the cross was added to raise the liturgical rank of the feast, as we see similar crosses – albeit in red and part of the original design – behind the feast-days written in red ink. The questions of where and by whom, however, remain open.            

 

One possible interpretation is that the cross was added before the calendar left England for Sweden. The question then is by whom it was done. It is possible that we see the action of a single individual devoted to Edmund, who felt that the saint had not received the rank he deserved and therefore sought to fix this problem. However, changing the liturgical rank also had practical consequences in the performance of the liturgy, and it was important that the church in question had the sufficient material to perform the office according to the rank of the saint. If Edmund was not particularly popular at that centre, they might not have been equipped to perform the office according to its rank. Moreover, the community of monks or clerics had to accept this raising of the rank.           

 

Consequently, it is unlikely that a single individual has taken it upon themselves to alter the liturgical calendar, and so we should expect the cross to be added on the initiative of the authorities at the centre where the change was made. The question then is whether the cross was added in England or in Sweden. England is perhaps the most reasonable answer, as we know that Edmund was widely popular, and he has a high liturgical rank in several calendars. However, if the cross was added in England, the calendar has most likely been in use at a different religious centre than where it was produced. Such a scenario is possible, and we can easily envision how a scriptorium at a larger centre produced a calendar for a smaller centre.       

Yet this explanation has two main flaws. First of all, if Edmund was important at the smaller centre, why would they not specify this at the larger centre? Or why would they not order the calendar from a centre where Edmund was venerated with a high liturgical rank? It is not impossible that a smaller centre received it as a gift and therefore had to make whatever changes were necessary to fit their own liturgical year, so this might have been the case. However, this brings us to the second main flaw of this scenario. Since the calendar ended up in Sweden, it is unlikely that it came via a smaller English centre instead of a scriptorium that produced liturgical material on a larger scale. It feels more realistic to suggest that the cross was added in Sweden.           

 

If we accept the hypothesis that the black cross was added to the calendar at a Swedish institution – most likely in Strängnäs – the question is then what this can tell us about the status of Saint Edmund in thirteenth-century Sweden. It might be that the black cross is the result of an effort to align the new calendar with an older calendar that had been in use at the Swedish centre in previous years. If this was the case, the high rank of Edmund’s feast might mainly reflect the status of the saint in the older calendar, and might not point to a living cult in thirteenth-century Strängnäs. However, this explanation is not very satisfactory, since a high liturgical rank affected the way that the office was celebrated, and why would the Strängnäs clergy elevate the rank of a saint that was not particularly important to them? If the celebration of Edmund was a relic of a past calendar, why not take the opportunity to trim the dead wood and leave the saint on a lower rank? Such changes were common in medieval churches, and sometimes we see entire feast days removed from the calendar if they came to be considered antiquated.  

 

This leaves us with the following scenario: The cross was added by a scribe in Sweden on the order of the religious authority at the centre where the calendar was used, whether it was the cathedral, a parish church, or a monastic community. The addition of the cross suggests that there was a thriving cult of Saint Edmund at this institution, one that had probably been initiated during the establishment of the Swedish church organisation in the mid-twelfth century, and one that had been sustained into the thirteenth century. 

Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Vienna

The past few months have been a blur of travels and museum visits, so I am still sorting through the photographic souvenirs to decide which wonders to share, and when. When working my way through a museum, my eye is often caught by the unfamiliar, unknown or unusual, and so I am more likely to capture an artefact of which I have not heard before. Part of this impulse appears to be either rooted in or otherwise related to my scepticism towards canon formation, and the typical focus on the big famous items that museums often tend to embrace when marketing their collections. 

Today's overlooked jewel comes from the medieval collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an institution most famous for its late-medieval paintings - what some call "Renaissance" - but where one can also find some absolute treasures that once adorned various churches and chapels. One such treasure was a wooden bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Michel Erhard (active c.1469-1522), holding a fragment of wheel intended for her torture (but broken by an angel before the torture could commence). 

The sculpture can be called a minor treasure in that it is not in any way highlighted in the museum's collection - at least not that I could see - and because it was just one item out of many in the unjustly downplayed medieval section of the museum. Yet this relative obscurity is deceptive, because Michel Erhard is one of the most famous Gothic sculptors active in the late-medieval German-speaking area, and we should imagine that the bust was originally a revered work of art, enjoyed not just because of its obvious beauty and craft, but also because of its association with a feted artist. 

The bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Kunsthistoriches Museum is a good reminder of how beauty might very well be objective to some degree, yet that objectivity pales in the absence of a subjective marker of quality, such as fame. So when the fame once attached to the item has faded, so the artwork - despite its artistic qualities - fades into a relative obscurity.   

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9938

 

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. 

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

Narrative and Saints' Lives, part III - Drama through Dialogue, and the Legend of Saint Valentine

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day

Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate

- Geoffrey Chaucer, Parliament of Foules

In this series of blogposts I'm looking at certain narrative aspects and techniques in the lives of the saints. Previously, I have looked at narrative technique in very short accounts, touching on how thenarrative is affected by its brevity, and also on how narratives are shaped when the legend is concernedwith a multitude of protagonists. In this blogposts, I use the legend of Saint Valentine to look how the narrative changes through the use of direct speech, as compared to a more straightforward account. As an example of the latter, I rely on the legend of Valentine as contained in the Nuremberg Chronicles and as told in the Legenda Aurea.

Saint Valentine is arguably among the most widely known saints of the world, although I think it's a fair assumption to say that the knowledge does not go very far beyond the name and his feast-day, February 14, alternately known as all hearts' day and singles awareness day. This connection between Valentine and the celebration of couples in love is attested to by the epigraph above, taken from Chaucer's Parliament of Foules, and can thus be suspected to be commonplace in the fourteenth century England. 

Almanac for February, with the bird of Valentine to the far right on the other page

BL MS Royal 17 A XVI, agricultural almanac with calendar, c.1420

Courtesy of British Library

The Nuremberg Chronicle

Another and quite pervasive story claims that the connection between Valentine and love is far older and stronger than that. According to this version, Valentine was a late Roman priest who married couples despite the prohibition against Christian marriage under imperial law. There might an old legend making such claims, and according to the Wikipedia article on Saint Valentine this story is found in the Nuremberg Chronicle, written by Hartmann Schedel and published in 1493. The Nuremberg Chronicle is a world history including many episodes from the lives of the saints. Valentine's legend is recounted on folio 122r, a folio which contains the tail end of the martyrdoms of the eighth persecutions and the beginning of the ninth persecution of the church by Roman authorities.

In the searchable online edition of Walter Schmauch's English translation of the Chronicle, this account appears to be the only one depicting the death of Valentine, and it contains no reference to marriage, only Valentine's mockery of the pagan gods. The legend goes as follows (my brackets):

[Valentine], a Roman priest, after giving evidence of exceptional learning and writing, was imprisoned by the Emperor Claudius; and being asked his opinion concerning the pagan gods, said: Jupiter, Mercury, and the other gods were miserable human beings. Afterwards he enlightened the daughter of Asterius [by healing her blindness]. He brought her and forty-nine persons of her household to the Christian faith. Finally, at the command of the emperor, he was severely beaten with clubs, and was beheaded on the 14th day of the month of February.
- Hartmann Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle, translated by Walter Schmauch

The confusion regarding Saint Valentine goes very far back, as even old martyrologies contained reference to two or even three martyrs called Valentine being celebrated on February 14. One Valentine is a Roman priest, another a bishop of modern-day Terni in Italy, but both being killed during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. David Farmer in his Oxford Encyclopedia of Saints suggests that these Valentines are one and the same.

 

Valentine interrogated

BL MS Royal 2 B VII, English psalter, c.1310-c.1320

Courtesy of British Library

Legenda Aurea

The legend of Valentine is presented in a slightly more elaborate and dramatic fashion in Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, written around 1260 in Italy. The elaboration consists in snippets of direct speech, but it contains no further essential details than what we find two centuries later in the Nuremberg Chronicle (although they disagree on the method of execution). The story is nonetheless markedly different, because Jacobus gives the characters of the legend their own speeches, thus making them coming alive, making them more memorable. The version by Jacobus comes after an explanation of the meaning of Valentine's name and goes as follows (my brackets):
Valentine was a venerable priest, whom the emperor Claudius [II] summoned before him. "What is this, Valentine?" he asked. "Why do you not win our friendship by adoring our gods and abandoning your vain superstitions?" Valentine answered: "If you but knew the grace of God, you would not say such things! You would turn your mind away from your idols and adore the God who is in heaven." One of the people standing by Claudius said: "Valentine, what have you to say about the holiness of our gods?" "All I have to say about them," Valentine replied, "is that they were wretched human beings full of every uncleanness!" Claudius spoke: "If Christ is true God, why do you not tell me the truth?" Valentine: "Truly Christ alone is God! If you believe in him, your soul will be saved, the empire will prosper, and you will be granted victory over all your enemies!" Claudius responded, saying to those around him: "Men of Rome, heed how wisely and rightly this man speaks!" Then the prefect said: "The emperor is being led astray! How shall we give up what we have believed from infancy?"
At this the heart of Claudius was hardened, and he turned Valentine over to the prefect to be held in custody. When Valentine came into this man's house, he said: "Lord Jesus Christ, true light, enlighten this house and let all here know you as true God!" The prefect said: "I wonder at hearing you say that Christ is light. Indeed, if he gives light to my daughter who has been blind for a long time, I will do whatever you tell me to do!" Valentine prayed over the daughter, her sight was restored, and the whole household was converted to the faith. Then the emperor ordered Valentine to be beheaded, about A.D. 280 [a date which is ten years after the death of Claudius II].
- Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger Ryan, 2012

Valentine beheaded

BL MS Royal 2 B VII, English psalter, c.1310-c.1320

Courtesy of British Library

On narrative and dramatic speech

As we see, the use of dialogue makes the story of Valentine according to Jacobus become much more captivating and dramatic than is the case in the Nuremberg Chronicle. One important consequence is that the narrative is more memorable: Valentine is not a taciturn figure whose narrative is left solely to the narrator, he is a character in a dramatic passion play, his own passion play. Furthermore, he also becomes quotable, delivering verbal punches of Christian defiance. In addition, the legend of Valentine becomes in this way peopled by more characters with whom Valentine can perform his verbal battle, and who serve as foils for his perfect Christian truth: The emperor begins promisingly but falls because he listens to others instead of following his heart, while the prefect begins as a pagan responsible for Valentine's imprisonment but becomes the saint's Christian brother instead. These two minor personal dramas are played out within the passion story of Valentine, and we only properly access these personal dramas by way of dialogue, as the dramatic speech provide brief glimpses into the thoughts and concerns of the two antagonistic figures in the narrative.

The question then is why the legend is rendered in this way by Jacobus. One possible explanation is that he quotes directly from an existing vita, though the lack of detail and the brevity of the narrative might suggest that he draws from his own memory rather than a specific written source. It is important to underline, that the difference between the story as presented in Legenda Aurea and the Nuremberg Chronicle does not have to do with the different genres at play, hagiography and historiography. Indeed, chronicles often contained direct dramatic speech, and the contents of these were likely to be put in the mouths of the characters by the historiographers to increase the drama or to present the complex rationale behind an action in an easily accessible way. Among the many medieval historians who practiced this kind of editorial inventiveness I want to name the tenth-century Italian bishop Liutprand of Cremona, and the twelfth-century English historian Henry Huntingdon, to suggest how widespread this phenomenon was.

Since the distinguishing feature is, in my mind, not the genre of the work, I will instead suggest that the key lies in the purpose of the work. Jacobus de Voragine wrote Legenda Aurea as a compendium for homilists from which they could find material for their sermons on the various liturgical feasts. I therefore suggest that the dramatic dialogue serves partly as a mnemonic tool by which homilists could more easily remember the story, hence the result that the story becomes more memorable. Another point to make is that, as mentioned, Valentine becomes quotable, thus providing the homilists with material by which they can make their sermons more exciting.

A third and final point regarding the dialogue is that we might consider it as a form of imitatio Christi. I have elsewhere written about how a debate between the saint and pagans about the nature of divinity or other subjects could be ways of imitating Christ when he was twelve and lectured the learned men in the temple. This kind of rhetorical imitatio is perhaps most famously known as performed by Catherine of Alexandria, but we can also see some of this in Valentine's dismissal of the pagan gods.

In short, I believe that Jacobus' use of dramatic speech is there to bring the story more alive to his audience who in turn had as their job to make the story more alive to their own audiences in church. It might also be that the dialogue serve to embellish a narrative about a saint of whom very little is known.

Afterthought

As an afterthought, Jacobus is not the only one to dramatize the story of Saint Valentine. One dramatic rendition of the legend was narrated by Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, S06E16. Its veracity is dubious on many accounts, but I will let that doubt speak for itself.

Valentine and his best bro Desperatius

From HIMYM S06E16 (for the full clip, see below)

Courtesy of this website

Bibliography

Farmer, David, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004

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

Schedel, Hermann, The Nuremberg Chronicle, translated by Walter Schmauch, accessed at Morse Library, Beliot College, online edition: https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/

Websites

The Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm

Wikipedia: ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine

Some thoughts on an inclusive syllabus - gender

Jousting women
BL MS Royal 2 B VII, f.197v, psalter, England, between 1310 and 1320
Courtesy of British Library

A few days ago, November 30, academic and blogger Erin Wunker launched an appeal to fellow academics for crafting syllabi that emphasised inclusiveness and diversity. The appeal was disseminated on Twitter via the hashtag inclusivesyllabus, devised by Wunker's co-blogger Aimée Morrison (Associate Professor at University of Waterloo). I myself became aware of this appeal thanks to medievalist Dorothy Kim who picked itand redirected it more specifically to teachers of the pre-1500 eras. What followed was an engaging discussion about various ways in which to make syllabi more inclusive. Some of the suggestions that arose were collected in storify by Jonathan Hsy, and it became evident that there were many ways to go about making a syllabus more inclusive.

Personally, as a historian of medieval texts, I embrace the idea of an inclusive syllabus because a history syllabus should reflect historical reality, and the reality is that the medieval world was both diverse and complex (though often not inclusive in the modern sense). In this blogpost I wish to present some of my ideas for an inclusive syllabus, ideas which emerged in the course of the Twitter discussion, and which I think are more easily fleshed out here. In the following I will only address one topic, and hopefully I will return to other topics in later blogposts. Since this post is the result of a collaborative discussion my ideas were inspired by the suggestions of several people, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in opposition. I will try my best to provide due acknowledgement for these ideas, and if some readers who participated in this discussion feel they have been forgotten, please let me know.

The following is a set of works, themes and strategies by which I believe a syllabus of a course in medieval studies can become more inclusive. It is worth noting that this is not an exhaustive list by any means. It is also worth noting that the following does not comprise a syllabus of its own, but that it is intended to provide ideas for those who are designing their own syllabi. Moreover, I want to emphasise that a great number of participants in this dicussion come from literary studies, while I myself have a background predominantly from history. This means that my perspective will be somewhat different, and it also means that many suggestions might be more suitable for history rather than, say, English courses. However, I'm of the opinion that to teach medieval literature without also bringing in medieval history to provide a context for this literature is shoddy and wrong.

A final remark worth making is that the degree and level of diversity and inclusiveness in a medieval studies syllabus depends very much on the course itself. I for my part would love to design a course which was centred on precisely the diversity of medieval history. However, even though syllabi can often emphasise diversity only up to a point, the important thing is to be aware that measures can be taken to ensure an increased attention to diversity, both in introductory courses and more specialised courses.

Marie de France writing her lais
Bibliothèque nationale de France - BnF, Arsenal Library, Ms. 3142 f. 256, France, 1285-92
Courtesy of Wikimedia

Suggestions for inclusive syllabi - gender


Scholarship and secondary reading

There are many ways in which a syllabus can be made more inclusive, and a good place to start is to make sure that the reading list includes scholarship done by both men and women. In medieval studies, this is not difficult at all: Many brilliant scholars, both male and female, have contributed to the field of medieval studies for decades, and to have both men and women is important not only because it is more inclusive but also because that often is the only way to accurately represent the contributions done in a field of medieval scholarship. Once when I was a teaching assistant at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, after having finished my MA thesis, I was approached by one of the female history students who asked if I could give her some names of female academics. She made it quite clear that she wanted someone of her own gender to look up to, and in a field like history I can understand that very well as it often comes across - at least to first-year students - that history is largely written, and enacted, by men. Having done my MA thesis on the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor in the High Middle Ages, I was not short on suggestions and ended up compiling a long list of female academics whom I had myself relied on for my dissertation. To provide students with the sensation that they have someone from their own gender to look up to, and via those role models to be reassured that their gender does not prohibit a career in a field of medieval studies, is one of the cornerstones of an inclusive syllabus.

The same point, that students need to feel represented, should also be made when it comes to ethnicity. However, in medieval studies - especially history - that is less easily done simply because a vast majority of medieval scholarship is conducted by Caucasian men and women in Europe and in North America. When possible, inclusion of relevant scholarship by non-Caucasian academics is a positive thing and is to be encouraged. 

Catherine of Siena
Autun - BM - ms. 0269, f.170v, Book of Hours, Use of Autun, c.1480-1490
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Female medieval authors

The majority of recorded medieval history is dominated by men. The majority of known individuals from the Middle Ages, both in the political sphere, the religious sphere, the cultural sphere, the mercantile sphere and so on, are men. Most of the texts written in the Middle Ages were written by men and largely for men. This is how the situation is, and the majority of primary sources for a syllabus in medieval studies is most likely to be comprised of male writers or male authors (not always the same thing in the Middle Ages), unless the course was designed specifically to teach female writers, which would be an interesting challenge. The problem, however, is not that most medieval sources were written by men, this is to be expected. The problem arises when the many female influences on medieval texts are ignored, and it is here an inclusive syllabus can make an important difference.

Although most medieval authors were men, we have quite a list of female authors as well and these can be employed in a wide range of syllabi, covering several angles and subjects. Since women in the Middle Ages had several restrictions for how they could participate in society. However, many women did become notable authors, for instance due to their education as nuns. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that many authors did not themselves write the works they authored, but dictated them to a scribe. This also meant that the literacy was not necessarily the obstacle we might think it is. I also want to point to Hildegard of Bingen for a case where lack of education was seen as a strong point. In her collection of celestial visions Scivias, Hildegard emphasises her insufficient education and lifts it up as a mark of the authenticity of her vision. Because she is lacking rhetorical prowess and can only describe her visions in simple words, her prose is also - she argues - more true, more accessible, more accurate. This claim of superiority in content through inferiority in style is a timeworn topos of much medieval writing and originated in part in opposition to the rhetoric of pagan writers of the early Christian period. Hildegard is here following an old tradition, but she employs the motif as a woman: Since she, as a woman, is less educated than high-ranking churchmen, her prose is untouched - thus not falsified - by rhetorical ornament.

It is also important to note that although there were many medieval femal writers and authors, several female voices gained dissemination through the translation of their words into Latin. This was the case with Saint Birgitta of Sweden whose revelations were translated by her confessor. In the case of some Italian female recluses who became venerated as saints, their stories were also written down into Latin by their male, mendicant confessors. The stories and the content of the works came from women, but word and content was shaped by men educated in the hagiographic genre.

Despite social restrictions, women could become powerful voices in their age, and could be ardent critics of men of powers, be they kings or popes, such as Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena respectively. Most of the primary sources from the Middle Ages which have a female authorship are religious works since it was in the religious sphere could be most active and could most easily express themselves in literature. These works, however, are applicable not only to religious matters but can be used to explore several aspects of medieval culture. 

Christine de Pizan
BL MS Harley 4431, various works by Christine de Pizan, France, c.1410-c.1414
Courtesy of British Library

Below is an incomplete list of female late-antique and medieval authors which provides important suggestions to elements of an inclusive syllabus:


Anna Komnene, The Alexiad

Anonymous nun of Barking Abbey, Life of Edward the Confessor (in Anglo-Norman verse)

Birgitta of Sweden, Revelations

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies; The Treasure of the City of Ladies

Clemence of Barking, Life of Saint Catherine (in Anglo-Norman verse)

Egeria, The Pilgrimage

Elisabeth von Schönau, various works

Hadewijch of Brabant, various works

Heloise, Letters

Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias

Hrothsvita of Gandersheim, various works

Jorunn Skáldmær, skaldic extracts preserved in The Prose Edda

Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

Marie de France, Lais

Medieval women as patrons

As was pointed out by Erica Weaver, medieval women of power - either as queens or abbesses - were important patrons of arts and were the dedicatees of many important works of medieval literature. Chrétien de Troyes, for instance had Marie duchess of Champagne as his patron, and Marie's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine was the patron of writers such as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-Maure. One of the perhaps most interesting cases of female medieval patronage is Queen Emma of England who commissioned the historiographical work now known as Encomium Emmae Reginae (alternately Gesta Cnutonis). This latter work is available in translation and has been the subject of much excellent scholarship.

Emma receiving the encomium
BL MS Add. 33241, Encomium Emmae Reginae eleventh century
Courtesy of Wikimedia

It is here important to note that although female literacy was generally lower than the literacy of men, literacy in the Middle Ages is not the same as being familiar with literature. In the Middle Ages, reading was a communal activity and one person would often read aloud to others, either during mealtimes in the monastery, in the royal court, or in the families of nobles and the merchants. Precisely since the ability to read was so limited, those who could read were often given the task of reading to others, and sometimes work could be recited from memory - which was made easier by writing in verse, and which is why prose texts could sometimes be rendered into verse as a mnemonic tool. Medieval literature had a strong oral element we sometimes tend to overlook.


Medieval female saints

In addition to teaching works authored by women, an inclusive syllabus also needs to contain works written about women, even though these works were authored by men. One helpful perspective here is history, where legal documents of various kinds provide examples of the the roles, the constrictions, but also the possibilities of women in the Middle Ages. Even in a literature course, it would be a great addition to provide some historical context for the lives of medieval women, for women in the Middle Ages were not secondary characters to historical events although they have been made to be so by traditional historiographical works.

Four female saints (the Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Margaret and one more)
BL MS Royal 2 B VII, f.308, psalter, England, between 1310 and 1320
Courtesy of British Library

One field in which the role of women, the perception of women and the importance of women in the Middle Ages can be seen is in the cult of saints. I emphasise this field because the cult of saints is my own particular field, so I am more than a little biased. Nonetheless, I maintain that in the cult of saints we see the convergence of many subjects and many perspectives which are useful to the topic at hand. For instance, when reading texts pertaining to medieval female saints, we can in some cases grasp the outlines of the historicity of the lives of these women (though that historicity has been obscured by the pre-requisites of hagiography). We can also be able to detect how male medieval writers viewed women. A great number of such writers held a view of women which was tinged with various degrees of misogyny inherited largely from patristic writers and parts of the Biblical narrative, and which was cultivated by a monastic environment in which celibacy and separation of the sexes were seen as crucial steps towards spiritual perfection. Also secular writers, like Giovanni Boccaccio, were likely to hold such views of the feminine. However, men who wrote down hagiographies for women were faced with a subject which had attained holiness and yet belonged to what was considered the weaker sex. In these hagiogaphies, therefore, male writers were compelled to provide a more nuanced depiction of women, and even though they might exude a more negative attitude to women in general they at least had to acknowledge that their protagonists were holy persons.

The cult of saints is an important source for an inclusive syllabus, not only because it is a repository for mixed attitudes towards women, but also because women themselves could write hagiographies. I've mentioned above the Life of Saint Catherine written by Clemence of Barking, for instance. Clemence's Life was, however, an adaptation, a vernacular version of an existing legend.The norm was that men were the ones writing the Latin, seminal lives, such as when Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and Osbert of Clare were commissioned to write the vitae of English female monastics who were believed to be saints. In the genre of hagiography, however, we see an interesting intersection of men and women in the cases where the lives of the women were dictated by the women themselves in the vernacular and then translated into Latin as the vita of that woman by a male figure, often her confessor. This is believed to be the case with Christina Markyate in the twelfth century, and became a widespread trend in the emergence of cults of female recluses in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. In the case of the Italian ascetic women, their confessors and/or hagiographers were often monks of the Dominican and Franciscan orders who sought to make of these women examples for others to follow, and who also were likely to give these vita a certain mendicant spin. This relationship between a female author and a male writer, translator and editor is an interesting area of study, and there are numerous examples of this relationship. As mentioned above, the same relationship goes for male scribes who latinized the visions and polemics of women religious who later became saints, such as Birgitta of Sweden, but in those cases we can at least expect that the author has been active in the editing process, whereas in the case of hagiographies the author and protagonist has been dead for some time by the time the hagiography is published.

Elizabeth of Hungary reading
Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f. 652, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

During the Middle Ages, there were many female saints which were venerated throughout Christendom. Some of these women were mythical and belonged to such a distant past that their mere historicity is dubious, namely SS Margaret, Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara and others. Some were results of more slowly coalescing legends, as in the cases of SS Ursula, and Sunniva of Norway. Other women were historical, although veneration and hagiography naturally added some sediments of myth to their stories, such as Eadburga of Winchester, Elizabeth of Hungary, or Margaret of Scotland. This rich repository of medieval stories about women is a great and needful addition to an inclusive medievalist syllabus.

Below is a list of some lives of female saints available in English translation:

Anonymous, The Life of Christina Markyate (Oxford World Classics)

Clemence of Barking, Life of Saint Catherine (Everyman)

Geoffrey of Burton, Life and Miracles of St Modwenna (Oxford Medieval Texts)

Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, texts on the female saints of Ely (Oxford Medieval Texts)

Niketas Magistros, Life of Theoktistes of Lesbos (Dumbarton Oaks)

Raymond of Capua, The Life of Agnes of Montepulciano (Dominican nuns of summit)


Shorter versions of legends and lives can be found in Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend (Princeton University Press). For a more detailed studies of these women, it is also necessary to work with their liturgical offices.

In addition to these female saints, it is of course important to remember the omnipresent cult of the Virgin Mary, which resulted in an expansive body of literature, both in Latin and in the vernacular. This subject is too big for this present blogpost, but should not be overlooked as it covers both religious and secular literature, hymns, liturgical offices, miracle collections and prose narratives. 

Mary of Egypt
BL MS Royal 20 D VI, Lives of the saints, Wauchier de Denain, France, 13th century
Courtesy of British Library

Women also appear in medieval texts as representatives of otherness, but this is a subject I hope to cover in a later blogpost.