Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 90 No. 5, 2020.
Original scientific paper
Ruler Martyrs on the Periphery of Medieval Europe
Simon Malmenvall
; Catholic Institute, Faculty of Law and Business Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
From the early tenth to the early twelfth century the northern and eastern periphery of Europe was composed of polities which had recently adopted Christianity as the official religion. Here a special type of veneration of saints or martyrs emerged. This type of sainthood refers to historical personalities characterized by a martyr’s death caused out of political self -interest by Christians themselves—not by members of other religions as a result of hatred against the Christian faith as such. The veneration of martyr rulers was unknown both in (Latin) southern Europe and the Byzantine Empire of the time. This article is dedicated to a historical, theological, and literary analysis of three saints: Boris and Gleb (died in 1015) from Kievan Rus’, Jovan Vladimir (died in 1016/1018) from Dioclea, and Magnus Erlendsson (died in 1115/1117) from the Orkney Isles, at the time a part of Norway. All of these saints share the same fundamental characteristics: in the face of mortal danger, they did not resort to revenge or fratricide as a means of struggle for power, but rather voluntarily accepted their deaths for the benefit of peace in their homelands. The phenomenon of ruler martyrs focuses on the example of their voluntary sacrifice, highlighting a duality between the righteousness of an innocent victim and an unfair act of a murderer. Ruler martyrs were regarded by their contemporaries as promoters of a new ideal of Christian monarchs and as symbols of the rejection of the recent pagan past. This phenomenon is also connected with the self -esteem of the ecclesiastical and secular elite of the newly Christianized peoples—they saw their homelands, despite their relatively late adoption of Christianity, as religiously »mature« and therefore on equal footing with others, which was to a large extent possible due to the emergence of the first local saints.
Keywords
Boris and Gleb; Jovan (John) Vladimir; Magnus Erlendsson; Kievan Rus’,
Hrčak ID:
251242
URI
Publication date:
28.1.2021.
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