Mapping Saints

Saints and Holy Wells – A Medieval Tradition?

2021-02-23

Terese Zachrisson, University of Gothenburg

St. Olaf’s Spring and ”St. Olaf’s Cauldron” in Borgsjö, Medelpad.

Bodies of water believed to be gateways to the supernatural are a common aspect in many cultures, and they are still a feature of modern Christianity. The veneration of springs is an adaptable tradition that can be tied to deities, saints and other supernatural forces, all according to the particular cultural context in which they are found. In medieval Europe, many wells and springs were associated with the saints. Healing miracles frequently occurred at these wells, and pilgrims left votive offerings at the sites. At times, the crutches and canes left behind would pile up by the wells, as a testament to the intervention of the saints.

In the Swedish source material, holy wells and springs are frequently mentioned in 17th-century antiquarian reports, where they are usually described as remnants of a ‘superstitious’ Catholic past. Some of the springs were dedicated to universal saints, such as the Virgin Mary, St. Lawrence or St. Nicholas, but a large portion of them were connected to regional and local saints that were believed to actually have been present at the sites during their lifetimes. St. Olaf and St. Sigfrid, who according to tradition travelled extensively during their lives, have both left a particular abundance of footprints in the form of natural objects bearing their names. But holy wells also give us glimpses of saints’ cults that are otherwise largely unknown — for instance St. Ingemo in Dala, St. Torsten in Bjurum, and St. Björn in Klockrike.

But can we really know that holy wells and the religious traditions associated with them were part of medieval lived religion, when the majority of the sources are from the early modern period? The answer is that we simply cannot know for sure, but that there is a high probability that they were. Holy wells have been strangely neglected in modern Scandinavian research. When mentioned at all, they are often, especially in popular publications, sweepingly referred to as ‘pagan survivals’. There has been some scholarly debate in Denmark as to their status in the medieval tradition. Jens Christian Johansen (1997) and Susanne Andersen (1985) both state that holy wells are to be viewed as a primarily Post-Reformation phenomenon, and that evidence of the cult is almost entirely lacking from the medieval period. According to this view, the cult of holy wells developed in the early modern era in part as a way of compensating for the loss of the saints in institutionalized religion, and in part due to the growing fashion among the upper classes of attending spas and mineral wells.

That the Reformation and the sudden disappearance of several previously important channels to the divine led to a surge in visits to holy wells and other sites that were outside of ecclesiastical control is not in doubt here. But does that mean the cult of holy wells was non-existent in the Middle Ages? I would argue not. While evidence of the medieval cult of holy wells in Sweden is unusual, it is not entirely lacking.

Letter of indulgence for the chapel above St. Elin’s Spring in Skövde, Västergötland.
Photograph by the Swedish National Archives.

The most prominent examples are the two springs dedicated to St. Elin of Skövde in Skövde and Götene in the Skara Diocese. Already in the officium to St. Elin composed by Bishop Brynolf Algotsson (in office from 1278–1317), it is mentioned that a spring miraculously appeared at the site of Elin’s martyrdom. In addition to this, we have three preserved letters of indulgence that mention the sacred springs. In a letter from 1373 (SDHK 10386), Bishop Nils of Skara grants 40 days of indulgence to pious visitors to the oratorium jn honorem gloriose martiris Elene super fontem suum prope Skødw, that is, “the shrine in honour of the glorious martyr Elin, above her spring near Skövde”. Though the indulgence primarily concerns the shrine or chapel  built above the spring, the spring itself seems central: on the back of the letter, a later scribe in a 15th-century hand, has added the words: indulgencie ad fontem — indulgence for the spring. The indulgences granted at the Skövde spring were reaffirmed in another letter in 1425 by Bishop Sigge (SDHK 20587). The other St. Elin’s Spring, at the site of her murder in Götene, is also mentioned in a letter of indulgence, issued in 1462 by Bishop Lars of Växjö (SDHK 40914). In this letter, indulgence is granted to those that under certain conditions visit Götene Parish Church, but also to those that with good intentions visit the Fontem Sancte Helene. 

Some legal sources also mention holy wells. In the court records from the town of Arboga in 1459, Hælge Swens kællo — a holy well dedicated to the elusive local saint Sven of Arboga — is mentioned briefly. The most famous holy well in Sweden was likely Helga Kors källa (‘Holy Cross Spring’) in Svinnegarn parish in the archdiocese of Uppsala. Accounts of the cult of this spring are abundant from the early modern period, but the cult is alluded to in sources that strengthen its ties back to the Middle Ages. In 1487, a man in Stockholm convicted of manslaughter was required to make several pilgrimages in order to atone for his crime, with one of the locations being Svinnegarn. In his 1566 writing on church ordinances and ceremonies, Reformer and first Lutheran Archbishop Laurentius Petri stated his disapproval of how the ‘popish’ clergy had consecrated wells and springs. In the same work, he also criticized the previously abundant pilgrimages to famous sites like Rome, Santiago de Compostela – and Svinnegarn. To be fair, we do not know whether these sources refer to the church of Svinnegarn, the spring, or indeed both. That the spring itself had been the object of pilgrimage is indicated by the writings of Johannes Messenius (1579–1636). According to his Scondia Illustrata, a holy crucifix had been placed at the renowned Svinnegarn spring, and it had been removed by Laurentius Petri. Messenius lived in close proximity in time to the later part of the Swedish Reformation, and many in his audience could easily have falsified his claims were they not common knowledge at the time. Several coins have also been located in the spring, though the oldest one is dated to the 1590s — but the offertory log that according to oral tradition used to be placed by the spring, contained several coins from the period 1275–1520. 

Medieval comb found in one of Barnabrunnarna in Tolg, Småland.
Photograph by the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Speaking of archaeological finds, in 1901, when clearing one of the Barnabrunnarna (literally ”Children’s Wells”) in Tolg parish in Växjö Diocese, nearly 6000 coins, tokens, and other small objects were found. The majority of these offerings could be dated to the period between the late 16th century and the mid-19th century, but among them were also a medieval comb and a coin issued in the reign of King Magnus Eriksson (1319–1354). That so few medieval objects have been found in holy wells could either indicate that the cult was only a minor feature of medieval lived religion, or that many of the springs were cleared at some point following the Reformation. But whether the cult was a major or minor aspect of the medieval repertoire of piety, it certainly did occur. 

There is also the aspect of the place of Scandinavian religious culture in the context of a wider medieval Christendom. Recent research has demonstrated that Scandinavian Christianity was firmly in line with the church in Rome, with a vast and active network of ecclesiastical communication, and by no means as ‘peripheral’ as previously believed. The cult of holy wells was an integrated part of everyday piety throughout Christian Europe – why would Scandinavia differ from the rest in this particular aspect? Concluding that since records of the Scandinavian cult of holy wells in the Middle Ages are scarce, it did not exist, is an argumentum ex silentio. But at the end of the day, every scholar using our database will have to make their own assessment of the evidence available. 

Further reading:

Celeste Ray (ed.), Sacred Waters: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells, Abington 2020.

Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland, Oxford 2011.

Terese Zachrisson, Mellan fromhet och vidskepelse: Materialitet och religiositet i det efterreformatoriska Sverige, Göteborg 2017.

A Short Reflection on Mapping Saints in 2020

2021-02-09

Sara Ellis-Nilsson, Linnaeus University

The following was originally published as a thread on Twitter @MappingSaints (Dec. 18, 2020). It has been edited for clarity.

The year [2020] is drawing to a close. Time to reflect! The project has taken clear steps forward: developed an input interface and a data model for our cultural heritage data, created a holy place register, implemented vocabularies and linked data where possible, and digitized analogue material, etc.

Our collaborators at the Swedish Historical Museum and the Swedish Heritage Board archives have finished their digitizing components. Some metadata enrichment is still ongoing. These collections are being integrated into our platform, but will also later be linked to via SOCH (Swedish Open Cultural Heritage).

We held a (digital!) workshop for our advisory board and managed to have a two-day project meeting [in the autumn] to discuss challenges and solutions. We welcomed two work-experience students to our team for a month. All invaluable collaborative efforts! Work is of course ongoing and there is still much to do, especially in terms of entering data and digitizing our analogue source texts.

We continue to collect and input data, and develop/fine-tune our model. More tools/solutions will be implemented. But we have come a long way in a year, and especially this one, despite the setbacks, for example, of not being able to travel to archives to collect material. Thank you to everyone! (And to digital meetings and tools!)

Next year [2021] will be even more exciting with ongoing work on our research resource, as well as new developments! First, we have received financing for a postdoc researcher from Finland who will be starting in the summer (more on that later in 2021). In addition, we will start collaborating with the newly funded Society of Swedish Literature in Finland project, Lived Religion in medieval Finland. There is a lot to look forward to with these collaborations!

Finally, we have of course presented the project numerous times in different fora.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us and shown an interest along the way! Keep yourselves posted on further developments via Twitter or here on our blog!

 

Att praktisera inom projektet: Mapping Lived Religion: Medieval cults of saints in Sweden and Finland

2020-11-12

Blogginlägget är skrivet av projektets praktikanter Andreas M. Blixt och Douglas Reinvik, båda studenter på Lunds universitet.

Den här texten kommer att ge en inblick i två praktikanters upplevelser och tankar kring att praktisera inom projektet Mapping Lived Religion: Medieval cults of saints in Sweden and Finland. Vi fick möjlighet att praktisera inom det här projektet genom våra studier vid Lunds universitets historiska institution, där vi läste kursen Historia: Projektledning och projektarbete för historiker [HISA38]. Inom denna kurs förekom det en delkurs med namnet Praktikkurs, som gav oss studenter möjlighet att praktisera som en del av våra studier. Vi valde då att acceptera erbjudandet om denna praktik.

De relevanta egenskaper för praktikanter, som vi genom våra studier inom humaniora anskaffat oss är att kunna granska, läsa och förstå akademiska texter och verk. En annan egenskap är att göra om den här informationen, så att den både passar och är relevant till den angivna arbetsuppgift som ska utföras.

Huvudfokuset för vår praktik och våra arbetsuppgifter var Mats Åmarks verk; Sveriges medeltida kyrkklockor: Bevarade och kända klockor. Den här boken skulle läsas och granskas för att utvinna information om medeltida kyrkklockor i Sverige, där syftet var att finna och registrera kyrkklockor i databasen med en eller flera helgon-manifestationer. I vårt arbete fann vi helgon-manifestationer i olika former, exempelvis via klockornas inskrifter, deras pilgrimsmärken eller figurer och gestalter på klockornas kroppar.

Vi båda fann Åmarks bok välstrukturerad, lättanvänd och ett lärorikt material för våra arbetsuppgifter. Det som gjorde Åmarks verk välstrukturerat och lättanvänt var dess förmåga att ge läsaren en bra insikt och förståelse för kyrkklockornas historia och utseende. Den här strukturen, gällande kyrkklockornas information, förenklade vår arbetsbörda inom projektet. Den gav oss även kunskaper och utvecklade våra egenskaper i att tolka äldre skrifter. I det här fallet var det att tolka och tyda gotisk stil eller så kallad munkstil. Den gav oss också insikter och ökade kunskaper kring svensk, medeltida helgonkult och svenska kyrkklockor. De svårigheter som i början av arbetet uppkom med Åmarks verk, var att det vid ett fåtal kyrkklockors inskrifter, saknades svenska översättningar. På det stora hela uppskattade vi ändå att arbeta med Åmarks bok.

 

Mats Åmarks verk; Sveriges medeltida kyrkklockor: Bevarade och kända klockor från 1960. Foto: Andreas M. Blixt 2020.

Under den sista tiden av praktiken användes verken från rapport-serien Medeltidsstaden [Medeltidsstad 3 1976: Uppsala från 1977; Medeltidsstaden 6: Sigtuna från 1977; Medeltidsstaden 24: Skara från 1980 och Medeltidsstaden 46: Växjö från 1983]. De här rapporterna skulle vi använda till att skapa nya platser, byggnader eller andra av människor skapade strukturer, med någon form av medeltida religiös anknytning i databasen. Endast icke-registrerade platser skulle skapas av oss. Då de andra projektdeltagarna innan starten för vårt arbete redan hade registrerat en del platser, var vi också tvungna att försäkra oss om att ingen enskild plats blev registrerad mer än en gång. Fornsök är en databas som tillhör Riksantikvarieämbetet och skulle användas i kompletterande syfte till vad som fanns i Medeltidsstadens olika verk.

Vid vårt första granskande av Medeltidsstadens rapporter upplevde via dem vara välstrukturerade och ge oss praktikanter ett överflöd av information till vår arbetsuppgift att skapa platser i databasen. Dock insåg vi under arbetsgången med dessa verk att sanningen var den raka motsatsen. Medeltidsstadens största brister var både dess avsaknad av nödvändig information, samt utmaningen med att finna den relevanta informationen som geografisk placering, historia och helgon-kopplingar till vår arbetsuppgift. En annan utmaning med verken var att Fornsök inte kunde användas för att komplettera det som saknades, och därför blev vi mer beroende av Medeltidsstaden än vad som tidigare varit tänkt. Dessutom nämnde inte Fornsök platser som förekom i Medeltidsstaden. Uppgifter som inte gick att återfinna nämndes i Medeltidsstaden, som exempelvis plats för en byggnad och även en karta från 1600-talet. En ytterligare nackdel var att det förekom faktafel som exempelvis var en kyrka var placerad på en äldre karta. Medeltidsstadens verk hade dock den nyttan att de gav oss praktikanter ytterligare- eller grundläggande kunskaper kring historisk arkeologi. Vi fick även kunskap kring att utläsa äldre och nya kartor, samt kunskap kring vilka sorters byggnader som förekom i några av Sveriges medeltida städer.

 

Hans Anderssons (Red.) verk; Medeltidsstaden 3 1976: Uppsala från 1977. Foto: Andreas M. Blixt 2020.

Vi praktikanter har även diskuterat differenser som förekom mellan Åmarks verk och Medeltidsstadens rapporter. Medeltidsstaden i jämförelse med Åmarks verk var väldigt svårhanterliga, även om våra första tankar kring verken var rena motsatsen. En annan skillnad var att Medeltidsstaden i mycket högre grad än Åmark hänvisade till annan litteratur som vi inte hade tillgång till. Medeltidsstaden, till skillnad från Åmark, förmedlade inte den relevanta informationen till läsare gällande den litteratur som de hade hänvisat till. Den här strukturen gav upphov till att vi praktikanter i högre grad än tidigare uppskattade strukturen och innehållet i Åmarks verk, medan vi fick en mer negativ bild av Medeltidsstaden.

Databasen var den faktor som enade de olika arbetsuppgifterna. Denna databas utvecklades och förändrades under hela vår praktikperiod, såväl genom att dess struktur förändrades och genom att vi i vårt arbete bidrog till databasens ökade innehåll. Det största bidraget vi gjort till databasen har varit den information vi registrerat i databasen. Vi har också bidragit till vissa strukturella förändringar, exempelvis genom att vi förmedlat våra tankar kring den redan befintliga strukturen. Ett exempel var kyrkklockorna med pilgrimsmärken, där användaren ska ha möjlighet att se och lätt komma till pilgrimsmärkenas sidor i databasen. Det här gjordes möjligt genom att Associated cult manifestations skapades, där pilgrimsmärket kan ses under klockans informationstabell. Tidigare kunde användaren bara se kyrkklockan på pilgrimsmärkets sida via Associated cult manifestation som förekom i pilgrimsmärkets informationstabell, men inte på själva kyrkklockan.

Trots att det tidvis uppstått frågetecken kring användandet av databasen, har den generellt varit lätt att förstå och bruka. Det uppkom dock en utmaning då det visade sig att datainmatning inte hade varit konsekvent i vissa fall. Det saknades en riktig eller kontinuerlig struktur mellan hur de olika projektmedlemmarna hade registrerat exempelvis sina kyrkklockor och pilgrimsmärken i databasen. Med de här svårigheterna fick vi en insikt i vilka svårigheter som kan förekomma när alla är experter i varsitt område, men även hur det kan se ut när en projektgrupp försöker lösa de svårigheter som kan uppstå. Det visade sig i några enstaka fall vara svårt att försäkra sig om att platserna i databasen inte var registrerade. Ett exempel var Sankt Eriks källa i Uppsala, som vi placerade in i databasen. Dock framkom det sedan att den här platsen var redan inplanerad, men då på grund av att platsen doldes av en Fornsök-koordinat.

Den här praktiken varit intressant och det har varit lärorikt att praktisera inom detta projekt. Det intressanta med praktiken har varit att få delta i ett projekt, som försöker skapa en utförlig databas, som berör helgonkult i Sverige under medeltiden. Det som har varit lärorikt med den här praktiken har vi nämnt tidigare i texten. Vi anser att praktiken har varit ytterligare lärorik genom att vi har fått en mer verklig bild av hur ett historiskt projekt kan genomföras och se ut. Vi hade tämligen grundläggande kunskaper hur arbetet med ett projekt kan se ut, och väldigt grundläggande kunskaper kring svensk, medeltida helgon-kult. På båda dessa områden har vi genom vårt deltagande som praktikanter fått utökade kunskaper. Vi har också fått ett utökat intresse, såväl gällande forskningsområdet som för projektet i sig.

Tiden som vi deltog i projektet var kort, men givande. Dock var det en utmaning att känna att vi gjorde vårt bästa i slutet av praktiken, då vi kände att praktiken var på väg mot sitt slut och såväl arbetslusten som arbetsuppgifterna började att minska. Det här berodde på att vi visste att vårt deltagande i projektet var på väg mot sitt slut, men även att det inte förekom några riktiga arbetsuppgifter framöver och att vårt ansvar minskade när våra arbetsuppgifter blev mindre viktiga för projektets utveckling. Vi kommer båda att sakna att vara en mer direkt del av projektet, även om vi fortfarande kan se själva projektets utveckling.

Vi praktikanter vill därför avslutningsvis tacka för vår tid i det här projektet, och vi ser båda fram emot projektets fortsatta utveckling.

 

–Projektmedlemmarna tackar er också för fint arbete!

 

What is “lived religion”?

2020-03-23

Lena Liepe, Linnaeus University

Our project is called Mapping Lived Religion. The meaning of the “mapping” part of the title should be fairly clear since the entire project is premised on the creation of an interactive map to places connected to saints’ cults in medieval Sweden and Finland. But what about “lived religion”? In the following, I will outline the concept of lived religion, or LR, in brief and give some examples of how it has been applied in previous scholarship on religious experiences historically and today.

The choice of lived religion, as the theoretical platform of the project implies a conception of saints’ cults not merely, or even primarily, as a manifestation of an institutionalized framework for religious observance managed by the Church in compliance with a predetermined set of creeds and rituals. Instead, the focus of the LR approach lies on religion as a practice that unfolds in the everyday life of the individual. Religion is seen as something that people do, not just something they believe in. The interest is directed towards the individual practitioners and the way they “make” religion by embracing various customs and practices and putting them to use according to their own needs and priorities. LR takes little interest in “belief” as an articulated internalisation of tenets of faith according to the teachings of the Church. The religious usages of common people in the Middle Ages are better described as an adherence to local practices, resulting in highly varied strategies to establish contact with the sacred in order to secure the welfare of people, cattle and crops.

In a useful survey of late medieval religious attitudes and the changes they underwent in the course of the Reformation, Meredith McGuire underscores lay religiosity in the late Middle Ages as a matter of practice rather than belief in a confessional sense. The conventional privileging of belief (as opposed to praxis) as the principal form of religiosity conforms to a Western, Protestant, historically situated and fairly narrow conception of religion (McGuire 2008: 39–41; see also Bowman & Valk 2012: 5; Meyer, Houtman 2012: 2). Following an LR perspective of the Middle Ages, religion can instead be seen as something that transpired in the day-to-day life of individuals that choose their own devotional options from a large repertoire of acceptable practices. In this process, the sacred intermingles with what would today be seen as belonging to the profane spheres of life: a distinction that was largely irrelevant then. For instance, the saints’ feasts listed in the calendars of the Church year – an important source material for the Mapping Lived Religion project – served to structure sacred time in a way that flowed into daily life, providing a temporal framework for the routines of mundane activities and creating a communal sense of shared temporal regularity. “Rather than diminishing the quality of experience of the sacred, such diffusedness in everyday life made the sacred more useful.” (McGuire 2008: 31).

The roots of the LR approach can be traced back to the 1920s when sociologist Gabriel Le Bras joined the Annales school and argued that the study of canon law needed to take in la religion vécue as an integral facet of the development of the church law in order to chart why, for whom, and under which conditions the laws were created and how they were received and applied in the society for which they were made (Arnold 2014: 31; Desroche & Le Bras 1970: 16). Despite these early efforts, LR was slow to catch on in theology and church history, whereas it has played an important role as a conceptual tool in contemporary religious education and for empirical research in the branch of theology that deals with the religious life of today’s multicultural, multireligious and secularized society. A central name here is practical theologian Hans-Günter Heimbrock who picks up on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl in a recognition of the religious experience as something that springs from the life world that exists as a subjectively perceived present for each and every one of us individually (Heimbrock 2005, 2007).

In the conclusion to her chapter on lay religiosity in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, Meredith McGuire calls for an increased awareness of religion as a historically and culturally changeable phenomenon. Religion is not a given, institutionally defined entity with more or less fixed distinguishing features, but a lived experience that can take multiple forms depending on the individual’s needs. It extends beyond the adherence to formalized creeds and normative patterns of behaviour prescribed by religious institutions (McGuire 2008: 43–44). As the database of the Mapping Lived Religion project grows and more and more cult manifestations appear on the map, McGuire’s wish will be rewarded. A broad spectrum of devotional practices and ways of addressing the saints will emerge on the map and in its connected entries, in a testimony to the multitude of forms that the appeal to the saints could take in the Middle Ages.

 

Literature

Arnold, John H.: “Histories and historiographies of medieval Christianity”. Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014: 23–41.

Bowman, Marion, Ülo Valk: “Introduction: Vernacular religion, generic expressions and the dynamics of belief”. Marion Bowman, Ülo Valk (eds.): Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life: Expressions of Belief. Sheffield: Equinox 2012: 1–19.

Desroche, Henri & Gabriel Le Bras: “Religion légale et religion vécue. Entretien avec Gabriel Le Bras”. Archives sociologie des religions 29 (1970): 15–20.

Heimbrock, Hans-Günter: Livsfrågor–religion–livsvärld. Bidrag till en kontextuell religionsdidaktik ur ett tyskt perspektiv. Rune Larsson (övers.). Uppsala–Lomma: RPI Arbetsgemenskapen för religionspedagogik 2005.

—: “Reconstructing lived religion”. Hans-Günter Heimbrock, Christopher P. Scholtz (eds.): Religion: Immediate Experience and the Mediacy of Research. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Objectives, Concepts and Methodology of Empirical Research in Religion. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2007: 133–157.

McGuire, Meredith: Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008.

Meyer, Birgit, Dick Houtman: “Introduction: Material religion—how things matter”. Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality. Dick Houtman, Birgit Meyer (eds.). New York: Fordham University Press 2012: 1–23.

 

Fragments of a Year: Saints’ Feasts in Swedish and Finnish Medieval Calendars (Part I)

2020-01-15

Sara Ellis-Nilsson, Linnaeus University

Part I: the Sources

The start of another (Gregorian calendar) year provides a fitting opportunity to present an important source for the cults of saints in the medieval period: the Calendars. These perpetual timekeepers were full of information about, among other things, the months and days of the years, important liturgical celebrations, the “golden numbers” used to calculate Easter, and saints’ feast days. Calendars were included in other works, such as liturgical books, chronicles, annals, and treatises.[1] Regarding the cults of saints, they provided instructions as to the observation and liturgical rank of saints’ feast days.

 

January calendar fragment with feast days from Linköping Diocese

Fr 27557 (Mi 666, Mi753) – 15th-century Calendar fragment for January in use in the Linköping Diocese

 

For the earliest period, that is from the 12th to the 14th centuries, the Swedish Calendar material is fragmentary. However, for the end of the medieval period, entire liturgical works, such as printed breviaries and missals, still survive and include complete calendars. This way of organizing the year was valid until just prior to the Reformation. In order to chart the development of saints’ days, the early calendar fragments, in combination with the printed works, are important. Once a part of over 6000 manuscripts – from theological treatises to liturgical books – it is, in fact, lucky that these mutilated codices survived at all. These volumes were considered obsolete in the ecclesiastical reforms which occurred in the wake of Martin Luther’s reformation and, in the Nordic countries, were collected in order to be re-purposed.

Thus, as one of the consequences of the Reformation in the Nordic countries, these discarded manuscripts were re-used, among other things, as parchment covers on account books or binding reinforcements. In itself, re-using the parchment was not unusual in the medieval period as parchment, being costly and valuable, for worn-out books was often re-purposed in some way.[2] In Sweden, it was King Gustav Vasa who made this particular decision to re-use the pages as wrappers for his accounts. The practice was then later continued by his sons. In fact, nearly all of the accounts of the Chamber Archives are bound in old church books.[3] These included pages from liturgical books including their accompanying calendars.

Before discussing the calendars further, it is important to give a brief overview of the work that has been done identifying and cataloguing the parchment fragments. The systematic collection and re-use of these parchment leaves meant that they were preserved in the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet and Kammararkivet) and, eventually, in Helsinki in the Senate Archives and then in the National Library of Finland (Helsinki University Library). In Sweden, by 1930, Antonie (Toni) Schmid (1897-1972) began cataloguing and collating the fragment material about which the National Librarian Isak Collijn (1875-1949) had originally written an account. Oloph Odenius was Schmids assistant in the cataloguing endeavour from the 1950s and he continued her work after she left the archives.[4] Their project was re-vitalized in 1995 by Jan Brunius (Swedish National Archives), together with Gunilla Björkvall (Stockholm University) and Anna Wolodarski (National Library of Sweden). Over the next decade, the MPO-project (Medeltida PergamentOmslag, or medieval parchment covers) aimed to complete Schmids Catalogus Codicum Mutilorum (CCM) – i.e. catalogue of mutilated manuscripts – and catalogue the fragments in a database that is now available online: the Database of Medieval Parchment Fragments.

As for the material preserved in Finland, it is estimated that the fragments once comprised 1500 volumes. After Finland was annexed by Russia in 1809, the documents related to Finnish and Russian territories formerly belonging to Sweden were moved to the Senate Archives. From the mid-19th century, a process of removing the medieval parchment fragments from the account books and tax records began. This collection was then moved to what was then called the Helsinki University Library, now the National Library of Finland. The first attempt to systematically catalogue the material was started in the early 20th century by Toivo Haapanen (a musicologist), who was interested in the liturgical material. A church historian, Aarno Maliniemi, studied the calendar fragments around the same time.[5] However, it was first in the 1970s that Anja Inkeri Lehtinen commenced the next step in the cataloguing of the fragment material, in particular the theological and legal texts. After this, a number of scholars actively catalogued various categories of material in the 1980s and 1990s, for example Ilkka Taitto’s research into the antiphonaries. Finally, in the early 21st century, Tuomas Heikkilä led a project focussing on literary culture, rather than on specific book categories. One of the results of this project was a catalogue of previously uncatalogued fragments and the beginnings of a digital research database of the fragments.[6] The resulting database was the first released in the Nordic countries. More recently, work on the fragments has also been published by, among others, Jaakko Tahkokallio, Ville Walta, and Jesse Keskiaho. The resulting catalogue and digital images of the Fragmenta Membranea Collection are available online in the Fragmenta membranea database: http://fragmenta.kansalliskirjasto.fi .

As part of this project, I am studying the development of saints’ feasts in the Ecclesiastical Province of Uppsala by analyzing the addition and removal of feasts in the Calendar fragments. Using digital methods to compare and map the calendars, these results will be compared to the final version of the liturgical year that was established in the printed Calendars before the Reformation. More on this part of the project will be the subject of my next blog-post.

 

Notes

[1] See also, Kathleen Doyle and Cristian Ispir, “Medieval Calendars” (British Library, 2019), https://www.bl.uk/medieval-english-french-manuscripts/articles/medieval-calendars, Accessed 2020-01-04.

[2] This occurred in all three kingdoms Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. An overview of research on the fragments in Norway and a digitized catalogue can now be found online, here: https://fragment.uib.no/ . For Denmark, see, e.g. Åslaug Ommundsen & Tuomas Heikkilä (eds.), Nordic Latin Manuscript Fragments: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Medieval Books (Routledge, 2017).

[3] Jan Brunius, “Medieval manuscript fragments in the National Archvies – a survey”, in Jan Brunius (ed.), Medieval Book Fragments in Sweden (The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, 2005).

[4] For more info see, “Antonie (Toni) E M Schmid” (by Jan Brunius) in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (1917-): https://sok.riksarkivet.se/Sbl/Mobil/Artikel/6390  and Jan Brunius, “Foreword” in Jan Brunius, From Manuscripts to Wrappers: Medieval Book Fragments in Swedish National Archives (Skrifter utgivna av Riksarkivet 35, 2013).

[5] Tuomas Heikkilä, “Research on parchment fragments”, The National Library of Finland Bulletin 2012. 2012. https://www.kansalliskirjasto.fi/extra/vanhat_bulletinit/bulletin12/article1.html Accessed: 2020-01-14. See also, the collection description: https://www.kansalliskirjasto.fi/en/collections/fragmenta-membranea-collection

[6] Heikkilä, “Research on parchment fragments”, https://www.kansalliskirjasto.fi/extra/vanhat_bulletinit/bulletin12/article1.html

 

Medieval Church Objects and Early Modern Antiquarianism

2019-11-08

It’s not just the middle ages that can tell us about the middle ages. A very large quantity of medieval devotional objects was preserved – and sometimes in continuous use – in post-reformation churches. The great era of destruction of these artifacts wasn’t in the wake of the Reformation, but occurred during the Enlightenment. By then, medieval churches were considered too small, too dark and too primitive, and the parishes that could afford to do so, often had them torn down and replaced by the spacious, neoclassical white churches that today can be seen all over the Swedish countryside. Sculptures of saints that weren’t lucky enough to have been bought by museums and private collectors, often ended up as oven fuel.

But parallel to, and in part due to, this modernising process, antiquarians and other scholars started to display an increased fascination with the history of their hometowns and villages, resulting in a boom in historical dissertations focusing on the author’s home region. Luckily, this has left an abundance of evidence of many soon-to-be-discarded medieval church objects, whose existence otherwise would have been unknown to us. An excellent example of these 18th-century academic pursuits are the collections of Sven Wilskman (1716–1797) and Olof Sundholm (1752–1819) that I have recently spent a few days researching in Skara stifts- och landsbibliotek as part of the project.

Wilskman and Sundholm systematically collected parish descriptions from the clergy of the Skara diocese, and these descriptions offer many interesting insights into the medieval heritage still kept in parish churches. Though these local pastors had an excellent knowledge of their own churches, as to when renovations had taken place, when an object had been discarded and so on, they weren’t always that knowledgable when it came to iconography.

In the description of Ottravad parish church, authored by its vicar in 1784, the vicar tells us of an image of a man placed in a shrine in the church. According to his parishioners, the image represented a man named Antonius, who had once lived in the parish. He was a prosperous swine farmer, and used all the revenue from his sale of pork to pay for the foundation of Ottravad church. That was why he was shown with a pig on his arm, with a small bell around its neck. Though the vicar himself didn’t know it, this description helps us to identify the saint as the desert father St. Anthony! The people of Ottravad had remembered his name, but without the ecclesiastical framework of the pre-reformation Church, his legend had been forgotten, and a new one invented instead – one that placed him firmly on local ground.

Another interesting finding from these collections is the 18th-century discovery of a relic in Habo parish church. In 1716 the church was to be renovated, and the old high altar was torn down. Inside the altar a small urn was discovered. In the urn there was a small bone wrapped in red silk fabric, and next to it a small piece of parchment, whose inscription contained the information that during the episcopacy of Bishop Sigge (1340–1352), a relic of the 11000 virgins that accompanied St. Ursula had been enshrined when consecrating the altar. The relic container itself is today kept at Västergötlands museum, but the informative piece of parchment seems to have been lost. If the vicar hadn’t remembered the occasion when faced with Wilskman’s questionnaire, we would never have known what saint this object was associated with.

The collections are of course mostly consisting of less spectacular– but not less important – information of medieval church objects. We are told of a now-lost sculpture of the Virgin Mary in Vesene parish church, that the bell of Råda church was consecrated in the honour of St John the Baptist, that St. Catherine was depicted on the murals of Böne parish church, that an inscription in Blidsberg parish said that the church was inaugurated during the feast of St. Eric and that a medieval image of St. Sigfrid had been incorporated into the the early modern pulpit at Öttum parish church.

All in all, these collections help us to fill in the gap when the medieval sources themselves are silent and let us in not only on the richness of medieval lived religion, but of its afterlife in the early modern era as well.

Helgon i Viborg

2019-10-28

Anders Fröjmark, Linnéuniversitetet

 

Viborgs slott med Sankt Olofs torn. Foto: Anders Fröjmark 2019

 

De geografiska gränserna för vårt projekt är den gamla svenska kyrkoprovinsens gränser. Längst i öster gränsade den till det ryska området. Här, på en strategisk plats där kommunikationsvägarna drar fram över Karelska näset, reser sig sedan 1293 borgen Viborg. Dess mäktiga torn gavs namnet Sankt Olofs torn. Sankt Olof är alltså det första helgon vi möter i Viborg. Sankt Olof var gärna anlitad som beskyddare när det svenska riket och den svenska kyrkoprovinsen befäste sina positioner i gränsområdena. Också den 1475 anlagda Sankt Olofsborg i Savolax, vid dagens Nyslott/Savonlinna, är ett vittnesbörd om detta.

I skydd av det kraftfulla tornet, och i mer eller mindre symbiotisk samexistens med borgen, växte staden Viborg fram. Här anlades en stadskyrka med betydande dimensioner, och här – vid den katolska världens gräns – grundade också de båda ledande tiggarordnarna, franciskanerna och dominikanerna, konvent. Naturligtvis vördades ordnarnas helgonförklarade grundare, Sankt Franciskus och Sankt Dominicus, av sina respektive ordnar. Vid stadskyrkan, som hade Jungfru Maria och Sankt Olof som sina skyddspatroner, grundades flera prebendor under medeltidens lopp, inte minst av hövitsmän på borgen. En prebenda var en altarstiftelse med en anställd präst, som skulle läsa mässor för grundaren och hans eller hennes familj, och för alla kristnas själar, som det heter i en av stiftelseurkunderna. Tack vare olika urkunder vet vi att stadskyrkan i Viborg hade prebendor och altaren till bland andra följande helgons ära: Erik den helige och hans följeslagare Sankt Henrik, Anna, Erasmus, Johannes Evangelisten, Johannes Döparen, Maria Magdalena och Katarina av Alexandria.

Sankt Olof sågs som en mäktig beskyddare av borgen och staden, men kunde inte förhindra att Viborg, efter att i över fyrahundra år framgångsrikt ha motstått alla anfall, intogs av ryssarna under det Stora Nordiska kriget 1710. Nu började en ny tid i Viborgs historia, och helgonkulten fick en ny skjuts när rysk-ortodoxa trosbekännare blev ett mer dominerande inslag. De nya kraftfulla befästningsverk som anlades på borgens västra sida, med udden riktad mot svenskarna, fick namnet Kron Sankt Anne. Skyddshelgonet är valt med tanke på att Anna var namnet på den då regerande kejsarinnan i Ryssland.

Redan tidigare hade Viborg varit en kosmopolitisk stad. Det förblev den under tsarväldet, och särskilt efter att den 1811 hade förts till Storfurstendömet Finland. Ett känt talesätt är, att i denna stad talade man fem språk: svenska, tyska, ryska, finska och jiddisch. De svensk- och tyskspråkiga Viborgborgarna var vanligen lutheraner och delade församlingskyrka. Även denna kyrka, grundad 1793 och invigd 1799, är känd under helgonnamn: Petri-Paulikyrkan. Ursprungligen hade man tänkt sig att den skulle heta Sankta Katarina efter kejsarinnans namnhelgon, men kejsarinnan avled under byggnadstiden, så i stället valde man den nye kejsaren Pauls namnhelgon.

Staden hade även en katolsk församling. Dess kyrka var från 1802 inrymd i det medeltida före detta Riddarhuset på den vackra Vattenportsgatan, och församlingens skyddshelgon var Sankt Hyacinthus. Hyacinthus, på polska Jacek, var en berest och lärd polack som gick in i dominikanorden 1220, efter att ha mött ordensgrundaren själv i Rom. Han var därefter verksam i Polen och Ukraina, samt enligt en obestyrkt tradition också i Norden. Han kanoniserades 1594.

Viborgs 1900-tal bjöd på svåra öden, och detta har också gått ut över de här nämnda kyrkorna. Dominikankyrkan och den gamla stadskyrkan är i ett sorgligt tillstånd. Peter-Paulskyrkan var lager- och klubblokal under sovjettiden, men fungerar nu åter som luthersk kyrka. Sankt Hyacinthus upphörde som kyrka 1939 och har därefter använts för olika ändamål, bland annat som utställningslokal.

 

Viborgs dominkankyrka blev efter reformationen den finska landsförsamlingens kyrka. Kyrkan omdanades i klassisk stil under ledning av den kände arkitekten Carl Ludvig Engel. I dag är den en ruin. Foto: Anders Fröjmark 2019

Jag avslutar dock där jag började, i den mäktiga borgen. I dag är där inrymt ett välskött och sevärt museum. Jag fick en rundvisning av den unge museichefen Alexej Melnov, som också pekade på en Sankt Olofsikon i rysk stil i trapphuset. Sankt Olof är ju, påpekade han, inte bara ett katolskt utan också ett ortodoxt helgon.

 

Fotnot: Projektet Kartläggning av religion i vardagen – medeltida helgonkulter i Sverige och Finland inkluderar även de socknar – inklusive Viborg – på Karelska näset som i dag tillhör Ryssland. Även de kommer att ha en plats i vår databas.

CFP – Saints Online: Using digital methods to investigate the cults of saints

2019-09-04

CFP International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2020

Please consider applying for the following panel at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo sponsored by the project Mapping Lived Religion: Medieval Cults of Saints in Sweden and Finland/Kartläggning av religion i vardagen, Linnéuniversitetet, and the Centre for Digital Humanities, Göteborgs universitet. Please send all paper proposals to sara.ellisnilsson@lnu.se. Submission guidelines can be found here: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

The deadline for paper abstracts is September 15, 2019.

Saints Online: Using digital methods to investigate the cults of saints

The source material for researching saints’ cults in the Middle Ages is large and varied, ranging from texts (e.g. hagiography, liturgical texts, diplomas, miracle collections, antiquarian accounts, etc.) to material evidence (e.g. relics, reliquaries, altars, chapels, buildings, images, pilgrim badges, votive objects), and popular tradition. Until now, grasping this immense source material in its entirety has been beyond the capacity of most researchers. However, developments within digital technology open up new possibilities for working with comprehensive sets of different data. The session welcomes papers on the employment of new technology for interdisciplinary research on the cults of saints. Papers that engage with digital methods in the study of the cults of saints are especially encouraged. These contributions may include presentations of completed projects, works-in-progress, or critical approaches to digital methods. The following are of particular interest: mapping (e.g. GIS), visualizations, textual analysis (text technologies), reconstructing books/manuscripts from fragments (especially liturgical), database creation and design for historical analysis, and interdisciplinary (digital) studies, as well as forms of knowledge organization (e.g. linked open data).

 

 

Welcome to ‘Mapping Saints’!

2019-06-14

Welcome to ‘Mapping Saints’, the research project blog for Mapping Lived Religion: Medieval Cults of Saints in Sweden and Finland!

The blog belongs to a five-year digital humanities project with funding from the Swedish Research Council. The project members are currently building a comprehensive, online database that will provide users with access to data from cultural heritage collections (mainly museums, libraries, and archives) and previous research results through the principles of linked data. In this project, digital methods will be used to answer specific research questions centred around the concept of medieval “lived religion”, studying its expression in the material and textual sources related to the cults of saints. The digital aspect facilitates interdisciplinary research – archaeology, art history, and history – and allows for new perspectives in exploring this particular question. One way the project does this is through the creation of interactive, digital maps. This important digital component introduces a new aspect in terms of analyzing cult-sites both spatially and chronologically. The resource will be made freely available to other users when complete.

Blog-posts focusing on ongoing project work from various angles will be written by the project’s members: Sara Ellis Nilsson (researcher, PI), Anders Fröjmark (researcher), Lena Liepe (researcher), Terese Zachrisson (researcher), and Johan Åhlfeldt (research engineer).

For more information, see the project’s official home-page: https://lnu.se/en/research/searchresearch/forskningsprojekt/mapping-lived-religion-medieval-cults-of-saints-in-sweden-and-finland/