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  • Saints and Their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000–1200)
  • Justin Haar
Saints and Their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000–1200), ed. Haki Antonnsson and Ildar H. Garipzanov, Cursor Mundi 9 (Turnhout: Brepols 2010) 319 pp.

This collection, the result of a 2008 conference in Bergen, explores the development of saints’ cults and veneration in Scandinavia and Rus’ in the eleventh and twelfth century, aiming to understand Christianization, how the veneration [End Page 272] of saints worked as a marker of Christian identity, and how Christian networks of social power and influence were growing in the wake of official conversions (1). The authors and editors do not assume that readers know the historiography of saints’ cults in the academies of either Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, and hope this volume will shift their topic away from the “periphery” and into dialogue with scholars of the rest of Europe. Thus the volume has several aims: to provide an overview of the developments in the study of saints and their cults on the northern and eastern frontiers of Europe, to bring the disparate studies in northern and eastern Europe into closer dialogue, and to emphasize the centrality of the cult of saints to the cultural and political interactions across their regions (4). They succeed, to some extent, in each of these goals (although there is some variance across the essays), so while the collected papers here might not require their readers to rewrite all of their assumptions about saints in Scandinavia and Rus’, they will certainly bring them up to speed on the developments in the field, ask new questions of old sources and assumptions, and point the direction of future inquiry.

The volume has two parts, each with six chapters; the editors frame the parts and their implications in an introduction and conclusion. The first part, “Localizing Saints on the Periphery,” explores the development of saints’ cults across the geographic and temporal span of the collection. A chapter by Haki Antonsson explores the interplay between royal authority, conversion, and missionary saints. Anna Minara Ciardi unpacks the roles of saints in cathedral culture in Scandinavia, while Åslaug Ommundsen discusses the development of saints’ cults in Norway before 1200. Monica White and Ildar Garipzanov discuss saints in Rus’, with White exploring the influence of Byzantine saints in the royal cult of Boris and Gleb and Garipzanov comparing the veneration of saints in Novgorod and Kiev. Tatjana Jackson’s chapter rounds out the section with a study of St. Olaf’s “Russian” miracles as a means of assessing possible connections between Scandinavia and Novgorod.

The studies in the second part, “Contextualizing Hagiography on the Periphery,” detail the composition, communication, and influence of the texts underpinning saints’ cults. James Palmer discusses the formation of cultural and political identities in the context of Anskar’s hagiography. Aidan Conti argues for the influence of the works of Aelnoth of Canterbury in the creation of a universalizing mythical Christian past in Denmark. Lars Boje Mortensen unpacks the dialogue between Latin and Old Norse versions of St Olaf’s Life, with implications for future scholarship. Lenka Jiroušková’s chapter analyzes the complex relationship between the fragments of the Passio Olavi, with some corrections to earlier assumptions about its composition. Jonas Wellendorf argues that the confrontation with pagan gods and their subsequent overthrow made hagiography an appealing genre for entertainment in the Old Norse-speaking world, contending that scholars have overlooked the importance of saints’ lives for the sagas. Finally, Marina Paramonova explores the development of the cult of Boris and Gleb, arguing that the historiographic commonplace of Bohemian influence on the cult does not align with its cultural context.

The volume has two structural shortcomings that bear commenting on before moving on to its substantial strengths. The first is a tendency by several of the authors to assume an audience that understands the importance and relevance [End Page 273] of their research questions. Many of the chapters “explore” or “unpack” rather than argue, making it difficult not only to parse each author’s thesis, but also to relate the scholarship...

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