The "Comene Course of Prayers": Julian of Norwich and Late Medieval Death Culture

by Aidan Conti, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bergen

The literature of translation offers modern students of the Middle Ages an essential tool for understanding the reception, assimilation, and transformation of Christianity as the religion and its attendant literate culture spread to the so-called northern periphery of Scandinavia. The study of this material reveals the books and learning deemed to be most necessary for newly Christian lands, and at times can illuminate the very routes by which Christian culture made its way north. In examinations of the ongoing process of Christianization, the role of English ecclesiastics in the development of Christian institutions and practices has been prominently and appropriately emphasized. More specifically, Anglo-Saxon influence has been especially apparent in the two most prominent testaments to early Christian teaching in the north, namely the Norwegian Homily book (NHB) and the Icelandic Homily book (IHB), the earliest complete manuscripts preserved in a Scandinavian vernacular. In many literary surveys of Old Norse-Icelandic, these collections, and indeed Christian religious genres in general, have been viewed as tangential; although written in the vernacular, this body of work is perceived as a product of a Latinate culture that does not reflect the unique nature of a native prose style. Nevertheless, while there may be a residual perception that these works are essentially derivative translations based on patristic thought and Carolingian models, if the degree of balance achieved in the recent A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature is indicative, future studies will no longer be able to ignore the large body of Christian prose in particular and translations in general. Indeed, a balanced view of Christian prose literature presents its subject not only as a reflection of its earlier sources, but also as a snapshot of its contemporary production and environment. In this respect, NHB and IHB can be viewed as conservative repositories of patristic tradition, but also as texts of contemporary interest. As Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir notes:

Much of the exegetical material used by the authors of the Old Norse homilies can thus be traced to Origen, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine …the formulation of ideas is often the work of later authors, such as Caesarius of Arles, bede, some of the learned homilarists of the Carolingian Age like Paul the Deacon and Paschasius Radbertus, or even twelfth-century writers like Honorius Augustodunensis.