Cross and Scepter (25 page)

A potentially valuable source on literature and reading habits in medieval Scandinavia are the fragments of medieval manuscripts used for binding cadasters and administrative records in the post-Reformation period. A large part of these have been collected and registered, but they are only now being studied for the information they can convey about books and learning. Most come from liturgical manuscripts, but there are also fragments of theological, philosophical, and classical texts. Future research on this material may give us a more complete view of the knowledge available to the clerical elites of the Scandinavian countries. So far, the impression is that although pan-European clerical elite
culture was represented in Scandinavia, the region was nevertheless at a certain distance from the main centers of learning.

The Church introduced writing for literary purposes to Scandinavia; the runic alphabet, which goes back to the beginning of the Christian era, seems mainly to have been used for shorter messages and inscriptions. The earliest literature is also religious. It begins with hagiography. In 1086, the Danish King Knud was killed in the cathedral of Odense during a popular rebellion against his attempt to mobilize an army to conquer England. A short account of the event was composed shortly afterwards, followed by a legend, the
Passio sancti Canuti regis et martiris
(The Passion of St. Knud, King and Martyr, c. 1095) and the more ambitious
Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius et passio gloriosissimi Canuti regis et martyris
(The Deeds of King Sven the Great and his Sons and the Passion of the Glorious Knud, King and Martyr) by the English monk or cleric Aelnoth. Both conform to common European hagiographic models. Knud is shown to have possessed the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, moderation, and courage—even in childhood. After his father's death, he is passed over in favor of his brother and has to go into exile, as did Joseph in the Bible as the result of his brothers' intrigues. When he returns to Denmark to become king after his brother's death, he rules as the perfect
rex iustus,
in the mold of David. Finally, when persecuted and killed by his rebellious people, he throws away his arms and accepts death meekly, like Christ himself.

The legend of the Norwegian national saint, Olav Haraldsson (
Passio Olavi
) was composed in the second half of the twelfth century and (at least the life), probably by Archbishop Eystein himself. It presents a similar picture of its protagonist. The story opens dramatically with a description of the frozen landscape of the north, where the devil holds sway, and then shows warm winds coming from the south, represented by Olav, to melt the
ice, a picture of the northern countries that is also found in the hagiography of Knud. Like Knud, Olav is a model of sanctity—his Viking past and acts of violence are discreetly overlooked. Although he is killed in battle, he does not die fighting; rather, he throws away his arms and, like Knud, accepts death meekly, as a martyr. A similar legend about St. Erik in Sweden (d. 1160) is later, probably from the second half of the thirteenth century. A Norwegian collection of sermons, the earliest vernacular text from that country, has been preserved in a manuscript dated around 1200, as has a similar collection from Iceland. In both cases, there are indications that at least some of the sermons, and probably also the collections, are older, of the first half of the twelfth century. The first—and almost the only—flourishing of Latin literature in Norway also took place during Eystein's tenure as archbishop, and most probably under his influence. Eystein is usually credited with the foundation of the cathedral of Nidaros in its present form. The new cathedral was far larger than the old one and is influenced by English Gothic architecture.

Already in the late eleventh century, Pope Gregory in his letter to the king of Norway (above, p. 5) suggested that some young men of good birth be sent to Rome to receive an education that would enable them to teach their compatriots Christian doctrine. We do not know what came of this, but in the twelfth century, we meet Scandinavians in Paris, notably at St. Victor, the Augustinian house known for its learning. Many of the contemporary bishops recruited from the aristocracy had such an education. However, there were considerable differences within Scandinavia when it came to contacts with learned European culture. Denmark, the closest of the three to European centers of learning, was the first to have an indigenous Latin literature. Norway and Iceland followed, beginning in the mid-twelfth century, while Sweden lagged behind. This changed around 1300, and for the rest of the Middle Ages, Denmark and Sweden were
better integrated into European intellectual culture than Norway and Iceland. In the early thirteenth century, the Danish Archbishop Anders Sunesen (1201–1221, d. 1228) wrote the Biblical poem
Hexaemeron
(The Six Days), which deals with the creation of the world, the fall, and salvation. Inspired by twelfth-century French theology, the work applies the method of “four levels of meaning” to the Biblical text, uncovering the literal or direct meaning; the allegorical meaning, which reveals the religious significance of the story; the moral or tropological meaning, showing the story's significance for the life and behavior of the faithful; and finally the anagogical or eschatological meaning, which points to the end of the world and the coming reign of Christ.

Whereas Anders is an example of a Scandinavian churchman bringing home learning from Paris and other European centers, there were other Scandinavians who themselves made an impact in these centers. The most prominent of them is Boethius (Bo) of Dacia, one of the preeminent philosophers at the University of Paris towards the end of the thirteenth century. He seems to have spent most of his life in Paris and never to have returned to Denmark. He was a follower of Aristotle, but in a more radical way than the most famous of the thirteenth-century Aristotelians, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Boethius taught at the Faculty of Arts (
artes
), the lower faculty at medieval universities, where all students had to begin before they could move on to one of the three higher faculties of law, medicine, or theology. Ten of his works have been preserved, but much has been lost; his total literary production seems to have amounted to at least three thousand pages. As was usual at the time, most of his works take the form of
quaestiones,
disputations for and against a particular proposition. A few take the form of
sophisms,
a more complex kind of inquiry, necessitating subdivisions into more specific propositions. Finally, Boethius wrote treatises “On the Highest Good,” “On the Eternity of the World,” and “On Dreams.” As a
philosopher, Boethius addresses one of the most burning questions at the time, the relationship between faith and knowledge. In his view, nothing in the world is necessary; everything could have been different or might not have existed at all. On the other hand, we can study nature and establish laws that describe it. Theoretically, the consequence of this view is that all knowledge is gained exclusively by human intelligence, which contradicts Christian doctrine. Of course, Boethius did not draw this consequence, but accepted the dogmas of the Church. Nevertheless, he came dangerously close to the idea of a “double truth.” He claimed that it was possible to state that there was no first man, meaning that human beings and the world have always existed, as long as this statement was understood as referring to what could be established by biological methods. Theology, on the other hand, taught that there was an actual first man. This and other opinions were condemned by Étienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, in 1277, a condemnation that was most probably explicitly directed at Boethius. Boethius does not seem to have taught in Paris after 1277, and he ended his life as a Dominican.

Another Dane, Martinus de Dacia, taught in Paris in the 1270s and even became a canon at Notre Dame. Several of his works survive, of which the best known is
Modi Significandi
(Modes of Meaning), a theory of language that became very popular during the following centuries. From the point of view of philosophy, Martinus is nevertheless less important than Boethius. On the other hand, he went on to a career in Denmark after his time in Paris. In 1290, King Erik Menved tried to have him appointed bishop of Roskilde—besides the archdiocese, the richest see in Denmark—but this was prevented by Archbishop Jens Grand. Six years later, Martinus got his revenge. He became the king's attorney in the process at the papal curia against the archbishop, which led to the latter's deposition in 1302 (above pp. 159–60). Martinus died in Paris in 1304. Of other Danes in Paris, we might
mention Nicholaus de Dacia, who was elected rector of the University of Paris in 1344.

There are no comparable figures from the other countries before the early fourteenth century, but we have evidence of Scandinavians studying in Bologna in the late thirteenth century: altogether nineteen Danes, eleven Swedes, and six Norwegians during the years between 1285 and 1300. Characteristically, some of these were laymen who later made a career in the king's service. Nor is it a coincidence that they went to Bologna, the leading center for the study of law. For those who wanted to make a career in the royal or ecclesiastical administration, studying law was usually the best choice, and Scandinavian sources from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards give plenty of evidence of the knowledge of law, canon as well as Roman. Revisions of the laws during this period created a need for men with a legal education and the laws themselves make it quite clear that such men were available.

A Swedish intellectual of about this same period was Petrus de Dacia (1235–1289), a Dominican (Dacia refers to the Scandinavian province of the order, not to the country of Denmark). Petrus studied in Paris and Cologne and may possibly have had Thomas Aquinas as his teacher. However, he is less known as a theologian than for his close friendship with the German mystic Catharina of Stommeln, whom he visited several times, corresponded with, and whose biography he wrote, including the correspondence between them, in which he also gives information about himself. His aim in this was probably to have her canonized. Catharina was a mystic who had several visions and drastic experiences of God and the devil, including stigmatization, ecstasy, and various kinds of torture attributed to the devil. As she was illiterate, her letters were written by her parish priest or by some literate person in her circle. Master Mathias (d. 1357) was
one of the most learned theologians in Scandinavia and wrote a number of works. He was also St. Birgitta's confessor.

Danes and Swedes were far more numerous at the European universities than Norwegians. In the later Middle Ages, 2,146 Danes, 821 Swedes and Finns, and 219 Norwegians are known from the matricula to have studied at German universities. In the fourteenth century, there were three Swedish and two Danish houses for students in Paris. Eventually, towards the end of the Middle Ages, universities were also founded in both countries, in Uppsala in 1477 and in Copenhagen in 1479.

Conforming to this picture, the vernacular literature of Norway and Iceland includes a large number of religious works: saints' lives, sermons, some doctrinal works, and translations of parts of the Bible, but few examples of more advanced theology. The most ambitious theological work is probably a translation of Genesis and the first part of Exodus, commissioned by King Håkon V of Norway (1299–1319), which includes extensive theological commentaries by authors like Petrus Comestor (c. 1100–1187) and Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1200–1264), both of whom taught in Paris.
The King's Mirror,
composed in Norway in the mid-thirteenth century, probably in court circles, includes various kinds of knowledge derived in part from European sources, in part from the author's own experience Its main aim is ethical. The author begins his teaching with the biblical quotation, “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God,” and continues by directing admonitions at people in various ranks of society on how to conduct their lives.

The
Mirror
is clearly based on European learning, but it is plainly an effort to transmit this learning to a Norwegian audience, even largely to a lay audience. This is evident both from the fact that it is written in the vernacular and from its style, which aims to be lively and entertaining rather than terse and precise
in the manner of a scholastic treatise. The author rarely mentions his sources specifically, but they seem to have consisted mainly of the best-known writers of the time, such as the great early-medieval authorities Isidore of Seville (560–636) and Bede of Jarrow (672/73–735). Of more recent authors, he can be shown to have used Petrus Comestor.

The author's description of the world and geography largely reproduces what was common knowledge to the learned elite of the day. The earth is a globe, but all the inhabited land is situated on the top, so that the Mediterranean world, with Jerusalem as its center is where we place the North Pole, whereas the northern regions are down the slope, near our equator. The author's geographical descriptions focus on three countries—Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland, probably chosen in part because they were of special interest to his audience, in part to show the contrasts that exist in the natural world. While Ireland is the best country in the world, Iceland and Greenland are the worst, Iceland even furnishing evidence of the existence of hell, the source from which the island's volcanoes and hot springs get their heat. Whereas the descriptions of Ireland seem to be based on literary sources and mostly consist of legends and curious stories, those of Iceland and Greenland are vivid and precise and demonstrate considerable familiarity with the countries and their natural conditions, knowledge most probably derived from the oral testimony of people who had visited them. Although there are few details in the author's description of nature and geography that point to advanced learning obtained from the leading intellectual centers of the day, the author's general attitude indicates that he is more than a compiler. He shows intellectual curiosity and makes energetic attempts to find answers to difficult questions, such as the explanation for the northern lights. Most impressive of all is the comprehensive philosophy he derives from his knowledge of nature, which rests on a parallel between nature and society and advises
using God's government of nature as a model for the king's government of society. Man can learn about God's ways by contemplating His creation of the world, which in turn can furnish a model for how society should be governed. The social hierarchy is the expression of God's will, and the author's message to the king as well as to people on various levels of society is that they should behave in accordance with the status God has given them.