Like many other saints, Saint Cnut, the Danish king murdered during a rebellion in 1086, was the subject of multiple vitae (in different formats), whose interrelations and roles in the shaping of Cnut’s cult have been elucidated by previous scholars. In The Multifunctionality of a Medieval Hagiography, Fiona Fritz offers a detailed analysis of what is arguably the most puzzling of these Lives. Written in Denmark by the English monk Ælnoth of Canterbury around 1111 or 1112, the text Fritz calls Gesta et Passio is at the same time a history of the Danish kingdom and its church, an account of the reigns of the Danish king Sweyn Estridsson (r. 1047–1074/76) and his sons, and a celebration of the life and martyrdom of Sweyn’s son Cnut. The title assigned the work by its early twentieth-century editor, Martin Gertz, already gives a sense of what Fritz terms its “multifunctionality”: Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius et Passio gloriosissimi Canuti regis et martyris (The Deeds of King Sweyn the Great and His Sons, and the Passion of the Most Glorious Canute, King and Martyr). The Gesta et Passio marks both Denmark’s first hagiographical work and the earliest specimen of Danish historiography. Fritz’s argument – in simplest terms – is that in the Gesta et Passio Ælnoth performs multiple tasks, all responding to the specific historical situation in Denmark in the early twelfth century.

Following her “Introductory remarks” (chapter 1), Fritz begins with a useful overview of the contexts in which Ælnoth was writing. Most importantly, the Gesta et Passio reflects the relationship between the processes of Christianization in Denmark (begun with the conversion of King Harald Bluetooth, r. 958–986) and the growth and centralization of Danish royal power. The cults of royal saints like Cnut were part of a symbiotic relationship between centralizing monarchies and Scandinavian churches that were consolidating their positions by the early twelfth century. A second and more immediate context for Aelnoth’s Gesta et Passio was the rivalry between the sons of Sweyn Estridsson over the succession to their father’s throne.

As Fritz makes clear in her third chapter (“Sources on St Cnut”), the earliest writings about Cnut all originated from Odense, home to a monastery founded by English monks at the invitation of King Eric, Cnut’s brother, in 1095. The Gesta et Passio marks the fourth contribution to what Fritz labels “the Odense literature,” and the chapter nicely lays out the ways in which Ælnoth borrows from and adapts earlier writings, as well as how later texts sometimes offered a different perspective, especially historical works by the anonymous author of the ca. 1138 Chronicon Roskildense , Sven Aggesen (ca. 1185), and Saxo Grammaticus (ca. 1200), as well as the mid-thirteenth-century Knytlinga Saga . A fourth chapter traces the development of Cnut’s cult, demonstrating that, while the veneration of Cnut was largely a local affair (as opposed to the Europe-wide cult of the Norwegian St. Olaf ), it did spread into large parts of Denmark and into Sweden.

The heart of Fritz’s analysis can be found in chapters five and six, in which she introduces the basic structures and narrative strategies of the Gesta et Passio and analyzes the means by which Ælnoth “remodel[ed] a viking as a royal saint” (115). As Fritz nicely demonstrates, various aspects of Ælnoth’s style derided by previous scholars in fact all work together strategically to further his various purposes. For example, Ælnoth’s lengthy digressions advance an argument about sin, evil, contrition, and repentance apart from his main goal of exalting Cnut’s sanctity. Chapter six offers detailed close readings of key moments in which Ælnoth depicts Cnut’s life as an imitatio Christi and describes him as a model king – despite his disruptions to traditional liberties that provoked the rebellion that ended in his martyrdom. Fritz compellingly argues that Ælnoth was alluding to models of the rex iustus and rex iniquus found in the seventh-century pseudo-Cyprian’s De duodecim abusivis saeculi – marking an earlier presence of these ideas and a different route of transmission for them than previous scholars have postulated. This theme is developed at greater length in Fritz’s eighth chapter, in which she postulates that the Gesta et Passio can be read as a mirror for princes, a function that has been noted in other saintly vitae , but not previously in Ælnoth’s work.

Fritz devotes her remaining chapters to additional functions performed by the Gesta et Passio . These functions include propagating Cnut’s cult, in part by claiming papal approval for Cnut’s admission to the canon of saints (chapter 7); enhancing the legitimacy and prestige of the ruling dynasty in Denmark (chapter 9); furthering the interests of the Danish church (chapter 10); and edifying (chapter 11) and entertaining (chapter 12) Ælnoth’s readers. As Fritz admits in her introductory remarks, “a given textual element … may be used to perform more than one task” (16), so that some passages from Ælnoth’s text appear in multiple chapters. The result is that the book can feel a bit repetitious at times, but this in no way diminishes the value of Fritz’s careful attention to context and to Ælnoth’s rhetorical strategies in the Gesta et Passio .

As a contribution to the growing body of scholarship on saints outside of the Western European heartlands and on royal sanctity, Fritz’s book should find an appreciative readership among historians working on hagiography and on medieval Scandinavia. It could also be useful in the classroom, where the notion of Viking saints never fails to intrigue my students. One might, for example, usefully pair Fritz’s sixth chapter and her conclusion – which provides a helpfully detailed summary of the whole – with the translated excerpts from Ælnoth’s Gesta et Passio available on the Internet Medieval Sourcebook (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/ailnoth-cnut.asp). Fritz’s careful study of Ælnoth’s work would be a valuable model for students of how one goes about a close reading of a medieval hagiographical text.