Church and nation The discourse on authority in Ericus Olai’s Chronica regni Gothorum (c. 1471) Biörn Tjällén Stockholm University Department of History Cover: plate 1. Reconstruction of the fifteenth-century façade of the Uppsala cathedral. After Boëthius & Rohmdahl. 2 Church and nation The discourse on authority in Ericus Olai’s Chronica regni Gothorum (c. 1471) Biörn Tjällén Stockholm University, Department of History, SE-106 91 Stockholm | Phone: +468-16 20 00 3 Church and nation. The discourse on authority in Ericus Olai’s Chronica regni Gothorum © Biörn Tjällén, Stockholm 2007 ISBN 978-91-7155-534-2 4 Contents Acknowledgements...............................................................................................................7 Introduction..........................................................................................................................8 The liberty of church and realm..........................................................................................9 The realm: representation or nation? ...............................................................................9 The church and the realm..............................................................................................14 Aim, method and disposition.............................................................................................20 I. Text, author and institutional context............................................................................24 Manuscripts and edition ...................................................................................................24 Time of composition and intended audience......................................................................26 Model reader.................................................................................................................28 Ericus Olai .......................................................................................................................30 Works and sainthood ....................................................................................................33 Church and government....................................................................................................36 The Uppsala arch see ....................................................................................................37 Historiographical traditions of the arch see......................................................................43 Annals ..........................................................................................................................44 Hagiography .................................................................................................................47 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................49 II. Social and discursive orders..........................................................................................51 The prologue ....................................................................................................................51 A compendium of national and institutional history ..........................................................53 The social body and its parts ............................................................................................57 Two orders, two swords................................................................................................59 The realm .........................................................................................................................66 The Goths.....................................................................................................................68 Authority and consent...................................................................................................71 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................78 III. Patrons of archdiocese and realm................................................................................80 Sts King Erik and Bishop Henrik: dualism to the benefit of the realm ...............................81 The legends of St Erik and St Henrik ............................................................................81 The cults in political discourse......................................................................................84 St Erik in the Chronica regni Gothorum .......................................................................91 5 King Karl Knutsson and Archbishop Jöns Bengtsson ‘who could not suffer each other in one realm’ ........................................................................................................................98 Tyranny and national martyrdom in the Scandinavian union .......................................100 King Karl Knutsson ....................................................................................................108 Archbishop Jöns Bengtsson ........................................................................................113 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................120 IV. Dualism and monarchy in 1528 .................................................................................123 Historical and political discourse in the reign of Gustav I ..............................................123 The reception of the Chronica in 1528............................................................................128 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................131 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................133 Bibliography .....................................................................................................................143 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................143 Manuscripts....................................................................................................................143 Editions ..........................................................................................................................143 Literature .......................................................................................................................145 6 Acknowledgements Many people ought to be thanked for their contributions to this thesis, more than I will mention here by name. I have profited hugely from the expertise, generosity and enthusiasm of my supervisor, Professor Olle Ferm. The constructive critique, discipline and patience of my secondary supervisor Fil. Dr. Bo Persson have been equally important for carrying this work to an end. Towards the final stage of the project I had the added benefit of comments and suggestions from Professor Eva Odelman and Assoc. Professor Carsten Selch Jensen. I am grateful to all of the above, whose input I have tried to, but, I am sure, not fully managed to do justice. The Department of History at Stockholm University generously provided most of the means required for the fulfilment of this project. I am thankful not the least for the warmth and efficiency of its administrative staff. The positive impact on my work from colleagues, some of whom I like to call my friends, also is hard to overrate. In that respect, I wish to express my thanks to Fil. Kand. Mats Berglund. In addition, Stockholm has been the hub of a family support that I have had many occasions in these last years to appreciate. From the onset of this project, however, my supervisor emphasized that medieval history is best not exercised as a national discipline. I tried to heed this suggestion by way of academic stays abroad. A mobility grant from NordForsk made possible a stay at The Danish National Research Foundation: Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals in Copenhagen. Another grant, provided by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, enabled a stay at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. Both of these stays proved of great value, scholarly as well as on a personal level, and I wish to express my gratitude both to the donors and to the members of these institutions that so generously received me as their guest. The C.M. Lerici foundation, the Fondazione Famiglia Rausing, and Jubileumsdonationen Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse provided additional travel grants. Grants from Svea Orden and Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse made it possible to conclude the work. Intermittently I have worked on this project at Trinity College Dublin. I am grateful for the kind reception I have received from members of that university. Dr Susan Foran has been an invaluable discussion partner throughout much of this work. I have benefited, not the least, from her patient suggestions regarding English usage. I dedicate this thesis to her. Copenhagen, November 2007 Biörn Tjällén 7 Introduction The Chronica regni Gothorum or Chronicle of the realm of the Goths is the first Swedish national history in Latin prose. It was completed after 1471 by a member of the Uppsala cathedral chapter, Ericus Olai, who, arguably, intended his work primarily for the readership of his own arch see. Ericus professed to compile a history of the Swedish realm from the birth of Christ until