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Kvhaa Konferenser 82 kvhaa konferenser 82 The Birgittine Experience PaPers from the Birgitta ConferenCe in stoCkholm 2011 Editors: Claes Gejrot, Mia Åkestam & Roger Andersson konferenser 82 k. The Birgittine Experience. Papers from the Birgitta Conference in Stockholm 2011. Kungl. Vitter­ hets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien (KVHAA), Konferenser 82. Stockholm 2013. 400 pp. AbstraCt The volume The Birgittine Experience contains a broad overview of recent scholarship on Saint Birgitta and the Birgittine Order. The nineteen papers were originally presented at an international conference in Stockholm in October 2011.The conference and the book are interdisciplinary, gathering scholars that specialise in various fields, for instance Art History, Literature, Scandinavian Languages and History. The authors represent ten countries – Swe­ den, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, England, Poland, Estonia, the United States and Israel. Three major themes were envisaged for the conference: Birgittine art and culture, ver­ nacular texts and literature, and Birgittine activities outside Vadstena. Although a few papers could easily have been placed in more than one group, these themes also form the structure of the printed book. Key words Saint Birgitta, Vadstena Abbey, Birgittine Order, medieval history, medieval literature, medie­ val manuscripts, medieval art, medieval religion, Old Swedish, Middle English © 2013 The authors and KVHAA, Stockholm ISBn 978­91­7402­417­3 ISBn 0348­1433 Publisher: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien (KVHAA, The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities), Box 5622, SE­114 86 Stockholm, Sweden, www.vitterhetsakad.se Distribution: eddy.se ab, Box 1310, SE­621 24 Visby, Sweden, http://vitterhetsakad.bokorder.se Illustrations: See captions Graphic design: Lars Paulsrud Printed in Sweden by Elanders Fälth & Hässler, Mölnlycke, Sweden 2013 Contents The Birgittine Experience – A Preface 7 ville Walta: Birgittine Fragments in Finland : Reconstructing Naantali Abbey’s Library 11 anna Woloarski: The Vadstena Library: Making New Discoveries 30 veroniCa o’mara: Saint Birgitta of Sweden’s Life in a Middle English Context 54 start forBes: The Birgittine Abbey of Syon: The Burials of the Sisters and Brothers in the Abbey Church 73 kersti marks: The Pirita Convent in Tallinn: A Powerful Visual Symbol for the Self-Consciousness of the Birgittine Order 93 elina räsänen: TheVallis gratiae Altar Frontlet: Object, Imagery, and Deconstruction of the ‘Artist’ 109 angela kappeler: The Birgittine Linen Crown 136 nirit Ben-Aryeh ebby: Saint Birgitta of Sweden in Florentine Art 171 maria HusaBø oen: Sight, Body, and Imagery in the Visionary Experiences of Birgitta 190 søren kasPersen: ‘Birgittine’ Wall Paintings?: A Reconsideration of a Disputed Phenomenon 209 emilia ŻoChoWska: Magister Mathias of Linköping and Saint Birgitta of Sweden: A Fellowship of Imagination 227 Corine Schleif: The Art of Walking and Viewing: Christ, the Virgin, Saint Birgitta, and the Birgittines Processing through the Cloister 241 volker Schier: Writing and Rewriting Processions: The Reworking of the Procession Liturgy by the Birgittine Nuns of South Germany 268 eva-Marie letzter: Teaching by Example: Exempla Used in Birgitta’s Revelations and in Old Swedish Popular Sermons 288 leena enqvist: Syon Abbey and the List of Faults: An Example of Shaping Social Life in a Medieval Birgittine Community 307 nils verstorP: Evidence for Commercial Book Production in Vadstena Abbey? 323 roger anersson: A Modern Edition of the Old Swedish Text of the Revelations 332 ingela heström: One Customary to Rule Them All: On the Lucidarium and its Transmission 351 Jonathan Adams: Analysing Language Mixture in a Medieval Birgittine Manuscript: Method and Findings 370 The authors 396 The Birgittine Experience A Preface n OctoBer 2011 a large number of medievalists and Birgittine scholars gathered in Stockholm for The Birgitta Conference 2011 – A Marcus Wallen- berg Symposium. During three days, speakers from many different count­ Iries presented and discussed aspects of recent Birgittine research. The event was arranged by the Birgitta Foundation (Birgittastiftelsen) and generously spon­ sored by the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for International Cooperation in Science. The arrangements were hosted by the Swedish National Archives, the Diplomatarium Suecanum and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien). Several themes had been marked out for the conference: Birgittine art, ver­ nacular texts and literature, and Birgittine activities outside Vadstena. These themes are reflected also in the printed contributions. Nineteen of the confer­ ence papers have been included in this volume. A first section deals with Birgittine traces in Finland, England, Sweden and Estonia. In the two first papers, we learn more about the fragment collections: Ville Walta studies the remnants of the monastery library of Naantali (Nådendal) in Finland, while Anna Wolodarski in her contribution concentrates on fragments from volumes once belonging to Vadstena Abbey. Turning to the Birgittines in England, Veronica O’Mara gives a thorough survey of various vernacular versions of Birgitta’s Life. Stuart Forbes demonstrates that it is possible to name individual persons in a medieval burial site. He has based his paper on a comparison be­ tween written evidence and the findings from recent excavations in London. Kersti Markus’s contribution discusses the extraordinary circumstances that led to the foundation of the Birgittine monastery Pirita in Tallinn. The second section is focused on new research on Birgittine art. The first contribution is by Elina Räsänen who presents her conclusions on a preserved 8 kvhaa konferenser 82 embroidery work, an altar frontlet used at Naantali. Furthermore, Angela Kap- peler discusses the linen crown seen in a number of Birgittine pictorial works and gives a survey of parallels from other monastic orders, especially in Germany. The question of how Saint Birgitta was portrayed in Florentine art is the topic of Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby’s paper. Among other things, she sees Dominican and Franciscan influence behind the presence of Birgittine images in the city, where the Birgittine monastery of Paradiso was established. In a paper connect­ ing the worlds of texts and images, Maria Husabø Oen explores the sometimes contradictory notions of visions and visionary experience found in Birgittine textual sources. Søren Kaspersen has analyzed some medieval Scandinavian wall­ paintings. After a close reading of these images and of the text of the Revelations, he discusses their possible place within a Birgittine context and their relation to Vadstena Abbey. This paper is followed by Emilia Żochowska’s looking into the concept of imagination in a study on the ‘imagined images’ used by Magister Mathias of Linköping and his confessant, Saint Birgitta. In two papers, rituals and manu­ scripts emanating from the German monastery of Maria Mai in Maihingen demand our attention. In the first of these studies, Corine Schleif, discusses pro­ cessions and daily walking in a Birgittine closed environment, using the letters written by the Maihingen nun Katarina Lemmel as a main source. The author of the second paper, Volker Schier, analyzes three Processionals preserved from the convent and finds differences from the Vadstena use. Saint Birgitta’s use of examples is the subject of Eva-Marie Letzter’s contribution, where she compares these exempla to those found in Swedish sermon collections. Leena Enqvist uses a normative text – the Additions to the Rule belonging to Syon Abbey – for a discussion about life and social relations in a Birgittine monastery. The last section contains papers dealing with vernacular texts and manu­ scripts. Using palaeographical evidence, Nils Dverstorp analyzes the Vadstena provenance of two fifteenth­century manuscripts and draws conclusions about commercial book trade at Vadstena. Furthermore, Roger Andersson discusses edi­ torial issues and presents his preparations for the publication of a new, modern edition of the Swedish version of Birgitta’s Revelations. The ‘Lucidarium’, the customary for the Birgittine sisters, is at the centre of Ingela Hedström’s paper. She looks into the transmission of this little studied text in various manuscripts and gives an overview of the known versions. The last paper deals with language mixture. Using statistical methods, Jonathan Adams analyzes the linguistic vari­ ants in a well­known manuscript of Birgitta’s Revelations written in a peculiar mixture of Swedish and Norwegian. kvhaa konferenser 82 9 In addition to these nineteen contributors, several other scholars presented papers at the conference. Among them were Stephan Borgehammar, who opened the conference with a key­note lecture (‘Saint Birgitta as a Pilgrim’), Unn Falkeid (‘A Ladder fixed on Earth. Revelation and Resistance in Birgitta’s Liber Questionum’), Mia Åkestam (‘The Art of Mastering Desire: Pictorial Language in Birgitta’s Revelations’), Sissel Plathe (‘The Virgin Mary or Saint Birgitta of Vadstena? A Close Look at the Oldest Painting on Canvas in Scandinavia’), Eva Ahl-Waris (‘The Use of History in Naantali and the Creation of the Com­ memorative Anatomy of the Monastery’s Memory Landscape’), Ruth Rajamaa (‘The Birgittine Monastery Marienthal near Reval in Medieval Livonia’), Anne Sofie Sifvert (‘The Spanish Birgittines of Azcoitia: Consequences of the French Revolution’),
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