Synnøve Midtbø Myking is a medievalist specialising in Scandinavian book and scribal culture and its ties to continental Europe. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, funded by the Hans Rasmus Astrup foundation, and after two years moves on to a researcher position at the University of Bergen.
Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi
«Rome, the capital of the world, holds the round orb’s reins»
Medieval verse
“[V]ita vi må at den store verd / er berre vårt store fedreland” (We must know that the great world / is but our great fatherland), wrote the Norwegian poet Aasmund O. Vinje in Nasjonalitet (1860). If Rome is the caput mundi, the city must also be Norway’s capital. Both before and after Vinje’s time, Norwegians and Scandinavians have come here in search of history, knowledge, and inspiration.
I myself was lucky enough to obtain a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, funded by the Hans Rasmus Astrup foundation and starting autumn 2024. As a medievalist, I have long studied the development of Scandinavian book and scribal culture from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries and how it was influenced by continental contacts, and I was well familiar with the journeys made by Nordic ecclesiastics, clerics, and students to the great European centres of learning. Rome was a natural endpoint to many of these journeys, for there lay the seat of the Pope, and the Pope had the last word when conflicts were to be resolved and high-ranking clergymen instated. But how did the Northerners themselves experience the famous city, and which stories did they pass onto others?
Esrum, Constantine, and Saint Olav
In my project, I used as a point of departure the manuscript Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV), Vat. Lat. 636, which is now in the Vatican Library but which in medieval times was owned by the Danish abbey of Esrum. This abbey belonged to the Cistercians, a monastic order originating in France. Esrum was founded by monks from the great and important abbey of Clairvaux. The manuscript, produced in the last decades of the twelfth century, contains several texts that implicitly or explicitly concern Rome. In my research, I have mapped out the manuscript’s contents, which have received little attention in earlier scholarship, and I have situated them in the greater context of cultural and intellectual history.
Among the texts of the Esrum manuscript, there are several excerpts from the Liber Politicus, a compilation from the 1140s which aimed to celebrate or document various aspects of Rome and Roman history. One of the excerpts focusses on Emperor Constantine (d. 337), famous for having legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire. The paragraph in question relates how Constantine builds three of Rome’s most important churches – the Lateran Basilica, the Vatican Basilica, and San Paolo fuori le mura – and equips them with magnificent and mysterious treasures before departing for Byzantium (Constantinople), leaving Rome to Pope Silvester.
This is an expression of the tradition of Donatio Constantini, Constantine’s Donation, which was based on a forged document from the eighth century and which in the twelfth century was interpreted to mean that the Pope should hold power over the emperor and other worldly rulers. Constantine and Silvester were also well-known figures in the North, but it was not just the forged document that interested the Scandinavians. For instance, Constantine, who according to Roman tradition was cured of leprosy after being baptised by Silvester, could be seen as a parallel to Saint Olav (d. 1030), the king who left paganism to become known as the greatest promoter of Christianity in Norway.
The wondrous salvation
Another fascinating text in the manuscript is the anonymous De septem miraculis mundi (“Of the world’s seven wonders”). The tradition of listing seven wonders goes back to Antiquity, but the specifics of the seven wonders changed over time. In De septem miraculis mundi, the first wonder is “Rome’s salvation”: a complex of statues which according to the legend represented the various peoples conquered by the Romans. The statues wore bells around their necks, which would ring to notify the Roman authorities if a given people planned rebellion.
The prominent place Rome and the legend assumed in De septem miraculis mundi led to the text’s being strongly associated with Rome throughout the Middle Ages, something we see exemplified in Magister Gregory’s travel description from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Gregory obviously used De septem miraculis mundi as a source, and he localises several of the wonders, not just the statues, to Rome. The text’s location in the Esrum manuscript may also be interpreted as a comment on Rome’s status and role in the twelfth century, for the scribe has placed this text second to last, only followed by Bede the Venerable’s (d. 735) poem on Judgement Day – a conclusion to the whole compilation.
The eternal city
For my own part, I must conclude my project somewhat earlier than planned, as I’m starting a new position this July. Fortunately, the capital of the world is also known as Urbs Aeterna, the eternal city, to which all roads lead – and the journey is both faster and safer than in medieval times.
It’s still sad to say goodbye to Rome and the Institute, but I leave with much more knowledge than when I arrived, and not just about what I have been researching. Evening lectures, seminars at the Institute and elsewhere, conversations with scholars, students, and guests – about everything from classical archaeology to twentieth century history – all of this I have learned from and appreciated. With the city at one’s doorstep, ready to be explored, and with the rest of Italy a train ride away, brimming with history and wonderful sights, my time here has been as much educational tour as postdoctoral project. And a true educational tour never ends.
