Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | September/2023 |
Spalte: | 850-854 |
Kategorie: | Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Oftestad, Eivor Andersen and Joar Haga [Eds.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Tracing the Jerusalem Code. Vol. 2: The Chosen People Christan Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536 – ca. 1750). |
Verlag: | Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2021. XX, 506 S. m. zahlr. Abb. Geb. EUR 86,95. ISBN 9783110634877. (Open Access) |
Rezensent: | Anders-Christian Jacobsen |
Neben dem angegebenen Titel in dieser Rezension besprochen:
Aavitsland, Kristin B. and Line M. Bonde [Eds.]: Tracing the Jerusalem Code. Vol. 1: The Holy City Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1100–1536). Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2021. XX, 617 S. m. zahlr. Abb. Geb. EUR 86,95. ISBN 9783110634853. (Open Access)
Zorgati, Ragnhild Johnsrud and Anna Bohlin [Eds]: Tracing the Jerusalem Code. Vol. 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750 – ca. 1920). Berlin u. a.: De Gruyter 2021. XX, 641 S. m. zahlr. Abb. Geb. EUR 86,95. ISBN 9783110634884. (Open Access)
The three-volume work Tracing the Jerusalem Code is nothing less than a masterpiece of Christian cultural history. The idea to use Jerusalem as a code for interpreting the Scandinavian Christian cultural history is brilliant, and the idea is thoroughly carried through. As the three volumes consist of more than 1700 pages and 74 articles, it is impossible to present a summary of the content. In the following, I will therefore present the general idea and give examples of how this idea takes concrete shape.
The use of Jerusalem as a hermeneutical key to interpret Scandinavia’s cultural history works well. The Jerusalem Code comprises of several elements. All or almost all of these elements are based on the Bible which provides myriads of images and interpretations of Jerusalem which again can be interpreted, received, and used in several additional ways. Therefore, Jerusalem is well-suited as a code for Christian cultures in periods and parts of the world where the Bible dominates religion and culture. The basic idea is that codes of any kind have the ability to transmit a message in a way which is only understandable to the implied receivers of the message. Codes must therefore be written (or painted, carved etc.) using specific digits. This requires experts. Codes can furthermore only be de- ciphered by those who know how to read the digits correctly. The idea that language and culture are encoded messages was developed during the 20th century for example in semiotics and communication theories. Following this way of thinking, the contributors to this book series decide to study Scandinavia’s Christian cultural history using Jerusalem as code. This means that Jerusalem is understood as an »organizing principle of a semiotic code« (vol. 1, 7). Jerusalem can according to the authors be used as code for understanding Scandinavia’s cultural history because it connects a network of signs and metaphors which together produce meaning by explaining relations between God, humans, and society. Constellations of these signs are expressed in different media such as texts, architecture, images, rituals etc. The network of signs and metaphors related to Jerusalem functions within time and space. Interpretations of Christian culture using the Jerusalem Code thus needs to move along a certain storyline defined by interpretations of the Christian history of salvation and inside the space defined by the salvation history, that is from creation of this world and to its fulfilment in the New Jerusalem. As long as this network of signs and metaphors and this storyline is alive in a culture, Jerusalem can be used as a cultural code. The question is whether this theoretical approach works as a hermeneutical key to interpret Scandinavia’s Christian cultural history. The answer is yes! The 74 articles in the three volumes testify to this. Of course, it works better in some cases than in others.
In the volumes, Scandinavia is defined traditionally as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. However, the volumes also include examples from Iceland, since there were close connections between Norway, Denmark, and Iceland in most of the period which the volumes cover. The research project which produced the books was Norwegian. This is probably the reason why most examples come from Norway, but the geographical areas of Sweden and Denmark is also well-represented. In the end it is difficult to draw the precise boarders between the Scandinavian countries, since these boarders shifted many times during the long period of time which these volumes cover. It is thus good that the editors abstained from using geography to structure the research project and the volumes com-ing out of it.
The overall structure of the project and the volumes is based on chronology. The first volume which carries the subtitle The Holy City. Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia covers the period ca. 1100–1536. At the beginning of this period, all of Scandinavia was Christianized and a Christian culture was about to be established. The period ends with the Lutheran reformation of Scandinavia. The second volume which has the subtitle The Chosen People. Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia covers the period 1536 – ca. 1750 which is the period between the reformation and the Enlightenment. The third volume with the subtitle The Promised Land. Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia covers the period ca. 1750 – ca. 1920, which means that it includes the first period of modern Zionism, but not the establishment of the modern state of Israel. However, Zionism is not thematized in the volume. This is in general a well-chosen periodization, since obvious changes in the Scandinavian cultural and theological reception of Jerusalem occurred at the time of the reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment period. However, this reviewer would have wished a slight change and probably a major addition so that a fourth volume would have covered the period from the beginning of modern Zionism around 1900 to the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Even though this is a short period, there would have been much material of a different kind to cover, so it is understandable that the coordinators of the project and the editors of the volumes decided not to include this period and theme.
All three volumes open with an introductory chapter which broadly describes the period which is covered by the volume. These chapters are informative even if they tend to be too broadly conceived.
How, then, did Jerusalem code Scandinavian Christian cultures during this long period?
The most important aspect of the first period from ca. 1100 to 1536 were the crusades in which also Scandinavians took part. Participating in the crusades was a way to translate the sanctity of Jerusalem into the Scandinavian Christian culture (vol. 1, 2). Thus, the crusades and other concrete relations to Jerusalem, for example pilgrimage and relics, did not only influence those who travelled to Jerusalem and back, but also the society as a whole. In this way, Scandinavia, which geographically was located in the periphery of the world, was connected to the center of the Christian world, Jerusalem. The articles in the first volume provides a lot of evidence of this. The volume is structured around four themes (vol. 1, 40): legitimation of political power (chapter 4–9); experience and perception of sacred topography (chapter 10–13); formulation of and interaction with sacred space (chapter 14–19); acknowledgement of the scheme of salvation history (20–24).
Lukas Raupp’s article with the title Importing Jerusalem: Relics of the True Cross as Political Legitimation in Early Twelfth-Century Denmark and Norway can serve as examples of how Jerusalem was coding Scandinavian Christian cultures. In his article, Raupp shows how relics of the true cross brought to Denmark and Norway by king Erik the Good and king Sigurd were used by them to support their claims to rulership in situations where these claims were disputed. Raupp argues that Erik the Good used the relic from the true cross, which he received as a gift from the Byzantine Emperor to support his claim to power in the same way as Constantine the Great had used the cross found by his mother Helena in Jerusalem as support of his power as the first Christian Emperor. King Sigurd of Norway used his relic from the true cross, which he had received from King Baldwin of Jerusalem, to support his claims to power presenting himself as a Christian warrior king in the vein of the Christian kings of Jerusalem. Raupp’s argument is supported by the fact that relics of the true cross existed in Denmark and Norway in the form of so called staurotheka, and by fact that literary sources tell about such relics.
Eivor Andersen Oftestad shows in the introductory chapter to volume two how the center of religious power shifted at the time of the reformation. This is illustrated by the example of the Danish nobleman, Johan Rantzau, who as many other noblemen and aristocrats traveled to Jerusalem during the first decades of the 16th century in order to be knighted in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. However, in the very year of 1517, where Rantzau was knighted in Jerusalem, the city was taken over by the Ottoman Sultan Selim and in Saxony the Augustinian monk Martin Luther inaugurated the Lutheran reformation. Rantzau had to flee from Jerusalem. From there he came to Rome, where he was received by Pope Leo the 10th. A few years later Rantzau became a Lutheran and travelled to Wittenberg, the holy city of the Lutherans. The center of religious legitimation changed rapidly (vol. 2, 13–16). Luther himself argued in his lectures on Genesis that Eden had its center in the area of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jerico. Eden was destroyed because of Adam’s sin. Later, Jerusalem, the place where Christ lived, was abandoned by God and destroyed because of the sins of the Jews. The earthly Jerusalem had no privileged status according to Luther and Lutheran theology. The true Jerusalem was to be found in the true worship, and the spiritual authority of Jerusalem was transferred to Wittenberg and other Lutheran cities. However, Jerusalem could still function as a cultural code in Scandinavian Christian culture because the meaning and authority of Jerusalem were transformed from the earthly Jerusalem located in Palestine to the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem.
One of the main themes in the Christian cultural history of Scandinavia during the period from 1536 to 1750 covered by the second volume is still the religious legitimation of political power. This is the theme of the first part of volume two (chapter 5–8). Part two (chapter 9–11) has its focus on the transformation of holiness and the Holy City of Jerusalem. The third part of volume two (chapters 12–16) investigates the rhetorical use of the destruction of Jerusalem in Denmark-Norway and the motive of the two cities Jerusalem and Babel. The last part of the volume (chapter 17–22) deals with the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Eystein M. Andersen’s article The Heavenly Jerusalem and the City Plan of Trondheim 1681 belongs to the fourth part of the second volume (vol. 2, 344–367). This article is a very fine example of how Jerusalem was used as code in material culture in the Baroque period. In the 17th century, Norway was Protestant and part of the Danish-Norwegian kingdom under the Protestant king Christian the Fifth. However, there were apparently openings for Catholic influences. The administrative head of the Norwegian part of the kingdom, U.F. Gyldenløve, was of course Protestant, but he apparently had Catholic sympathizers. Therefore, he allowed Catholics to hold central positions in the military. This was the case with Jean Gaspard de Cicignon, who held a central position in the army. He was at the same time an expert in construction of fortifications and city planning. When the Norwegian city, Trondheim, burned down in 1681, Cicignon was given the task to plan a new city. For this purpose, Cicignon employed Catholic traditions of city planning. These traditions included many symbolic references to Rome as a holy city, to the Roman Church, and, most important for the research topic of these volumes, the Catholic traditions for city planning also included many references to Solomon’s Temple and to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Andersen shows in his impressive contribution to the volume how Cicignon used these references in his planning of the new Trondheim. Most obvious is according to Andersen the use of Catholic numerology in the planning of the new Trondheim. Many of these numbers referred to ideas about the Heavenly Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple. This is the case with the number five, which according to Andersen was the reason why Cicignon planned five main streets going east-west and five going north-south. In the same way the width of the streets represented the numbers seven and twelve which also referred to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Andersen convincingly points to many other references to the Heavenly Jerusalem in Cicignon’s plan for the new Trondheim. Would this mean that the citizens of the new Trondheim or visitors to the city would recognize all these references to the Heavenly Jerusalem when they walked through the city? Not according to Andersen. In his opinion, Cicignon did not try openly to influence the Protestant citizens of Trondheim, but he strongly adhered to the Catholic belief that if the city was planned according to the perfect and harmonious shape of the Heavenly Jerusalem the perfection of the Heavenly Jerusalem would be partly induced into the earthly city of Trondheim. The Heavenly Jerusalem was thus partly established in Northern Scandinavia to the benefit of its inhabitants.
The third volume of the series covers the period from ca. 1750 to ca. 1920. The volume investigates how the idea of the Promised Land was used in Christian cultures in modern Scandinavia. Like the first two volumes this one is also divided into four parts. The first part (chapters 2–10) has the title The Promised Land: Awakenings. The second part (chapters 11–14) is called The Promised Land Renewal of the National Church. Part three (chapters 15–21 ) is entitled The Promised Land: Science and Travel. And finally, the fourth part (chapters 22–28) has the title The Promised Land: Realization and Secularization. As the subtitle of the volume and the headings of the sections show, the general focus is on Palestine and Jerusalem understood as an unrealized vision, which has influenced many areas of Scandinavian Christian culture in the modern period such as alternative Christian movements, the national churches, emigration including immigration to America as the Promised Land, nation building, and the developing sciences.
Like the first two volumes this third volume also contains many valuable articles. I have chosen to reference Jenny Bergenmar’s contribution with the title The Fatherland and the Holy Land: Selma Lagerlöf’s Jerusalem (vol. 3, 448–465). This article shows that the Jerusalem code was still used around 1900 when Selma Lagerlöf wrote her novel Jerusalem and other shorter texts about the city. The plot of Lagerlöf’s novel is how the longing for the New or Heavenly Jerusalem lure a group of Swedish peasants to embark on a journey to the Holy Land where they hope to find and settle in the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Swedish group was persuaded by millenarist ideas to leave their homes in the fertile Dalarne in Sweden behind. What they found, when they arrived in Jerusalem, was barren land, dry and hot in which they could not survive. Lagerlöf’s novel thus raises the important question: where is the Heavenly Jerusalem? In Jerusalem in Palestine? In Dalerne in Sweden? Or is the idea a religious illusion misleading people who dream about a better life? Bergenmar manages to show how Lagerlöf uses the idea about the Heavenly Jerusalem to describe major transformations in the modern Scandinavian societies around 1900. People leave their traditional homes and lives to search for better lives elsewhere – in America or in Palestine. The world opened and traditions broke down. Bergenmar also shows that Lagerlöf shared her period’s Orientalism, when she portrayed people from Palestine as the strange and exotic others who were culturally less developed than the Scandinavians, and how Lagerlöf’s novel participated in the period’s new ideas about nation building – maybe even nationalism. Bergenmar’s article is characteristic of the volume’s many inspiring contributions.
All three volumes are very well illustrated with photos, maps, drawings, and paintings of good quality, which in almost all situations add meaning to the text.
For those who are engaging in Scandinavian Christian culture and/or in the history and imaginations of Jerusalem these volumes will be an invaluable source of inspiration. Fortunately, the third volume is published with Open Access. Thus, it is only a few clicks away.