Minor pleasures - an initial from a twelfth-century manuscript

This week is an incredibly busy week, and my mind is compartmentalising my sundry tasks to such an extent that I pretty much have a tunnel vision. This leaves very little energy for other tasks, so as a way to unwind it's pleasant to idly ruminate on some of the minor treasures I have accumulated in my files throughout an as-yet continuing academic career.

One such treasure is the initial below, belonging to Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi by the second-century Roman historian Justinus. An epitome in this sense is a summary, or a shortened version of a longer work, a kind of digest that extracted the elements of key importance and adapted it according to the new author. I encountered this initial by chance and was mesmerised by it. To me, the O appeared as a miniature model of the universe, the earth placed in the middle per the geocentric cosmological view. I have since been reliably informed by a friend and colleague who is an art historian that this is not the case, but the initial remains a wonder of medieval quillwork.   

Nice - BM - ms. 0092, f.083v, 

Justinus, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi

(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr.)

Saint Peter's Chair - a feast of papal identity

Peter seated

Cambrai - BM - ms. 0528, f.141, homiliary, C12 

(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Today, February 22, is the feast of Saint Peter's Chair. This feast commemorates the founding of the bishopric of Antioch. According to early tradition, and based on the historical meeting of Peter and Paul in Antioch as recorded in Galatians 2:11-14, Peter established Antioch as a centre of preaching and served as its leader for a number of years. The name bishopric is a later projection onto the incipient infrastructure, and also conveys a succession and connection to later bishops of Antioch that is historically doubtful. This feast of Saint Peter's Chair is one of two such feasts from the medieval tradition. On January 18 another feast was celebrated, this time commemorating Peter's supposed founding of the see of Rome. This feast is now no longer included in modern Catholic calendars.

The idea of Peter as a founding bishop was, and remains, the linchpin of the institutional identity of the papal see. The pope is seen as the apostolic successor of Saint Peter, and the supporters of this view points to Matthew 16:18, where Christ says to Peter that he is the rock (petra - rock in Greek) upon which Christ's church was to be built. This verse is inscribed on the inside of the base of the main cupola in Saint Peter's basilica in Rome, for instance.

The notion that Rome is the centre of institutional Christianity came about in the Early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) was one of the most vocal promoters of the primacy of Rome, but for the first seven centuries of Christian history Rome was just one bishopric among many, and a bishopric that was entangled in various local conflicts on the Italian peninsula. Granted, Rome had a symbolic importance, as it was accepted that both Peter and Paul were executed and buried there, but in terms of power, it was not until the alliance between the Carolingian dynasty and the papal see that things began to slowly turn in a different direction. Even so, it would take centuries before the Roman pontiff became a powerful figure on the political scene beyond Italy.

Saint Peter as pope

Besançon - BM - ms. 0007, f.240v, Bible, C13 

(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

Papal power in the Middle Ages rested in large part on the symbolism of the city and of its connection to Peter. Consequently, Peter became an important figure in the establishment of a papal institutional identity. There are numerous pieces of evidence to showcase how reliant papal identity was, and remains, on the figure of Saint Peter. Churches, liturgical feasts, iconography, history-writing, all contribute to establish, formulate and perpetuate the idea that Peter was the first pope. Among other things, this can be seen in the plethora of medieval illuminations in which Peter is presented in papal regalia, holding one or two keys - the keys to Heaven and Earth which comprise the papal coat of arms - and often sitting on a cathedra, the bishop's seat. In this blogpost, I have collected a few examples from the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that point to the papal iconography with which these images of Saint Peter are imbued. Three of these four pictures are made in France, and this points to the universality of the idea of Peter as pope in medieval Latin Christendom. 

Saint Peter holding one of his two keys

Dijon - BM - ms. 0021, f.031, Glossed bible, c.1270-80, Paris

(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr) 

The most recent example I have chosen to include is not made in France, but it ended up in France by historical necessity, as it were. The example in question is a missal containing the Use of Rome, i.e. the list of feasts and their classification that was based on the liturgical performance in the bishopric of Rome. This missal is a sumptuous book produced in Bologna around 1370, a point in time when the leader of the see of Rome was not in Rome but in Avignon in Southern France. While we do not know exactly when the missal was made, it is believed that it was made for Pope Urban V, who returned to Rome in 1367 (but stayed only for a brief period). As Urban died in 1370, the missal passed on to his successors, and it remained in the papal residence at Avignon, even with the return of the pope to Rome in 1376. Consequently, when a series of popes elected by the French cardinals but not acknowledged by the Italian cardinals, these popes - antipopes or Avignon popes - returned to Avignon. The first of these Avignon popes was Robert of Geneva, who took the name Clement (VII), who reigned from 1378 to 1394. Thus, he became the new owner of the missal.

The Bolognese makers of the missal, however, could in no way anticipate how things would turn out. They made the missal for a pope who might at that time have returned to Rome, or might still be in Avignon. But regardless of the pope's geographical location, the pope remained the bishop of Rome, and consequently the missal had to follow the Roman liturgy, and contemporary Roman iconography. This is seen in the various episcopal figures among the saints illuminated in the initials, and among these we find Peter, rendered in the sumptuous garbs of the fourteenth-century Roman pontiff, holding the two keys and wearing the tiara of the papal authority. Despite the ongoing controversy over the fact that the bishop of Rome had resided outside of Rome for decades, the papal identity remained rooted in the idea that Peter was the first of the popes and that the popes were his apostolic successors. The feast of Saint Peter's Chair is one of the feasts that commemorate this papal identity, even though this particular feast was originally celebrated in commemoration of his establishment of the See of Antioch.

Peter as pope 

Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.232, Roman missal, Bologna, c.1370

(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

For the feast of Saint Sigfrid

Today is the feast of Saint Sigfrid of Växjö in Sweden, the patron saint of the city and of the region of Småland. His legend survives in thirteenth-century sources, and according to this legend he was the archbishop of York in the early eleventh century, who went to Sweden on the invitation of the pagan Swedish king who wanted to learn about Christianity. This king was Olof Skötkonung (d.c.1022), who is the first recorded individual to have claimed rulership over both the Geats and the Swedes, which were the two main political entities of medieval Sweden.Olof Skötkonung (interpreted as tax-king) is a historical figure, but Sigfrid's historicity is highly dubious. We do know that there has never been an archbishop of York by that name, and the English king Mildrith who also appears in the legend is likewise not authentic. 

Växjö Cathedral

The legend of Sigfrid continues with a description of his arrival in Denmark, where he was greeted by King Svend (presumably Svend Forkbeard who died in 1014). The Danish king was himself a Christian, and had Sigfrid escorted safely to the Swedish border. By this point in time, Denmark extended into the region of Skåne, or Scania, which today belongs to Sweden. Consequently, at Sigfrid's time, it was Småland that constituted the border zone between the politically fragmented Sweden and the more centralised Denmark.

In Småland, Sigfrid set up camp by Lake Växjö, a name that I have seen interpreted as veg-sjö, or road-lake, i.e. a lake by the crossroads. If correct, this name points to the existing trade routes through forests and by water that were in place at the time of Sigfrid's alleged arrival. This also makes sense, considering that Christian missionaries - historical or mythical - were not pioneers in unknown lands, but settled where there already existed networks of human contact and infrastructures by which the new faith could be disseminated. Close to Lake Växjö, he established his first church, said to be on the spot where the cathedral stands today. While Sigfrid's church is mythical, it is likely that a wooden church was erected in the early stages of the Christianisation of the area. It is also likely that this wooden church was placed where the cathedral stands today, because when Växjö became a bishopric in 1170, the building of a new stone church was started. This stone church were a replacement for the previous wooden structure, and likely raised on the same foundations - this is a very common pattern in the history of Nordic churches.

In the first stages of Sigfrid's missionary campaign, he was aided by his three nephews that he had brought with him from England. They were named Unaman, Sunaman and Vinaman, and they were in charge of the nascent church while Sigfrid went to visit King Olof to tell him about his progress. While Sigfrid was away, a group of twelve local aristocrats - i.e. rich farmers and chieftains - conspired against the three nephews. These twelve had been selected as honorary members of the church organisation, presumably in imitation of Christ's apostles, and possibly also with a nod to the twelve monks that were chosen by Benedict of Nursia in his establishment of the Benedictine Order. The twelve Swedes, eventually, stole into the sleeping quarters of the nephews and decapitated them. The bodies were buried and the heads thrown into Lake Växjö.

When Sigfrid learned about this, he returned to Växjö and as he was walking by the lake a celestial light shone down on the water, revealing the three heads placed in a small wooden tub. The heads spoke to him, and vowed revenge on later generations. The culpits were later punished by Olof Skötkonung, and Sigfrid continued his work as the first bishop of Sweden. He later died peacefully, and is therefore listed as a confessor in the calendars. 

Since today is the feast of Sigfrid, there was a concert in the cathedral featuring excerpts from the liturgical office, which survives in thirteenth-century sources. The arrangement was organised by Karin S. Lagergren, a friend and colleague at Linnaeus University whose research is the foundation for the musical arrangement, and the recording of a CD of Sigfrid's liturgy. It was a wonderful experience with beautiful music permeating the sacred space of the cathedral and bringing to life the mythical and inauthentic figures, whose story nonetheless is likely based on some collective memory from the time of conversion. This office was likely composed in the bishopric of Växjö - thus pointing to the existence of a scriptorium at the cathedral - and from there it was disseminated throughout the Swedish metropolitan see (which had been established in 1164). The performance, in this way, brought me closer to how the story of Sigfrid, and how the identity of the cathedral, was communicated to the medieval community of clerics from the thirteenth century onwards.

Following the concert, I had a stroll by Lake Växjö, following the shore where Sigfrid mourned his nephews and miraculously found their heads. There was no celestial light today, but it was nonetheless a very atmospheric afternoon, and with my head filled with the watery imagery of the Sigfrid legend, it became somewhat easier to imagine the scenes of the story. It was, in other words, easy to see how the legend and the landscape in combination served to solidify an identity centred on the figure of Sigfrid. We now know that he never existed, but to the Swedes in the twelfth century onwards he was, and he became the representative of their identity both in relation to the local geography and in relation to the Swedish history as a whole.

Two voyages centuries apart - unexpected connections in academic research

Research into medieval history often opens up strange and unexpected pathways, and many of these pathways lead into the modern world, highlighting the unbroken continuity of time and disabusing us of the insufficiencies of periodisation. As a medievalist, I enjoy exploring these various ways in which any given research topic also has a reception history that yields knowledge about a time much closer to my own than that of the individuals and institutions of my research. One such case that delighted me this week was that of two voyages centuries apart, the legendary voyage of Saint Olaf, king of Norway (d.1030), and the historic voyage of Lev Trotsky in 1917.

Olaf encounter the trolls of Norway

Dingtuna Church, Albertus Pictor, c.1500 

(courtesy of this website)

The voyage of Saint Olaf is an episode in the corpus of stories told about the saint-king throughout medieval Northern Europe. According to the various accounts, Olaf races his half-brother Harald Hardråde (d.1066) in a ship, and it became a popular theme of church art in late-medieval Sweden, as seen in the example by Albertus Pictor above. The roots of this story might lie in Olaf's return to Norway in 1016 to claim the Norwegian kingship, after having spent years as a mercenary in Normandy and England. But this possible kernel of historical truth became a fantastical tale that was expanded by various villages which claimed that Saint Olaf's voyage had passed through the area.

But what does this have to do with Lev Trotsky? In March 1917, Trotsky had left New York where he had been living for a period of time, and began to make his way back to Europe on a Norwegian steamer. Trotsky was a person of interest to the American and British intelligence services, and was detained in Halifax for a short while, but he was eventually allowed to continue his voyage. The ship that had brought Trotsky from New York to Halifax was SS Kristianiafjord, one of the steamers of the Scandinavian-American line that connected Europe and America, but since this crossing had been interrupted Trotsky had to find a new ship. This ship is what connects him with Saint Olaf, because the steamer on which he travelled from Halifax to Oslo was SS Hellig Olav, named after the man whose legendary voyage to Norway had such a tremendous impact on the cultural history of Scandinavia. So they travelled, Olaf and Lev Trotsky, each in their own vessel, centuries apart.

Now, you may ask what we are to do with this information, how can this contribute to a greater understanding of either Saint Olaf or Lev Trotsky. The simple answer is that this information is of very little consequence to our understanding of either. This is an amusing coincidence that does not yield any information beyond itself. However, the fact that a steamer was named after Olaf is an example of the reception history of the saint-king into the modern era, and gives us at least a somewhat more nuanced understanding of how the myriad ways in which Saint Olaf has set his mark on Norwegian culture. 

Plan of the steamer Hellig Olav of the Scandinavian-American Line

Courtesy of this website

For information about Trotsky's voyage, see Nigel West, Historical Dictionary of World War I Intelligence, p. 223.

Article - The Odense literature and the liturgy of St Cnut Rex

Last month I announced the publication of a collection of articles, Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy, edited by a few colleagues and myself. The entire publication is available in Open Access, and I am very satisfied with the articles it contains.

Today, I was also given a pdf of my own article in the collection, and in case it might be practical to access the individual article rather than the entire collection, I have made this available here: https://www.academia.edu/41775817/The_Odense_literature_and_the_liturgy_of_St_Cnut_Rex.

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 15 - a little teaser

Two years ago I was employed to participate in a pilot project dedicated to researching fragments of medieval manuscripts at the university library of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. My job was primarily to identify those liturgical fragments that had been discovered in the books once belonging to Herlufsholm School, an institution founded in the town of Næstved on Sjælland in 1565.

One of the books presented a particularly challenging case, namely Herlufsholm 534.11. As can be seen below, the spine has been strengthened by six strips of parchment - one of which had fallen off - as well as a loose fragment strip that is currently attached to the binding (not pictured). My colleague and I could identify this as having belonged to a liturgical manuscript thanks to the notation, but this was as sure as we could be about anything when we began our inquiries. 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, Herlufsholm 534.11

The main problem was that with the exception of the two fragments at either end of the spine (about which I have written here and here), the manuscript had been cut vertically. On the one hand, this has provided us with a better sense of the original folio layout and the length of the texts. On the other hand, it meant that the individual fragments contained many incomplete words. This is a major issue when it comes to identifying such chant texts, because identification is often done by searching liturgical databases, such as the Cantus database. In order to use these search engines, it is important to have at least one complete word, and preferably more than a conjunction or preposition, in order to avoid wading through large quantities of material. And because Latin words have various endings depending on their grammatical clause, it makes a huge difference to be able to ascertain whether a word ends in the nominative or the accusative clause, for instance. In the case of the fragments of Herlufsholm 534.11, this grammatical information was often absent, either because the beginning or the end of the word had been cut off, or because of smudges or wear had made some letters illegible.

I have been working on these fragments on and off since this pilot project, always returning in the hope of teasing out some more information, and hoping that with some time away from the matter my eyes will be able to detect new details. Thankfully, this method has paid off. In the past month, I have twice returned to my images of the fragments as a way to distract my brain from various tasks, and this has yielded some breakthroughs that has changed my understanding of the fragments, and allowed me to fill in some important gaps. The second of these revelations came only two days ago.

Presently, I'm still systematising the information that has been gleaned from the recent revelations, and consequently there are still many things I'm leaving unsaid until I'm able to present my findings in a more coherent way. This blogpost is more as a way to express my excitement, and to provide an idea of why these particular fragments have been so challenging. I therefore hope the reader will forgive me for being a bit coy about the details.

But in order to illustrate the significance of the recent breakthroughs, I present you with the picture below. This shows the upper part of one of the fragments, showing the side that faces inward against the spine. The text on this side of the fragment is now completely lost to us, and all that remains are these letters, letters so difficult to read that I had since the very beginning of my work discarded all hope of teasing out their meaning. However, thanks to this week's revelation, I have been able to compare it with texts from some of the other fragments, and I now know that the text below reads "potuque dignas", and that it comes from a sequence for the feast of Easter Wednesday (Cantus ID: ah53050). In the microcosm of these fragments and my research on them, this is terribly exciting, and I hope to be able to share more details anon.

Spine fragment 5 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, Herlufsholm 534.11

The three kings at Sotosalbos

Today is the feast of Epiphany that commemorates the visit of the wise men to the Christ-child, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew. From at least the third century, the number of wise men, magi, or kings was commonly set to three, and this is the standard representation throughout the Middle Ages. Images of the three kings were ubiquitous in medieval Christian art, since they were an important feature in the story of the life and time of Christ. For this year's feast, I'm presenting to you one of these medieval representations, which I encountered last year on a capital in the thirteenth-century Church of Saint Michael in Sotosalbos, Spain.