C ONCLUSION :

N ORTH AND E AST E UROPEAN C ULTS OF S AINTS

IN C OMPARISON WITH E AST -C ENTRAL E UROPE

Gábor Klaniczay

T
he cult of the saints, a central feature of medieval Christianity, bears
testimony to, among other things, regional characteristics and differences,
cultural transfers, and a complex entangled history of interrelationship and
differentiation within Christendom.1 My concluding remarks to the present series
of interrelated enquiries concerning Scandinavian and Russian cults of saints
intend to offer a possible broader framework. Using an overview of the different
types of medieval East-Central European saints — principally (but not exclusively)
of Latin Christianity — until the thirteenth century, I shall offer a scheme for the
contextualization of the models unfolding from the studies of the present volume.
To begin with, I must give an idea of what I mean when I speak of these vast
territories to be compared. I am referring here to three historical regions.2 Two of
these became part of the world of Latin Christendom around the turn of the first
millennium, providing the most significant expansion of Europa Occidens in the

1
For a general perspective on regional models of sainthood, see André Vauchez, La Sainteté
en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge: d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagio-
graphiques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1981), pp. 171–254; for a critical perspective on
cultural transfers and ‘entangled history’, see Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann,
‘Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung: Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des
Transnationalen’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28 (2002), 607–36; and Werner and Zimmermann,
‘Penser l’histoire croisée: entre empirie et réflexivité’, Annales, 58 (2003), 7–36.
2
For this notion, see Jenõ Szûcs, ‘The Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline’, Acta
Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 29 (1983), 131–84, also published in Civil Society
and the State: New European Perspectives, ed. by John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 291–332.
284 Gábor Klaniczay

Middle Ages.3 The third, the eastern Slavic domain of the Kievan Rus’, adhered to
Greek Christendom, while developing a significant set of contacts with its western
and northern neighbors.4 Two formerly dangerous and aggressive enemies, the Scan-
dinavian Vikings (Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes) on the northern borders and the
nomadic Hungarians on the eastern confines, adopted Christianity and founded
kingdoms that sought a place among the European states.5 The same two centuries
also witnessed the conversion of the Slavs, the largest ethnicity in Eastern Europe.
The specific features of these new regions have been analysed by an ample tradi-
tion of historical reflection. East-Central Europe (Ostmitteleuropa) has been on the
agenda since the mid-nineteenth century, and since the 1920s Polish, Czech, Hun-
garian, and Romanian historians (such as Oskar Halecki, Francis Dvornik, Jerzy
K³oczowski, Jenõ Szûcs, Henryk Samsonowicz, and Florin Curta6) have conducted
many significant studies pertaining to these issues. Following the well-formulated

3
I have recently discussed Scandinavian and East-Central European parallelisms from this
point of view in ‘The Birth of a New Europe about 1000 CE : Conversion, Transfer of Institutional
Models, New Dynamics’, in Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystalli-
zations, Divergences, Renaissances, ed. by Johann P. Arnason and Björn Wittrock (Leiden: Brill,
2004), pp. 99–130.
4
The typological similarities of the Russian territories with East-Central Europe are stressed
by Jenõ Szûcs in ‘Three Historical Regions’, pp. 150–58; and recently analysed in the thorough
comparative surveys by Márta Font, A keresztény nagyhatalmak vonzásában: Közép- és Kelet-Európa
a 10–12. században (Budapest: Balassi, 2005).
5
Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. by Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); and András Róna-Tas, The Hungarians and Europe in the Early
Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History (Budapest: Central European University
Press, 1999).
6
Oskar Halecki, Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe (New
York: Ronald, 1952); Halecki, The Millennium of Europe (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1963); Francis Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London: Polish
Research Centre, 1949); Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (New Bruns-
wick: Rutgers University Press, 1962); Jerzy K³oczowski, Europa s³owiañska w XIV – XV w. (Warsaw:
PIW, 1984); K³oczowski, L’Europe du Centre-Est dans l’historiographie des pays de la region (Lublin:
Institute of East Central Europe, 1995); K³oczowski, M³odsza Europa: Europa Œrodkowo-
Wschodnia w kregu cywilizacji chrzeœcijañskiej œredniowiecza (Warsaw: PIW, 1998); K³oczowski,
‘Les Pays de l’Europe du Centre-Est du XV e au XVIIe siècle’, in Histoire de l’Europe du Centre-Est
‘Nouvelle Clio’, ed. by Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux and others (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
2004), pp. 106–85; Szûcs, ‘Three Historical Regions’; Henryk Samsonowicz, ‘Histoire de l’Europe
du Centre-Est des origines au début du XIV e siècle’, in Histoire de l’Europe du Centre-Est, ed. by
Ducreux and others, pp. 3–105; East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by
Florin Curta (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 285

characterization by Aleksander Gieysztor, these countries were ‘newcomers’

(‘nouveaux venus’)7 who apparently strove to emulate the models of their western
neighbours, relying upon transferred and adopted ecclesiastical structures, and
within that and not the least, models represented by the cult of saints. Robert
Bartlett described this process, relying principally upon Scandinavian examples, as
the ‘making’ and the ‘Europeanization’ of Europe.8 Recently, significant efforts
have been invested in order to examine the specificities and the European context
of the ‘Nordic region’, such as the enquiries by Aaron J. Gurevich, Birgit Sawyer
and Peter Sawyer, Sverre Bagge, Tore Nyberg, and Brian Patrick McGuire.9
Finally, the closer analogy between the medieval history of Central Europe and
Scandinavia has been examined with more and more attention recently. Let me
refer here to a few examples. A comparative enquiry on the ecclesiastical history in
both regions was organized by André Vauchez in 1986;10 a conference in Colle-
gium Budapest co-organized by Bengt Ankarloo and myself in 2001 deliberated
upon saints’ cults and canonization processes in Scandinavia and Central Europe;11

7
Aleksander Gieysztor, L’Europe nouvelle autour de l’An Mil: la Papauté, l’Empire et les
‘nouveaux venus’ (Rome: Unione Internazionale degli Istituti di Archeologia storia e storia dell’arte
in Roma, 1997).
8
Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change
950–1350 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993).
9
Aaron J. Gurevich, ‘Die Freien Bauern im mittelalterlichen Norwegen’, Wissenschaftliche
Zeitschrift der Universität Greifswald, 14 (1965), 323–36; Gurevich, ‘Space and Time in the Welt-
modell of the Old Scandinavian People’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 42–53; Gurevich, ‘Saga
and History: The Historical Conception of Snorri Sturluson’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 4 (1971),
42–53; Birgit Sawyer and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation,
circa 800–1500 (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Sverre Bagge, ‘The Scandi-
navian Kingdoms’, in New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), pp. 720–42; Tore Nyberg, Die Kirche in Skandinavien: Mitteleuropäischer und
englischer Einfluss im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert: Anfänge der Domkapitel Børglum und Odense in
Dänemark (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986); Nyberg, Monasticism in North-Western Europe,
800–1200 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); and Medieval Spirituality in Scandinavia and Europe: A
Collection of Essays in Honour of Tore Nyberg, ed. by Lars Bisgaard (Odense: Odense University
Press, 2001); The Birth of Identities: Denmark and Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. by Brian Patrick
McGuire (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1996).
10
L’Eglise et le peuple chrétien dans les pays de l’Europe du Centre-Est et du Nord (XIV e– XV e siècles),
Actes du colloque […] de Rome (27–29 Janvier 1986) (Rome: École française de Rome, 1990).
11
Procès de canonisation au Moyen Age: Aspects juridiques et religieux; Medieval Canonization
Processes: Legal and Religious Aspects, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay (Rome: École française de Rome,
2004).
286 Gábor Klaniczay

a volume edited by Nora Berend on Christianization and the Rise of Christian

Monarchy12 was reliant on close cooperation for several years by the Bergen Centre
for Medieval Studies, the Nordic Network of Medieval Studies, the Prague Centre
for Medieval Studies, the University of Warsaw, and the Central European Uni-
versity of Budapest; and finally, two recent conferences organized by the Centre
for Medieval Studies in Bergen addressed related issues. The one convened by Lars
Boje Mortensen on The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Chris-
tendom targeted an examination of parallels and divergences in medieval history-
writing in these regions,13 and the other conference convened by Ildar Garipzanov
and Przemys³aw Urbañczyk on Franks, Northmen, and Slavs confronted the dif-
ferent relation of identities to state formation in these regions of early medieval
Europe.14 The framework of the present volume continues this series, and it also
relies on several recent comparative studies on the cult of the saints in this region,
such as the monograph by Haki Antonsson putting a Scandinavian martyr-cult in
context15 or the commented anthology of legend translations edited by Thomas A.
DuBois.16 We can say that all these individual and collective works provide an
ample basis for constituting a sophisticated comparative overview. The question
is: what could be added to the already existing stock of our knowledge by the pres-
ent group of analyses? This is what I will try to assess by comparing and contrasting
Scandinavian and East European cults with those in East-Central Europe.

Types of Saints Venerated in East-Central Europe

In the early Middle Ages, the cult of the saints was primarily the cult of the local
patron, whose relics were kept in the cathedral or the abbey. By the central Middle
Ages, the period we are discussing here, the cult of the saints developed into an

12
Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’
c. 900–1200, ed. by Nora Berend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
13
The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–1300), ed.
by Lars Boje Mortensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2006).
14
Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed.
by Ildar Garipzanov and others, Cursor Mundi, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008).
15
Haki Antonsson, St Magnús of Orkney: A Scandinavian Martyr-Cult in Context, Northern
World, 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
16
Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Thomas A.
DuBois (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 287

articulated system, filling the calendar in most locations with several feasts of saints
— some of these saints universally venerated by the Church, some promoted by
specific ecclesiastical or dynastic exchanges, some related to imported relics, and
some related to emerging new local cults.17 The interest of historical research is
mostly — and justifiably — dedicated to the last category, but one has to pay atten-
tion to all other cults as well that are accepted as ‘local’ by the presence of the relics
of these ‘imported’ saints. We should not forget: the very first figure of the mis-
sionary is that of the stranger coming from elsewhere, bringing a religious teaching
to be imparted.
The first category of saints to be examined here, the saints of the conversion
times, actually shows a combination of cults around ‘local’ and ‘imported’ saints.
Hagiographic research can rely here upon a vast literature on conversion: the
syntheses by Henry Mayr-Harting and A. P. Vlasto,18 the comparative discussion
made in Spoleto in 1969,19 the more recent accounts by Richard Fletcher and by
Guyda Armstrong and Ian Wood,20 or the systematic set of case studies in the
volume by Berend, which have identified various subtypes. Successful missionaries
could be outstanding bishops like St Martin of Tours or St Patrick of Ireland,
venerated as ‘confessor saints’. At the same time, the dangers of the missionary
activities, the resistance of the pagans, or simply the peril of robbers often cost the
lives of these converters — St Boniface is a good example.21
A second subtype of saint of the conversion times is that of the saintly ruler who
becomes an apostle of his kingdom, like Constantine the Great.22 As in the case of

17
For the cult of saints in this period, cf. Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the
Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Thomas Head, Hagiog-
raphy and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orleans 800–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990).
18
Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London:
Batsford, 1972); A. P. Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970).
19
La conversione al cristianesimo nell’Europa dell’alto medioevo, Settimane di studio sull’alto
Medioevo, 14 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1969).
20
Richard Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity 371–1386 AD
(London: Fontana, 1997). Christianizing Peoples, ed. by Armstrong and Wood; and Ian Wood,
The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001).
21
Theodor Schieffer, Winfrid-Bonifatius und die christliche Grundlegung Europas (Freiburg:
Herder, 1954).
22
Robert Folz, Les Saints rois du Moyen Age en Occident (VIe– XIIIe siècles), Subsidia Hagio-
graphica, 68 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1984), pp. 33–91; and Gábor Klaniczay, Holy
288 Gábor Klaniczay

missionaries, we have the issue of martyrdom here too — the early Middle Ages
often witnessed converting holy rulers falling victim while in conflict with their
pagan opponents, either in battle or in courtly intrigue; the Anglo-Saxon saint
kings (St Oswald, St Edwin, St Edmund, and St Edward) generally belong to this
type.23 Within this second subtype one must pay special attention to the mulier
suadens — pious saintly women (a wife, mother, or grandmother) in a royal family
with persuasive capacities (like St Helena, or later St Clotilde) — who manage to
convince the ruler to convert.24
As for East-Central Europe, one has to take into account a conversion activity
coming from two sides: Byzantium and the West, with the first converting mis-
sionaries coming from the former. Constantine-Cyril (d. 869) and Methodius (d.
885) persuaded Tsar Boris in Bulgaria (d. 889) and Rostislav in Great Moravia to
take up Christianity, and their cult subsequently became the foundation of Slavic
hagiography in the region.25 At the same time missionaries also arrived from the
domains of Latin Christendom, from Bavaria, North Italy, and Dalmatia. In the
conversion of Czechs, Croats, Poles, and Hungarians, it was already the Latin mis-
sionaries who took the initiative, but these diligent western missionaries, somehow,
did not achieve the prominence of subsequently becoming venerated as saints.
What East-Central Europe has as conversion saints, instead, is the cult of two
ruler-saints: the pious Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia, murdered by his brother
Boleslaw in 929 (or 935), and the apostle king of the Hungarians, St Stephen
(1000–38), complemented by the cult of a martyr bishop, St Adalbert, equally
from a ruler’s family, whose relics helped the foundation of the Gniezno bishopric
in 1000 at the famous encounter of Emperor Otto III and Boleslaw the Brave.

Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. by Éva Pálmai
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 62–112.
23
David W. Rollason, ‘The Cult of Murdered Kings and Princes in Anglo-Saxon England’,
Anglo-Saxon England, 11 (1983), pp. 11–22; and Erich Hoffmann, Die heiligen Könige bei den
Angelsachsen und den skandinavischen Völkern: Königssheiliger und Königshaus, Quellen und
Forschungen zur Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, 69 (Neumünster: K. Wachholtz, 1975).
24
Martin Homza, Mulieres suadentes: Presviedèajúce ženy (Bratislava: Lúè, 2002).
25
Richard E. Sullivan, ‘Khan Boris and the Conversion of Bulgaria: A Case Study of the
Impact of Christianity on a Barbarian Society’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3
(1966), 55–139; Henrik Birnbaum, ‘The Lives of Sts. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius: A Brief
Reassessment’, Cyrillomethodianum, 17–18 (1993–94), 7–14; and Vladimir Vavøínek, ‘Mission
in Mähren: zwischen dem lateinischen Westen und Byzanz’, in Europas Mitte um 1000, ed. by
Alfried Wieczorek and Hans-Martin Hinz (Stuttgart: Theiss, 2000), I, 304–10.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 289

The cult of St Wenceslas was the founding cult of what would become the
dominant type of sainthood in East-Central Europe, that of the dynastic cult of the
holy ruler. The character of St Wenceslas, described as a martyred saintly ruler by
his legends, was, however, very different from what the saint-type of holy kings
later became. It is not by chance that it was a Czech historian, František Graus,26
who demonstrated that the first phase of the evolution of royal sainthood was not
a continuation of pagan concepts of ‘sacral kingship’ in a Christian context, as
suggested, for example, by Karl Hauck or József Deér in the 1940s and 1950s.27 On
the contrary, the first medieval royal saints (Sigismund, Hermenegild, Oswald, and
Edmund) became saints not because of but rather despite their royal dignity (for
having renounced it or having been violently deprived of it), and above all for hav-
ing suffered a Christ-like martyr’s death. St Wenceslas was a true model of this type
for East-Central Europe: the most pious young prince, who refuses to pronounce
death sentences, destroys the gallows, frees the prisoners, and wants to resign from
his ducal dignity to become a monk (miles Christi). His sanctity and his martyr’s
death are labelled in his earliest Latin legend as the ‘growth of Christian faith’
(Crescent fide Christiana) among the Bohemian people; that is, as an important
step towards their salvation. When his brother kills him, it becomes styled as a
confrontation of Christendom and paganism.28

26
František Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagio-
graphie der Merowingerzeit (Prague: Nakladatelstvi Èeskoslovenské akademie ved Praha, 1965).
27
Karl Hauck, ‘Geblütsheiligkeit’, in Liber Floridus: Mittellateinische Studien: Paul Lehmann
zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet, ed. by H. Bischoff and S. Brechter (Sankt Ottilien: Verlag der
Erzabtei, 1950), pp. 187–240; and József Deér, Heidnisches und Christliches in der althungarischen
Monarchie (Darmstadt: WBG, 1969).
28
The cult of St Wenceslas has been the object of numerous excellent studies. As the principal
authority, we should refer to Dušan Tøeštík, Poèátky Pøemyslovcù: Vstup Èechù do dìjin (530–935)
(Prague: Lidové Noviny, 1997); cf. more recently, Tøeštík, ‘Translace a kanonizace svatého Vávlava
Boleslavem I.’, in Svìtcí a jecích kult ve støedovìku, Sborník Katolické teologické fakulty Univerzity
Karlovy, Dejin umìní – historie, 4 (Prague: [n.pub.], 2006), pp. 325–44; in English or German cf.
František Graus, ‘St. Wenzel, der heilige Patron des Landes Böhmen’, in Graus, Lebendige Vergan-
genheit: Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in den Vorstellungen vom Mittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau,
1975), pp. 159–81; Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes, ed. by Marvin Kantor (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1983); Herman Kølln, Die Wenzelslegende des Mönchs Christian
(Copenhagen: Munksgaard for the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1996); and Lisa
Wolverton, Hastening toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
290 Gábor Klaniczay

Wenceslas was not very widely known as a duke and became noteworthy above
all because of the unfolding cult of saint around his person. Adalbert, on the other
hand, was one of the most important ecclesiastical personalities in Europe around
the year 1000.29 A member of the aristocratic family of the Slavnik, the principal
rivals of the Pøemyslids in Bohemia, Vojtech-Adalbert was the second Bishop of
Prague. Forced into exile after his family had been massacred in Libice in 995, he
stayed in Rome in the monastery dedicated to St Alexis and St Boniface. He was
active in the whole of Europe in the field of ecclesiastical diplomacy, in close rela-
tionship with Otto III and Gerbert d’Aurillac. As were many churchmen of his
time, he was attracted by an ambition to broaden the territories converted to
Christianity and by the glamorous perils of the missionary vocation. In 997 he
departed to Poland to convert the pagan Prussians and was murdered there. The
affirmation of his cult was due, above all, to the patronage of Duke Boleslaw, who
bought his relics from the pagans, commissioned his legend,30 and obtained his ele-
vation in 999. In this enterprise, then, he found a prominent helper in the person
of Otto III, who made a pilgrimage in 1000 to the grave of Adalbert, perhaps with
the intention of making him a saintly patron of the whole empire. At the famous
‘Gniezno congress’ (much debated recently by German and Polish historians, such
as Johannes Fried and Roman Michalowski31), Otto offered Boleslaw regal titles
strengthened by the famous holy lance in exchange for the arm relics of St
Adalbert.

29
The most recent authoritative study on him is by Gerard Labuda, Œwiêty Wojciech: biskup-
mêczennik, patron Polski, Czech i Wêgier (Wroc³aw: Fundacja na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej, 2000); in
German, see František Graus, ‘St. Adalbert und St. Wenzel: Zur Funktion der mittelalterlichen
Heiligenverehrung in Böhmen’, in Europa Slavica – Europa Orientalis: Festschrift H. Ludat, ed. by
Klaus-Detlev Rothusen and Klaus Zernack (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1980), pp. 205–31; and
Adalbert von Prag: Brückenbauer zwischen dem Osten und Westen Europas, ed. by Hans Hermann
Henrix (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1997).
30
Cristian Gaºpar (CEU, Budapest) gave an excellent lecture on the thorny issues related to
the legends of St Adalbert at the Bergen conference, which he intends to publish together with a
new English translation of the legends.
31
Johannes Fried, Otto III. und Boleslaw Chrobry: Das Widmungsbild des Aachener Evangeliars,
der ‘Akt von Gnesen’ und das frühe polnische und ungarische Königtum (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989);
Fried, ‘Gnesen – Aachen – Rom: Otto III. und der Kult des hl. Adalbert. Beobachtungen zum
älteren Adalbertsleben’, in Polen und Deutschland vor 1000 Jahren: Die Berliner Tagung über den
‘Akt von Gnesen’, ed. by Michael Borgolte (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), pp. 235–72; and Roman
Michalowski, Zjazd gnieŸnieñski: religijne przes³anki powstania arcybiskupstwa gnieŸnieñskiego
(Wroc³aw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroc³awskiego, 2005).
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 291

As underlined by his legend, the principal attribute of St Adalbert has been

‘sanctus et gloriosissimus martyr Christi’.32 But his cult was founded, at the same
time, upon the combined roles of the saintly bishop and the holy missionary, the
two most popular saint-types of the early Middle Ages — this is what made him
the emblematic saint of the conversion of Central Europe. Venerated as the most
important saint of the Polish Church in Gniezno, he was also chosen to be the
patron saint of the archbishopric of Esztergom (Strigonium), the centre of the new
Hungarian Church,33 and later even the role of baptizing St Stephen was attributed
to him. In 1038, as is well known, his relics were taken by Duke Bøetislav from
Gniezno to Prague, and his cult continued to dominate the ecclesiastical life of
both Slavic countries.34 Not only is Adalbert considered to be a most influential
model by modern historians, but he was also immediately perceived so by his
contemporaries. His second legend writer, Bruno of Querfurt, a disciple of St
Romuald, decided to follow the example of St Adalbert and reached the martyr’s
fate among the Prussians.35
Now we come to the principal saint of conversion for Hungary, who was, as in
the case of Bohemia, an apostolic holy ruler — St Stephen, the first Christian king
of Hungary.36 It might be worth noting that he was the first medieval sovereign to
be canonized without having been a martyr, honoured only in recognition of his
merits in vita as a king. The description of his life in his Legenda Maior37 demon-
strates that the merits of a rex iustus can be harmonized with those of a Christian
saint, and that it is possible for a ruler to become a saint if he sides with the

32
Alexander Gieysztor, ‘Sanctus et gloriosissimus martyr Christi Adalbertus: Un État et une
Église missionnaires aux alentours de l’an mille’, in La conversione al cristianesimo, pp. 611–47.
33
Kelet Közép-Európa szentje: Adalbert (Vojtech Wojciech Béla), ed. by Ádám Somorjai
(Budapest: METEM, 1994).
34
František Graus, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen:
Thorbecke, 1980).
35
Wood, Missionary Life, pp. 226–43; and Marina Miladinov, Margins of Solitude: Eremitism
in Central Europe between East and West (Zagreb: Leykam International, 2008), pp. 67–83.
36
The essential monograph on him is by György Györffy, István király és mûve (Budapest:
Gondolat, 1977); an abbreviated version of it is available in English: King Saint Stephen of Hungary
(Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1994). More recently, see Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Saint
Étienne de Hongrie (Paris: Fayard, 2004); and László Veszprémy, ‘Royal Saints in Hungarian
Chronicles, Legends and Liturgy’, in Making of Christian Myths, ed. by Mortensen, pp. 217–46.
37
Legendae Sancti Stephani regis maior et minor atque legenda ab Hartvico conscripta, ed. by
Emma Bartoniek, in Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae
gestarum, ed. by Emericus Szentpétery (Budapest: Academia Litter. Hungarica, 1938), II, 375–98.
292 Gábor Klaniczay

teachings of the Church. The legend describes that after having acceded to king-
ship, Stephen became a champion of the Christian faith, a miles Christi who
triumphed with the help of St Martin and St George. The sources characterized
him as a ruler with a firm hand but with extraordinary humility at the same time,
distributing alms, caring about pilgrims, widows, orphans, and the poor in general;
in short, a virtuous Christian of his age.38 The dominant trait, however, was that
of sheer force. The nature of the repression needed for the establishment of the
new faith is well illustrated by passages in the Legenda Minor of St Stephen
(written towards the end of the eleventh century), describing how he punished the
violators of his Christian laws by hanging the culprits ‘two by two along the roads
of every province of the country. Thus it was that he wanted to make people under-
stand that the same would be done to whoever did not abide by the just law
promulgated by God. The people of the earth heard the judgement that the King
had passed, and were filled with fear’.39 No wonder that such reprisals soon
provoked two forceful ‘pagan’ rebellions (in 1046 and 1072).40
To counterbalance this grim aspect of royal sainthood, however, let me mention
another trait underlined in the Legenda Minor of St Stephen: his education and
wisdom. ‘He kept judgement and justice before his eyes, according to the word of
Solomon: The wise man also may hear discipline and increase in learning, and the
man of understanding acquire government (Prov. 1. 5).’41 This reference to the Old
Testament models of kingship — those related to David and Solomon, so charac-
teristic of the early Middle Ages — also dominates the train of thought in the
Libellus de institutione morum, a kind of speculum principum dedicated (and prob-
ably inspired but not personally written) by St Stephen to his son Emeric.42
With these three major local saints of the conversion in East-Central Europe
— Wenceslas, Adalbert, and Stephen — we actually have four saint-types: the

38
Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Rex iustus: le saint fondateur de la royauté chrétienne’, Cahiers d’études
hongroises, 8 (1996), 34–58.
39
Legendae Sancti Stephani regis, ed. by Bartoniek, pp. 398–99.
40
Nora Berend and others, ‘The Kingdom of Hungary’, in Christianization and the Rise of
Christian Monarchy, ed. by Berend, pp. 319–68 (p. 339).
41
Legendae Sancti Stephani regis, ed. by Bartoniek, pp. 394–95; for an English translation by
Nora Berend of the third legend on St Stephen by Bishop Hartvic, see Medieval Hagiography: An
Anthology, ed. by Thomas Head (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 375–98.
42
Libellus de institutione morum, ed. by Josephus Balogh, in Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum,
ed. by Szentpétery, II, 614–21; and Jenõ Szûcs, ‘King Stephen’s Exhortations and his State’, New
Hungarian Quarterly, 30 (1989), 89–105 (with an English translation of the Exhortations).
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 293

martyr of faith, the holy ruler, the saintly bishop, and the courageous missionary.
In a second, subsequent wave of new cults related to the efforts of stabilizing the
results of the conversion, these types get further confirmed and also complemented
by new ones.
The fate of a martyr bishop, St Gellért (Gerard) of Csanád in Hungary, offers
insight into the perilous life of clerics in recently converted territories, where the
resistance of the pagans — as eloquently described recently by Karol Modzelewski
in his L’Europe des barbares43 — was quite strong and violent. Gerard, a monk from
Venice on a pilgrimage towards the Holy Land, was held up by King Stephen of
Hungary and nominated bishop of a more-or-less pagan part of Hungary, the
diocese of Marosvár (named Csanád after 1030). He thus became one of the most
active organizers of the Hungarian Church. During an insurrection of the pagans
in 1046 after the death of King Stephen (1038), he was stoned (as a St Stephen
protomartyr), and his subsequent cult became a symbol in the fight against the
residual forms of paganism.44
Besides the martyr’s death as the consequence of a conflict with pagans, there
were also other dangers menacing the Christians living in the vicinity of barba-
ricum: the robbers (who had already made a martyr of St Boniface two centuries
earlier). A group of five hermits who strove to implant the new eremitic movement
in Poland around 1000 were brutally massacred by a group of robbers. The Vita
quinque fratrum was written once again by Bruno of Querfurt before his departure
to the same region, to find a similar fate for himself.45 (And their relics were stolen
and carried to Prague by the invading Czechs at the same time from Gniezno, as
those of St Adalbert were.)
In the period when we see the appearance of this new group of martyrs related
to the expansion of Christendom around 1000, one can generally observe in Italy,
Germany, and France the great popularity of a new model of sainthood, that of the

43
Karol Modzelewski, ‘Europa romana, Europa feudale, Europa barbara’, Bullettino dell’Istituto
Storico per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 100 (1995/96), 377–409; and Modzelewski,
L’Europe des barbares (Paris: Aubier, 2006).
44
Edith Pásztor, ‘Problemi di datazione della Legenda maior S. Gerhardi episcopi’, Bullettino
dell’Istituto Storico per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 73 (1961), 113–40; and Anna
Kuznetsova, ‘Signs of Conversion in Vitae sanctorum’, in Christianizing Peoples, ed. by Armstrong
and Wood, pp. 125–32.
45
Marina Miladinov, ‘Hermits Murdered by Robbers: The Construction of Martyrdom in
Ottonian Hagiography’, Annual of the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European
University, 6 (2000), 9–21.
294 Gábor Klaniczay

ascetic hermit who realized martyrdom without blood. The oriental borderlands
of Latin Christendom represented a powerful attraction for the Italian and Ger-
man adherents of these new eremitic movements.46 Even St Gerard spent some
time dedicating himself to the solitary exercises of the hermit in Bakonybél, and
somewhat later another saintly hermit arrived at this hermitage, the blessed Gün-
ther of Niederaltaich, a Thuringian nobleman who turned to this penitent form
of life pro delictis iuventutis.47 This model was also represented by two Polish-
Slovak-Hungarian hermits near Nitra, St Zoerard-Andrew and St Benedict, who
lived in the first decades of the eleventh century; the latter was murdered by a
robber (as the Quinque fratres were). Their extreme ascetic practices, a kind of ‘sac-
ralization of the body’ according to some analysts, show parallel influences where,
besides the impact of the Camaldolese ideals, the traces of oriental, Maronite ere-
mitic practices could also be discovered. The popularity of this ideal in the recently
converted territories is illustrated by the fact that the very first Latin legend in
Hungary — probably in 1064 by blessed Maurus, bishop of Pécs (Fünfkirchen) —
is dedicated to these hermit saints, and their penitential chain-belt was obtained
as a precious relic by King Géza I in 1074.48 Finally, besides departing from a
similar hermit identity, the important Czech saint Procopius of Sazava (d. 1053)
enriches our cluster by yet another type — that of the saintly abbot.49
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, both the Czech and Hungarian cults
were dominated by an amplification of the cult of the dynastic saints. In Bohemia
the cult of Ludmila — the grandmother of Wenceslas, who played an important
role in his Christian education and suffered a martyr’s death before him — may
have predated that of Wenceslas, but it developed to a perceptible amplitude only

46
Sofia Boesch Gajano, ‘Alla ricerca dell’identità eremitica’, in Ermites de France et d’Italie
(XI – XV e siècle), ed. by André Vauchez (Rome: École française de Rome, 2003), pp. 479–92.
e

47
Gotthard P. Lang, ‘Günther, der Eremit, in Geschichte, Sage und Kult’, Studien und
Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner Ordens, 59 (1941), 3–80; Geneviève Bührer-Thierry,
‘Aux marges de la Bavière et de la Bohême: Gunther l’Ermite’, in Scrivere il Medioevo: Lo spazio,
la santità, il cibo: Un libro dedicato ad Odile Redon, ed. by Br. Laurioux and L. Moulinier-Brogi
(Rome: Viella, 2001), pp. 263–75; and Miladinov, Margins of Solitude, pp. 84–90.
48
J. T. Milik, Swiety Swierad: Saint Andrew Zoerardus (Rome: Edizioni Hosianum, 1966);
Marina Miladinov, ‘Dalle laure ai Paolini: le comunità eremitiche in Ungheria nel medioevo
centrale’, in Ermites de France et d’Italie, ed. by Vauchez, pp. 389–411; and Miladinov, Margins of
Solitude, pp. 115–27.
49
Der heilige Prokop, Böhmen und Mitteleuropa, ed. by Petr Sommer (Prague: Filosofia, 2005);
and Sommer, ‘Svatý Prokop a jeho kult ve støedovìku’, in Svìtcí a jecích kult, pp. 261–83.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 295

in the eleventh century.50 In Hungary the cult of St Stephen was initiated by the
elevation of his remains in 1083, and this opportunity was also used for starting
another cult around the person of his son Emeric, who died young at the age of
twenty-three before he could accede to his father’s throne.51 The unfolding cult of
Emeric, besides adding to the cult of St Stephen an opening towards the veneration
of an entire beata stirps,52 became the representative of a new type, the pious and
virginal young prince who lives in chastity and fully represents the Church’s morals
within the royal dynasty. Finally, I should mention the considerable broadening of
Hungarian dynastic cults in the twelfth century: this regards the cult of St Ladislas,
king of Hungary (1077–95), who arranged for the canonization of his royal rela-
tives in 1083 and who was canonized in his turn in 1192. His cult quickly became
the most popular saint cult in medieval Hungary; the tomb of St Ladislas in Nag-
yvárad (Oradea) became a popular site of ordeals; the legends and iconographic
representations presented him in the style of the century of the Crusades as a
chivalrous athleta patriae, protector of the country against oriental nomadic
aggressors.53
In opposition to what we see in Hungary and Bohemia (and many other
medieval European kingdoms), no dynastic cult of saint emerged in Poland,
perhaps because of the eleventh- and twelfth-century divisions within the Piast
dynasty and the territorial fragmentation of the kingdom. On the other hand, their
most important patron saint, the martyr bishop St Adalbert, found a replica in the
person of the assassinated Cracow bishop St Stanislaus, killed in a conflict with
Boleslaw II the Bold, king of Lesser Poland in 1079. Even though his cult only

50
Medieval Slavic Lives, ed. by Kantor; Tøeštík, Poèátky Pøemyslovcù, pp. 179–81; and Homza,
Mulieres suadentes, pp. 80–109.
51
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 155–60; and Tamás Lõrincz, Az ezeréves ifjú: Tanulmányok Szent
Imre herceg 1000 évérõl (Székesfehérvár: Szent Imre-templom, 2007).
52
André Vauchez, ‘Beata stirps: sainteté et lignage en Occident aux XIIIe et XIV e siècles’, in
Famille et parenté dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. by Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff (Rome: École
française de Rome, 1977), pp. 397–406; and Patrick Corbet, Les Saints Ottoniens: sainteté dynas-
tique, sainteté royale et sainteté féminine autour de l’an Mil, Beihefte der Francia, 15 (Sigmaringen:
Thorbecke, 1986).
53
Gábor Klaniczay, ‘L’Image chevaleresque du saint roi au XII siècle’, in La Royauté sacrée dans
le monde chrétien: Colloque de Royaumont, mars 1989, ed. by Alain Boureau and Claudio Sergio
Ingerflom (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1992), pp. 53–62; and
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 161–95.
296 Gábor Klaniczay

emerged in the thirteenth century, his eleventh-century martyrdom could relate

him to the model of St Adalbert.54
After this summary overview of the principal local cults in East-Central Europe,
let us cast a brief look upon the ‘imported’ saints.55 The most important and visible
among these cults is beyond doubt the cult of St Vitus, a late antique martyr whose
arm-relics were translated to Prague from Corvey (which in its turn had received
them from Saint-Denis in the ninth century) in 929 as a gift by King Henry I to
Duke Wenceslas.56 In Hungary we may observe the importance of the cult of St
Martin of Tours, who became the patron saint of the Abbey of Pannonhalma,
founded in 996,57 partly because of his Pannonian origin, which is mentioned
already in the Legenda Maior of St Stephen.58
The cult of St George and St Demetrios directs our attention to an important
question related to the ‘imported’ saints concerning the considerable influence com-
ing from Byzantium and the Orthodox domain. The cult of St George in Hungary
is related to the relics acquired by St Stephen on a campaign in Bulgaria, and the
veneration of St Demetrios in the Greek monastery of Szávaszentdemeter (Sremské
Mitrovica) is also related to these contacts.59 While the cult of St George in Bohe-
mia — represented in the Prague Castle by the chapel dedicated to him in the late
tenth century — may be related rather to Western influence, the Orthodox-Slavonic

54
On his cult, see recently Gerard Labuda, Œwiety Stanis³aw biskup krakowski, patron polski:
Œladami zabójstwa – mêczeñstwa – kanonizacji (Poznañ: Institut Historii UAM, 2000); and
Agnieszka Rozÿ nowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae: The Cult of Saint Stanislaus and the Patronage of
Polish Kings, 1200–1455 (Cracow: Unum, 2008).
55
This problem has been pointed to by Aleksander Gieysztor, ‘Saints d’implantation, et saints
de souche dans les pays évangélisés de l’Europe de Centre-Est’, in Hagiographie, cultures et sociétés:
Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979) (Paris: Études Augustiniennes,
1981), pp. 573–84.
56
Tøeštík, Poèátky Pøemyslovcù, pp. 411–15; Annales Pragenses, s.a. 929, ed. by Georg H. Pertz,
MGH SS, 3, p. 119; and Hedwig Röckelein, ‘Der heilige Vitus: Die Erfolgsgeschichte eines
Importheiligen’, in ‘Heiliges Westfalen’ Heilige, Reliquien, Wallfahrt und Wunder im Mittelalter,
ed. by Gabriela Signori (Gütersloh: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2003), pp. 19–29.
57
Mons Sacer 1996–1996: Pannonhalma 1000 éve (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Bencés
Föapátság, 1996); and Paradisum plantavit: Benedictine Monasteries in Medieval Hungary, ed. by
Imre Takács (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Bencés Föapátság, 2001).
58
‘In loco qui sacer mons dicitur, ubi sanctus Martinus, dum adhuc in Pannonia degeret,
orationis sibi locum assignaverat’: Legendae Stephani, ed. by Bartoniek, p. 409.
59
György Györffy, ‘A szávaszentdemeteri görög monostor XII. századi birtokösszeírása’, A
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Társadalmi-történeti tudományok osztályának közleményei, 2
(1952), 325–62; and 3 (1953), 69–104.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 297

traditions have been present in Czech Christianity as well.60 It might also be inter-
esting to examine how much the popularity of St Nicholas and St Michael in the
whole of East-Central Europe is due to a parallel influence from Byzantium and
the Holy Roman Empire, without speaking of the early emergence in this region
of the cult of the Virgin Mary, also related to both of these spheres of influence.61
In terms of Poland, one might add to these some important urban cults based
on imported relics, such as those of St Florian in Cracow (initiated in 1184),62 St
John the Baptist in Wroczlaw, or St Barbara in Kutna Hora.63 Recently, much
valuable new research has been done in Poland on the cult of the relics,64 and
hopefully similar detailed enquiries will also soon map important documentation
in this domain in Bohemia and Hungary (such as the relic donations from France
leading to the cult of St Aignan in the abbey of Tihany, the burial place of
Andrew I, or of St Gilles at Somogyvár founded by St Ladislas).65

Parallels and Divergences with the North and the East

The chapters in this volume have undertaken a very detailed critical scrutiny of the
formation of the cult of saints in Scandinavia and the Kievan Rus’, and they have

60
Dušan Tøeštík, ‘Slawische Liturgie und Schrifttum im Böhmen des 10. Jahrhunderts:
Vorstellungen und Wirklichkeit’, in Der heilige Prokop, ed. by Sommer, pp. 205–36; and Emilie
Bláhová, ‘Literarische Beziehungen zwischen dem Sázava-Kloster und der Kiever Rus’, in ibid., pp.
237–55.
61
Jerzy Józef Kopeæ, ‘Geneza patronatu Maryjnego – nad narodem polskym’, Roczniki
Humanistyczne, 34 (1986), 275–92; and Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 139–42.
62
Karol Dobrowolski, Dzieje kultu œw. Floriana w Polsce do polowy XVI w. (Warsaw: Rozprawy
Historyczne Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 1923); and Aleksander Gieysztor,
‘Politische Heilige im hochmittelalterlichen Polen und Böhmen’, in Politik und Heiligenverehrung
im Hochmittelalter: Reichenau-Tagung 1990/91, ed. by Jürgen Petersohn, Vorträge und
Forschungen, 42 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994), pp. 325–41 (p. 336).
63
Halina Manikowska, ‘Le Culte des saints patrons dans les villes dans l’archdiocèse de
Gniezno au bas Moyen Âge’, in Fonctions sociales et politiques du culte des saints dans les sociétés de
rite grec et latin au Moyen Age et à l’époque moderne: Approche comparative, ed. by Marek Derwich
and Michel Dmitriev (Wroc³aw: Larhcor, 1999), pp. 161–82.
64
Maria Starnawska, Œwiêtych zÿ yciepo zÿ yciu: Relikwie w kulturze religijnej na ziemiach polskich
w œredniowieczu (Warsaw: DIG-Akademia Polska, 2008).
65
Szent László és Somogyvár: Tanulmányok a 900 éves somogyvári bencés apátság emlékezetére,
ed. by Kálmán Magyar (Kaposvár: Somogy Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 1992).
298 Gábor Klaniczay

also tried to elaborate analytic tools for assessing the relative weight and impact of
these cults and their relationship to external influences. Let me first enumerate the
points I consider relevant for this new overview and make some additional obser-
vations on the basis of my East-Central European perspective.
What I consider to be an important new dimension of the present comparative
survey is that it takes a step beyond the traditional perspective of simply enu-
merating and individually presenting the relevant cults of a country in the chrono-
logical order of their emergence. In the first place, instead of examining isolated
sets of ‘foreign’ impacts on individual cults, it creates an innovative broader con-
text. Whereas the Scandinavian cults of the saints have so far principally been
examined in connection with the Anglo-Saxon and German influence that shaped
them (on which we also get much further documentation in the present volume)
and Russian cults in the context of models coming from the Byzantine domain
(here again elucidated by Monica White in this volume), the present enquiry
brings these two spheres together. By this token a series of hitherto less observed
interchanges becomes visible between Scandinavia and early Rus’, as well as the
presence of several further elements of Latin Christendom in the cults of saints
documented in the Kievan Rus’. On the other hand, some connections taken for
granted become questionable as a consequence of this critical scrutiny, such as the
much discussed ‘Czech connection’ in relation to Boris and Gleb66 (cf. the preced-
ing chapter by Marina Paramonova).
Besides measuring the degrees of outside and intraregional influence, several
studies concentrate upon the institutional ramifications and the media by which
we can document how precisely these cults were present and how they had been
promoted at the different ecclesiastical centres. The royal patronage of the cults of
the saints and the initiatives taken by bishops are given careful attention. The for-
mation and the dissemination of the cults themselves are traced according to three
sets of documents. The church dedications assessed by Åslaug Ommundsen
delineate the comparable importance of these cults, and this is complemented by
new information to be gained from church liturgy: Ildar Garipzanov exploits the
liturgical birchbark calendar of Novgorod. The other set of documents consists in
a detailed survey of the textual culture and the philological context of some key
texts such as the Life of St Anskar by Rimbert ( James Palmer), the Passion of St King
and Martyr Knud by Ælnoth of Canterbury (Aidan Conti), the Passio Olavi (Lars

66
Norman W. Ingham, ‘Czech Hagiography in Kiev: The Prisoner Miracles of Boris and
Gleb’, Die Welt der Slaven, 10 (1965), 166–82; and Ingham, ‘The Sovereign as Martyr, East and
West’, Slavic and East European Journal, 17 (1973), 1–17.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 299

Boje Mortensen and Lenka Jiroušková), the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pon-
tificum by Adam of Bremen (Haki Antonsson), and Old Norse sagas ( Jonas
Wellendorf), not separating their treatment from each other, but rather using one
for contextualizing the other. All this is further framed by an analysis of the hagio-
graphic preferences of ‘cathedral culture’ in Scandinavia (Anna Minara Ciardi).
All these investigations confirm the overall importance of one local cult that
became quasi universal in this region and even beyond, in northern Rus’, that of St
Olaf (Åslaug Ommundsen and Tatjana Jackson). At the same time, they point out
the prominence of some ‘locally venerated universal and foreign saints’, such as St
Lawrence in Lund, St Clement and St Nicholas in Århus (and also in Novgorod!),
St Alban in Odense, and St Lucius in Roskilde, over important but less popular
local saints such as St Knud of Denmark.
Let me now turn to my own agenda: what can be observed in connection with
these studies with my ‘East-Central European glasses’? I will go in a similar order
as my overview above and start with the ‘conversion saints’. In the first place, I
would not speak of a lack of conversion saints in Scandinavia; there are slightly
more there than in East-Central Europe. As for the missionaries, one can state a
similarity also underlined by Haki Antonsson between the two Frankish monks,
St Anskar and his companion Rimbert and St Adalbert. As well, the other convert-
ing saints acting in Swedish territories — the English Sigfrid, Eskil, and Henrik67
— could well be put in parallel with the mission stories of East-Central Europe
from Constantine-Cyril and Methodius to Bruno of Querfurt. As there was a
rivalry in East-Central Europe between missionaries coming from Byzantium and
those from Latin Christianity (and also there from Bavaria or from Italy), in the
North one can also discover at least two poles: the German missions and the En-
glish ones, a rivalry that can be traced back to the accounts of Adam of Bremen.68
The parallels could further be continued by the martyr’s death suffered by Bishop
Eskil, stoned in the pagan uprising of 108669 in similar circumstances as Gerard of
Csanád in Hungary in 1046.

67
Nils Blomkvist, Stefan Brink, and Thomas Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, in
Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy, ed. by Berend, pp. 167–213 (pp. 188–89); and
Thomas A. DuBois, ‘Sts Sunniva and Henrik: Scandinavian Martyr Saints in their Hagiographic
and National Contexts’, in Sanctity in the North, ed. by DuBois, pp. 65–101.
68
Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Constructing the Past: Religious Dimensions and Historical
Consciousness in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesie pontificum’, in Making of
Christian Myths, ed. by Mortensen, pp. 17–52.
69
Blomkvist, Brink, and Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, p. 183.
300 Gábor Klaniczay

The similarities could be continued by the apostolic role played by the two
Olafs and the hagiography of St Olaf Haraldsson, discussed in detail by the present
contributions.70 It might be worth comparing them with the role of Hungarian
rulers in conversion because, besides St Stephen, his father, Duke Géza, should be
taken into account here too. Like Olaf Tryggvason, Géza had considerable merits
in the conversion of his own people. He made the first decisive moves; it was his
decision to invite missionaries and have Stephen baptized and to found the first
Christian monastery in Hungary — but as the legend of St Stephen specifies, he
could not accede to the glory of sainthood because ‘his hands were stained by
blood’.71 Continuing the confrontation, St Stephen’s converting role had been
more explicit than that of Olaf Haraldsson, expressed by his legislation,72 by the
authorship attributed to him concerning the Admonishments to Prince Emeric,73
by the Gesta Ungarorum,74 and by his legends. (The comparably earlier appearance
of these written tools of cult in Central Europe than in Scandinavia has been
already underlined by Lars Boje Mortensen.75)
In the legends, St Stephen of Hungary is presented as a conscious coordinator
of a whole ecclesiastical team of missionaries, from St Adalbert and St Gerard to
all of the hermits, who all work with his direction on the integration of Hungary
into Christendom. He really had to conquer the whole country from more or less
pagan rivals and impose the new faith often with the help of foreign (Bavarian)
knights.76 Olaf Haraldsson, meanwhile, was fighting Christian rivals who were
made out to be pagan only in his subsequent hagiographic accounts.77 This, on the
other hand, puts Olaf Haraldsson’s case in parallel with that of Wenceslas, the

70
Cf. Åslaug Ommundsen, ‘The Cults of Saints in Norway before 1200’, Lars Boje Mortensen,
‘Writing and Speaking of St Olaf: National and Social Integration’, and Lenka Jiroušková, ‘Textual
Evidence for the Transmission of the Passio Olavi Prior to 1200 and its Later Literary Transfor-
mations’, in this volume.
71
Legendae Stephani, ed. by Bartoniek, p. 405.
72
János M. Bak, ‘Signs of Conversion in Central European Laws’, in Christianizing Peoples, ed.
by Armstrong and Wood, pp. 115–24.
73
Cf. above note 42.
74
Veszprémy, ‘Royal Saints in Hungarian Chronicles’.
75
Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘Sanctified Beginnings and Mythopoietic Moments: The First Wave
of Writing on the Past in Norway, Denmark and Hungary, c. 1000–1230’, in Making of Christian
Myths, ed. by Mortensen, pp. 247–73 (pp. 252–55).
76
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 134–47.
77
Hoffmann, Die heiligen Könige, pp. 58–62.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 301

pagan sympathies of whose mother and brother had also been exaggerated by the
legends.78
Let me also point to some further differences. We do not find any Central
European parallels to the mythological propensities of the cult of St Sunniva and
the martyrs of Selja.79 Even though their case could be put in a slight relationship
with the contemporary hermit movement, and the way ‘pagan’ locals were turning
against them is not unlike the conflicts that the Quinque fratres had to face, and
even though the account of the royal patronage of the cult by Olaf Tryggvason and
the construction of the church at the entry of the rediscovered cave in 996 is sim-
ilar to the way Otto III venerated the relics of St Adalbert or the Hungarian Géza I
those of St Zoerard-Andrew, it actually precedes these cult-patronizing gestures.
On the whole, the story rather belongs to the emerging hagiographic romances of
the twelfth century, and its parallels are rather in late antique or English-Irish
legends (the ‘Seven Sleepers of Ephesus’, St Ursula, and Modwenna).80 Perhaps one
might recall here yet another Central European and at the same time Anglo-Saxon
parallel, the emerging cult of Margaret of Scotland (whose life also included some
migrations).81
The cult of St Hallvard is also quite a peculiar one:82 in Central Europe such a
local saint cult related to a layperson is missing altogether, and there is no evidence
that any such ‘grassroots’ cult could make it to the important role of becoming the
patron of a local bishopric. The local cults in East-Central Europe seem to have
been related either to higher ranks of royal-ecclesiastical hierarchy or to prestigious
relics ‘imported’ by them, such as those of St Vitus in Prague or St George in
Hungary.

78
František Graus, ‘La Sanctification du souverain dans l’Europe centrale des X e et XIe siècles’,
in Hagiographie cultures et sociétés, pp. 559–72.
79
DuBois, ‘Sts Sunniva and Henrik’; cf. Haki Antonsson, ‘The Early Cult of Saints in
Scandinavia and the Conversion: A Comparative Perspective’, in this volume.
80
On the Seven Sleepers, see Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 1–5; on the parallels to Modwenna, see DuBois, ‘Sts Sunniva
and Henrik’.
81
Sándor Fest, The Hungarian Origins of Margaret of Scotland (Debrecen: Egyetemi Nyomda,
1943); a CEU Ph.D. student, Katie Keene, is currently writing a new monograph on Margaret’s
life and cult.
82
Haki Antonsson, St Magnús of Orkney, pp. 121–27; cf. the studies in this volume by Haki
Antonsson, ‘Early Cult of Saints’, and by Ommundsen, ‘Cults of Saints in Norway before 1200’.
302 Gábor Klaniczay

Let me finally come to the problem of royal-dynastic sainthood, the multiplica-

tion of successful royal and dynastic cults in the recently converted northern and
eastern regions, where I see the closest parallels between Scandinavia, Kievan Rus’,
and Central Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The reason for the prominence of this type seems to be related to the post-
conversion situation: the necessity to foster a close alliance between the ruling
dynasty of the new Christian kingdom and the local church that was emerging with
its support. The help given in Christianization was rewarded by conferring the halo
of sanctity on some outstanding figures of these dynasties. As is well known, the
first ‘breakthrough’ of this model is exemplified by the cult of royal saints in eighth-
and ninth-century Anglo-Saxon England.83 In a similar historical situation, in
eleventh-century Scandinavia the Anglo-Saxon model was directly influential in
shaping the cults of royal saints such as Olaf Haraldsson in Norway and Knud
Svensson (d. 1086) in Denmark.84 These cults typically started during the strife
surrounding the succession, and subsequently they were instrumental in securing
the ascendance of the branch of the dynasty that tried to capitalize on the
patronage of these cults. Later they became touchstones of the identity of these
new kingdoms and the Church within them. Yet in a subsequent phase, in the later
Middle Ages, some surviving elements of pre-Christian mythologies were attached
to these cults, adding to their ethnic flavour.85
What we can learn about the Kievan Rus’, about the cult around the two sons
of Vladimir, Boris and Gleb, who were murdered in 1015, very much confirms this
same image: they did serve the formation of a closer alliance between the local
Church and the Rurikid dynasty and were used by Jaroslav to solidify his power.86
As for Central and Eastern Europe, we can already see the dominance of this
same type of saint cult among the Czechs and Hungarians (and the lack of it
among the Poles). Even if the individual analogies should not be overstressed —
the not sufficiently documented nature of the impact of the cult of St Wenceslas

83
Susan Janet Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and
East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
84
Hoffmann, Die heiligen Könige, pp. 58–126; cf. the studies by Aidan Conti, ‘Ælnoth of
Canterbury and Early Mythopoiesis in Denmark’, and Mortensen, ‘Writing and Speaking of St
Olaf’, in this volume.
85
Tore Nyberg, ‘Autour de la Sacralité Royale en Scandinavie’, Annuarium historiae conci-
liorum, 27–28 (1995–96), 177–192.
86
Andrzej Poppe, ‘Politik und Heiligenverehrung in der Kiever Ruœ: Der apostelgleiche Herr-
scher und seine Märtyrersöhne’, in Politik und Heiligenverehrung, ed. by Petersohn, pp. 403–22.
CONCLUSION: NORTH AND EAST EUROPEAN CULTS OF SAINTS 303

upon the cults of St Boris and St Gleb is rightly criticized by Marina Paramonova
— on the whole there are innumerable interrelations. I tried to point out elsewhere
that the elevation of Boris and Gleb in 1072 must have provided a model for
Ladislas on how to initiate and use the cult of saintly ancestors.87 Several studies in
this volume also provide data on the mutual influence between Scandinavian and
early Russian cults.
The second phase of the development of these cults maintains the prominence
of dynastic saints. The cult of Boris and Gleb gets complemented in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries by the cult of their grandmother, Olga, and finally also by
their father, Vladimir, the ‘apostle’ of the Rus’. This dynastic amplification of the
founding cult can also be observed in Scandinavia (with the important difference
that no saintly queen joins the saintly kings and princes there). In Denmark, the
martyr prince Knud Lavard joined the rank of dynastic saints (1169), and Niels of
Århus (d. 1180), the murdered son of King Knud Magnusson, was also a future
candidate for sainthood; in Orkney, a similar cult developed around the figure of
a murdered earl, St Magnús of Orkney;88 in Sweden the cult of St Erik emerged
around the 1160s.89 This same period also saw the amplification of the cult around
Wenceslas and the addition of the cult of Ludmila to that of her grandson, and in
Hungary the unfolding of the cult of St Emeric, son of St Stephen of Hungary, and
that of the initiator of the first series of canonizations, King Ladislas I, who was
himself canonized in 1192.90
Royal sainthood, popular in these regions, began to recruit adherents all over
twelfth-century Christianity. It met, however, increasing opposition from the
papacy. It is not by chance that Pope Alexander III made his claims for the papal
monopoly of the canonization of saints only a few years after the canonization of
Charlemagne by the antipope Paschal III. More than that, his claim was made in
criticizing another emerging royal cult, that of the Swedish St Erik (for in all
probability it was his cult to which the Pope alluded in his letter of 1171 or 1172
calling him, with his denigrators, ‘a man who died while drunk’).91

87
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, p. 132.
88
Haki Antonsson, St Magnús of Orkney, pp. 103–45.
89
For these cults, see Hoffmann, Die heiligen Könige.
90
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, pp. 161–93.
91
Erich Hoffmann, ‘Politische Heilige in Skandinavien und die Entwicklung der drei
nordischen Reiche und Völker’, in Politik und Heiligenverehrung, ed. by Petersohn, pp. 277–324;
and Dick Harrison, ‘Quod magno nobis fuit horrori …: Horror, Power and Holiness within the
Context of Canonization’, in Procès de canonisation, ed. by Klaniczay, pp. 39–52.
304 Gábor Klaniczay

The evolution of the model of royal sainthood in the tenth to thirteenth

centuries illustrates that the new Christian cultures of the peripheries, far from
being passive recipients of a cultural or institutional transfer, developed their own
versions of the cults and the ecclesiastical models they received from the various
religious centres after their conversion. The emerging autochthonous patterns led
to a new differentiation and new dynamics within late medieval Christendom; they
could themselves become influential models for others in the ‘centre’ or in new
‘peripheries’ around the continuously expanding borders of Europe.