Open Collections

Clausen, Svend

Database of Religious History (DRH)

The holy Anders of Slagelse was a Danish priest from the town of Slagelse. He became venerated as a saint in the area around Slagelse within Roskilde diocese in medieval Denmark after his death. Apparently he died in 1205. He was never officially canonized, but his cult remained popular amongst the people locally for centuries. This is pretty much all which is known about him. All other information preserved on him stems from his saint´s legend and in this case the word legend really seems more appropriate than describing it as a saint´s vita. Not much trustworthy information on his actual life is to be found in the text. Instead it takes on a highly legendary character full of fantastic tales clearly reflecting that this was stories told about him amongst the people orally and that they circulated like this for a very long time until they were finally written down. The preserved late medieval text does not even follow the normal structure of hagiography as there is e.g. no mention of posthumous miracles, nothing said about his childhood or youth and not even any translation description. The preserved text was transmitted to the present day because it was later copied by a chaplain called Jakob Mosle from a church in Slagelse sometime around 1500. Jakob Mosle is not the author of it, though, but instead states openly that he merely copied an older manuscript. How old exactly this older manuscript was is unknown, but it is clearly reflected in the text that it could not have been written until quite a long time after Anders had died. Only one piece of information slightly indicates the age of the written text. Jakob Mosle states the he copied the text from an old piece of paper. The use of paper in Denmark instead of parchment makes it unlikely that writing took place before c. the mid-14th century. Thus it seems that this text about the holy Anders must have been written down sometime after c. 1350, but well before Jakob Mosle copied it around 1500. The fact that these stories about him really did circulate orally already long before his preserved saint´s legend was written down is known for certain, though, as an early version of one of these stories appear already in a book from around 1260 written by the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (1201-1272). Thomas of Cantimpré had probably heard this story from some anonymous Danish friar of his order, most likely a friar stemming from one of the friaries within Roskilde diocese. This Dominican book must be a story for another time, though, as the present entry will be about the text transmitted by Jakob Mosle exclusively.

Other

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0438192

Non UBC

Unreviewed

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