University of Cambridge
Retelling Conversion: The Making of Christian Histories of Sweden, c. 1100–1550
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis dissertation explores how medieval Swedish writers understood early narratives of the Swedish conversion to Christianity, and how they used them to write and rewrite their Christian history despite — and frequently, in response to — their pagan past. This is taken as a starting point for a broader discussion of history-writing in medieval Sweden (in Latin and Old Swedish), for example, about why no major regnal histories were composed until the fifteenth century. The analysis is based on a corpus of texts written between the twelfth and the sixteenth century; the broad scope is necessitated by the late arrival of Latin literacy in Sweden and the relative scarcity of narrative sources in the Middle Ages. The dissertation is divided in three major chapters: The first chapter analyses the lives, offices and legends of saints allegedly active during the missionary period: Ansgar, Sigfrid, Botvid, Eskil of Tuna, and David of Munktorp. The second chapter focuses on the beginnings of Christian historiography in Sweden in the late Middle Ages. It contains a reconsideration of the beginnings of Gothicism in Sweden and its role in the creation of the regnal histories in the fifteenth century; further, it analyses how Nicolaus Ragvaldi, the Old Swedish Prose Chronicle and Ericus Olai used the motif of paganism to write and justify their Christian histories. The third and final chapter discusses how the Counter-Reformation historian Johannes Magnus received, approached and reworked medieval texts about the Christianisation of Sweden, against the background of his life as Catholic churchman exiled to Rome. The thesis includes an appendix with translations into English of the following Latin texts: Vita sancti Botvidi, Legenda sancti Eskilli, Legenda sancti Davidis longior, Legenda sancti Davidis recentior, Legenda sancti Sigfridi antiquior, Legenda sancti Sigfridi ex codice Upsalense, Legenda sancti Sigfridi ex codice Danico, and Ericus Olai, Chronica Regni Gothorum, ch. 1–2.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2025
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Rodríguez Avila, Adrián Israel
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Niblaeus, Erik
Subjects
dc:subject × 5Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122887
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/391978