Monasticism in North-Western Europe, 800–1200 by Tore Nyberg

Author:Tore Nyberg [Nyberg, Tore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351761369
Google: CPqADwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-20T01:45:34+00:00

Conclusion

Monastic life in the three Scandinavian kingdoms must be said to have gone through a decisive phase in the 1140s. In the foundation process of three monasteries for men in Sweden and two in Norway, a pattern of competition between secular and ecclesiastical power has been detected, with regard to which of the two powers was best fitted to understand the monks in their struggle for the purity of the monastic alternative. King Erik Emune appropriated Ringsted for his own purposes in 1135, King Sverker founded Alvastra in 1143, Munkeliv became part of royal and episcopal Bergen by virtue of its great construction works, crowned by the papal letter of 1146, and royal intervention may have played a role as Hovedøya church dedicated to an English martyr king became the site of English monks in 1147. In spite of all that, bishops were still felt to be more apt to understand the essence of monastic life. Thus we find Bishop Eskil giving his support to Nœstved in 1135, Bishop Gisle his to Nydala in 1143, Bishop Sigurd his to Lyse in 1146, and, parallel to these events, Archbishop Eskil founding Herrisvad in Scania in 1144 while working on the establishment of his own abbey of Esrum in Zealand. As McGuire (1982, p. 39) and France (1992, p. 44) unanimously have stressed against some scholars who have belittled Eskil's monastic efforts, the evidence of the Exordium magnum and the Øm chronicle cannot be dismissed: by being the proper founder of Herrisvad and Esrum, Eskil made it possible for men in two Danish dioceses, Lund and Roskilde, to live monastic Christianity according to the new interpretation of the Rule of St Benedict. But we may go further than that and conclude that the same urge for the monastic alternative made him effectuate the same opening for two more Scandinavian dioceses: Linköping and Bergen. Eskil's crucial role is not only Danish but Scandinavian.

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