Magnus Erlendsson, Medieval Ruler Martyrs and Realization of Christian Ideals amid (Political) Violence (2022) (original) (raw)
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The phenomenon of ruler martyrs was common between the tenth and twelfth centuries in the recently Chris- tianized lands on the eastern and northern periphery of Eu- rope—one of them were the Orkney Islands with jarl Magnus Erlendsson (died in 1115/1117). Like Christ, who gave his life for the peace and redemption of the world, Magnus gave his life for the peace and redemption of the people of the Orkneys. This also explains why the earliest texts produced on the pe- ripheries of medieval Europe were all about local saints. Wher- ever God’s presence was manifested through a saintly ruler, his people were, despite their late adoption of the new faith, inte- grated into the symbolic center of the Christian world. Conse- quently, the conduct of exceptional rulers to persevere in peace amid political violence was a manifestation of the creation of a new Christian community.
Konštantínove listy (Constantine's Letters), 2021
From the early tenth to early twelfth centuries the eastern and northern periphery of Europe was composed of polities which had recently adopted Christianity. Here, a special common type of veneration of the saints emerged-ruler martyrs, such as Wenceslaus of Bohemia (died in 935), Boris and Gleb of Kievan Rus' (died in 1015), Magnus Erlendsson of Orkney (died between 1115 and 1117), etc. This type of sainthood refers to saints characterized by a martyr's death caused out of political self-interest by Christians themselves. One of the most representative saints pertaining to the phenomenon of ruler martyrs is jarl (earl) Magnus Erlendsson of the Orkney Isles, then part of the Norwegian kingdom. The internal political plot led by a close relative, the jarl's nonresistance on principle, and the slaughter of the innocent victim resembling Christall this recalls the manner of the deaths of some Slavic princes of the time, for example, Boris and Gleb of Kievan Rus'. Magnus and other ruler martyrs from that period together formed a new tradition of sainthood, previously unknown both in the Byzantine Empire and Southern (Latin) Europe, where the murdered ruler eventually became a saint who could legitimize the self-esteem of newly Christianized peoples and position them in the symbolic center of the Christian world.
Ruler Martyrs on the Periphery of Medieval Europe (2020)
Bogoslovska smotra, 2020
From the early tenth to the early twelfth century the northern and eastern periphery of Europe was composed of polities which had recently adopted Christianity as the official religion. Here a special type of veneration of saints or martyrs emerged. This type of sainthood refers to historical personalities characterized by a martyr's death caused out of political self-interest by Christians themselves, not by members of other religions as a result of hatred against the Christian faith as such. The veneration of martyr rulers was unknown both in (Latin) southern Europe and the Byzantine Empire of the time. This article is dedicated to a historical, theological, and literary analysis of three saints: Boris and Gleb (died in 1015) from Kievan Rus’, Jovan Vladimir (died in 1016/1018) from Dioclea, and Magnus Erlendsson (died in 1115/1117) from the Orkney Isles, at the time a part of Norway. All of these saints share the same fundamental characteristics: in the face of mortal danger, they did not resort to revenge or fratricide as a means of struggle for power, but rather voluntarily accepted their deaths for the benefit of peace in their homelands. The phenomenon of ruler martyrs focuses on the example of their voluntary sacrifice, highlighting a duality between the righteousness of an innocent victim and an unfair act of a murderer. Ruler martyrs were regarded by their contemporaries as promoters of a new ideal of Christian monarchs and as symbols of the rejection of the recent pagan past. This phenomenon is also connected with the self-esteem of the ecclesiastical and secular elite of the newly Christianized peoples—they saw their homelands, despite their relatively late adoption of Christianity, as religiously »mature« and therefore on equal footing with others, which was to a large extent possible due to the emergence of the first local saints.
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This thesis explains a new interpretation of the law books written during the reign of King Magnus the Lawmender of Norway (1239-1280, crowned 1261, r.1263-1280). In the process it also teases out common themes in Norway’s early histories, Iceland’s early laws, and biblical exegesis and re-writes much of what is assumed about “church” and “state” in this era, beginning at Magnus’ coronation and ending with the fraught year following his death, 1281. According to the new interpretation explored in these four chapters, the laws of Magnus the Lawmender were not an attempt at royal legitimization of the king’s exclusive right to legislate, an element in a protracted contest between the church and the Norwegian crown over jurisdiction over Christian law, or a project undertaken to centralize the state bureaucracy. Rather, the laws are the clearest representation of the king’s attempt to build a kingdom of “co-inherence” and charity, to replace injustice, discord between different classes of men, and problematic customs with a law based on universal and Christian principles. The landslov represents, first and foremost, an application of the tropological sense to the old laws of Norway and Iceland as part of an effort to enact Magnus’ self-understood role as the guardian of the peace and justice of the kingdom and to encourage a harmonious society of various classes of free men founded on the Christian faith and sacramental grace.
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This paper focuses on the literary functions of various figures, Thorvald the Far-Traveled, Njal Thorgeirsson, and Hoskuld Thrainsson the Godi of Hvitanes. Particular emphasis is placed on the behavior of these figures when in the presence of conflict, primarily in thirteenth-century texts such as Brennu-Njáls saga and Þorvalds þáttur víðförla. Despite representing only a small portion of a vast genre, these works will help to introduce the possibilities of thirteenth-century authorship in formulating new social and cultural ideals, particularly around Christianity. Further studies will need to be made in order to obtain a fuller understanding of such possibilities, but this paper should provide a step towards such a direction.
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Romano-centric understanding of the church" (25). Anderson shows how Innocent recognized both the awesome administrative potential as well as the inevitable frailty of governing through documents. The promise of uniformity was countered by the reality of the ease by which forgery or misconstrual could thwart papal intent. While the study's focus is kept honed on Iceland, with occasional discussion of other Nordic clerics in Greenland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, it could be a valuable next step in this examination to draw more comparisons with Rome's dealings with branches of Christianity lying outside of the Latin rite, particularly its interactions with the many Eastern churches and patriarchs whose relations with Rome were so complex and fraught in a period that witnessed the sack of Constantinople (1204). Innocent's rigid insistence that Eastern churches acknowledge Roman supremacy in his Fourth Lateran Council's fourth canon (1215; "one flock, one shepherd"), carried with it the implicit acknowledgment that any re-establishment of unity would necessitate acceptance of the abundance of equally valid traditions, liturgies, and customs that flourished across the continent and that had ancient roots in the history of the faith. Any attempted abridgment of such diversity would thwart the process of reunification. In many ways, the kind of conflict avoidance that Anderson describes for Icelandic prelates probably worked in both directions, with peripheral bishops, or their clerical biographers, downplaying deviance from Rome at the same time that Rome may have wished to look the other way, or at least, had to acknowledge the limitations of even its most draconian punishments. Excommunication proved remarkably ineffective against a powerful monarch like Norway's King Sverrir Sigurðarson or the many bishops who were his allies. Within historiography, Anderson's study participates in a shift away from analysis of processes of papal consolidation and Roman centralization (associated with classic historians like R. W. Southern and Robert Bartlett) toward one that focuses more on concomitant processes of local episcopal interpretation and the frequent appeals (or favor-mongering) inherent in the Roman church. As Anderson aptly shows, centralization and the continuance of local exceptionalism went hand in hand in Europe's thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, aided by the rise of documents as devices of social and legal control.
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Icelanders venerated numerous saints, both indigenous and from overseas, in the Middle Ages. However, although its literary elite was well acquainted with contemporary Continental currents in hagiographic compositions, theological discussions, and worship practices, much of the history of the learned European networks through which the Icelandic cult of the saints developed and partially survived the Lutheran Reformation remains obscure. The essays collected in this volume address this lacuna by exploring the legacies of the cult of some of the most prominent saints and holy men in medieval Iceland (the Virgin Mary along with SS Agnes of Rome, Benedict of Nursia, Catherine of Alexandria, Dominic of Caleruega, Michael the Archangel, Jón of Hólar, Þorlákr of Skálholt, Lárentíus of Hólar, and Guðmundr the Good), using evidence drawn from Old Norse-Icelandic and Latin hagiographic literature, homilies, prayers, diplomas, sacred art, place-names, and church dedications. By placing the medieval Icelandic cult of the saints within its wider European context, the contributions trace new historical routes of cultural transmission and define the creative processes of the accommodation and adaptation of foreign hagiographic sources and models in medieval and early modern Iceland. They provide a clear picture of an Icelandic hagiographic literature and culture that celebrates the splendour of the saints; they also show how an engaging literary genre, which became immensely popular on the island throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, was created.