Saints and Their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (C.1000-1200)

by Antonsson, Haki; Garipzanov, Ildar H.

• ISBN13: 9782503530338
• ISBN10: 2503530338
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-30
• Publisher: Isd

Summary

This volume examines the cult of the saints and their associated literature in two peripheral regions of Christendom which were converted to Christianity around the turn of the first millennium, namely, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The fifteen authors focus on how cultures of sanctity were transmitted across the two regions and on the role that neighbouring Christian countries like England, Germany, and Byzantium played in that process. The authors also ask to what extent the division between Latin Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy affected the early development of the cult of saints on the two peripheries. The first part of the book offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of the veneration of local and universal saints in Scandinavia and northern Rus' from c. 1000 to c. 1200, with a particular emphasis on saints that were venerated in both regions. The second part presents examples of how some early hagiographic works produced on the northern and eastern peripheries borrowed, adapted and transformed - i.e. contextualized - literary traditions from the Latin West and Byzantium.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	p. vii
List of Tables	p. viii
Introduction: The Veneration of Saints in Early Christian Scandinavia and Eastern Europe	p. 1
Localizing Saints on the Periphery
The Early Cult of Saints in Scandinavia and the Conversion: A Comparative Perspective	p. 17
Saints and Cathedral Culture in Scandinavia c. 1000-c. 1200	p. 39
The Cults of Saints in Norway before 1200	p. 67
Byzantine Saints in Rus' and the Cult of Boris and Gleb	p. 95
Novgorod and the Veneration of Saints in Eleventh-Century Rus': A Comparative View	p. 115
The Cult of St Olaf and Early Novgorod	p. 147
Contextualizing Hagiography on the Periphery
Anskar's Imagined Communities	p. 171
&Aelig;lnoth of Canterbury and Early Mythopoiesis in Denmark	p. 189
Writing and Speaking of St Olaf: National and Social Integration	p. 207
Textual-Evidence for the Transmission of the Passio Olavi Prior to 1200 and its Later Literary Transformations	p. 219
The Attraction of the Earliest Old Norse Vernacular Hagiography	p. 241
The Formation of the Cult of Boris and Gleb and the Problem of External Influences	p. 259
Conclusion: North and East European Cults of Saints in Comparison with East-Central Europe	p. 283
Index	p. 305
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