Open Collections

Clausen, Svend

Database of Religious History (DRH)

The text is interesting as Margrethe is the only indigenous Danish woman who was both venerated as a saint and of whom written source material is also preserved. She was a noble woman personally related to the famous Danish archbishop Absalon. Details of her life are scarce, but her family relations to Absalon and thereby also to the powerful Hvide family clan seems to show that she probably originated from the island of Zealand. The text begins its story only at her death telling how, in the year 1176, she was murdered by her husband Herlog. Afterwards Herlog hung her body on a rafter to make it look like she had committed suicide by hanging thus making himself look innocent. The local priest believed the suicide to be true and therefore denied her a burial on the holy ground of the cemetary. Instead, apparently, she was buried on a field near the beach where a chapel was later erected. When lights in the sky at night over the burial site marked her innocence, it was reported to Absalon who at that time was still bishop in the local diocese of Roskilde. Even though he was skeptical, the rumours increased and he therefore had an investigation begun. He then confronted Herlog who admitted his guilt. Margrethe´s relatives wanted to take revenge on Herlog, but Absalon managed to calm them down. Fronting a great crowd he then travelled to the burial site where her body was dug up, washed and carried in procession back to the town of Roskilde. The text concludes by decribing how she was buried with great pomp in the Church of the Virgin Mary where many miracles later happened at her burial site. It has sometimes been mentioned that she buried in the famous Roskilde cathedral originally. However, it is known from later documents, though, that her saint´s cult was attached to the still preserved monastery church of the abbey of the Cistercian nuns in Roskilde. This monastery chuch probably served as her original burial site in Roskilde all along. An attempt to have her papally canonized probably did not become succesful, but this seems to have had little immediate effect on the popularity of her cult locally in the Roskilde diocese where her cult appears to have remained popular throughout the 13th C. and perhaps also during the later middle ages. The text was written sometime after c. 1191/1192, but most likely before march 1201.

Other

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0438190

Non UBC

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/