Crusading Ideology and Imitatio Christi in Anders Sunesen, Bernard of Clairvaux and Innocent III

1Anders Sunesen belonged to the upper strata of the Northern and European elites both by birth and by education. He was a scion of one of the wealthiest and most influential noble families in Denmark, and in the 1180s and 90s, he studied theology and law in Paris, Italy and England. At some point he also taught theology, perhaps in a school in Paris, but this cannot be known for certain.1 In 1201, he was appointed archbishop of Lund, and he resided there until his resignation in 1223.

2Anders Sunesen appears to have been a driving force behind the crusading enterprises in Denmark at the beginning of the thirteenth century.2 In 1213, Pope Innocent III placed the responsibility for the organisation of the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land in Denmark and Sweden on Anders Sunesen.3 The Danish archbishop was also a key figure in the organisation of the Danish crusades in the Baltic during the reign of Valdemar II, and it was he who obtained the necessary papal confirmation and privileges for them from Innocent III.

3The archbishop was also directly active in the field. In all probability he preached the cross for both the Baltics and for the Holy Land in Denmark, and we know that he took part in the Baltic expeditions of 1206 and 1219.4 In the winter of 1206–07 he stayed over in Riga, calling all the clergy together and instructed them in theology—and according to the chronicle of Henry of Livonia he spent the whole winter together with them “in divine contemplation while reading the Psalms.”5 All in all we are able to gather a fairly detailed picture of Anders Sunesen’s involvement in the organisation of the crusades and mission in the Baltics; it shows his good relations with the papal see and with Innocent III, and it has even been suggested that he knew him personally since their days in the schools of Paris.6 This is not the place, however, to probe the organisation of crusades or crusade preaching, or to examine Anders Sunesen’s connections with the central authorities of the Roman Church at the administrative level. I shall turn instead to his theology and to his spiritual affinities with leading theologians and crusade preachers of his age.

4Anders Sunesen has left a long theological treatise, the Hexaemeron, and thanks to this we are able to say much about his training in theology and his ideas.7 It was most probably written before he became archbishop,8 and even though he does not mention the crusades in this work it nevertheless provides us with a unique opportunity to get inside the mind of a theologian and prelate who preached and organised crusades. Most of the many hundreds of people involved in the preaching of the crusades have left us no sermons or any other works by which we may gather an idea of their theological outlook. But in Anders Sunesen’s case we have his Hexaemeron. In this work Anders Sunesen moreover shows himself as a proponent of a theme that was absolutely essential to the theology of the crusades: the idea of the imitation of Christ. In this article I shall examine parts of the Hexaemeron in the light of its contemporary crusading ideology and propaganda. An examination of these aspects will furthermore point to other possible connections and sources of inspiration for Anders Sunesen than those that have previously been established by the scholarship on the Hexaemeron.

5The Hexaemeron of Anders Sunesen is quite a remarkable work. It is a didactical poem of 8,040 lines of hexameters—that is more than 250 pages—testifying to its author’s education in the schools of Paris and his familiarity with the ongoing theological debates there. The main sources for the Hexaemeron are Peter Lombard, Peter Comestor, Glossa ordinaria, Stephen Langton, Simon of Tournai, Praepositinus, magister Martinus, and Peter of Poitiers.9

6The hexaemeron means the six days of creation, but in fact Anders’s work is much more than a commentary on Genesis. It covers most of the topics of the theology of his time and it contains treatises on for instance the Trinity, on grace, sin and virtue, and on Christ and the redemption. These different treatises have been carefully ordered into twelve books so that the first nine books of the poem deal with subjects related to the creation and the fall, and the last three deal with the redemption, Christ, and the end of the world. In short, the first part deals with the creation and the second part with the salvation and re-creation of mankind after the fall.

7It is in this second part, in book 10, that we find the idea of the imitation of Christ expressed most extensively. In book 10, Anders discusses the redemption and the question of why God became man in Christ and lived as a man and died on the cross in order to save fallen man. As any good scholastic theologian Anders attempts to cover all the various theories that had already been put forward about this question, and tries to work them together by using a technique that can best be described as harmonization. Thus he makes use of both of the very different theories put forward by St Anselm of Canterbury and by Peter Abelard on this matter. The prevailing view in Anders’account, however, is the outlook that originated in Peter Abelard’s new, interiorized interpretation. Up until Abelard, and also by Anselm, the redemption had mainly been regarded as some kind of legal case with God, the Devil, and man as participants. Christ was crucified in order to make the payment that the sinners owed but could not pay themselves.10 According to Abelard, though, the reason why God became man in Christ was not to make a payment, but to make the love of God evident to man, so that man would begin to love God again as he rightfully should. Christ was to be a teacher and an example of love, an example that man could imitate and that would inflame his love of God.11

8Anders Sunesen’s account of the redemption is profoundly influenced by this way of thinking. According to Anders, Christ was meant to be a teacher for mankind, a teacher and an example, not just of love, as Abelard had stated, but also of humility. As sin originated in arrogance, what was needed was humility. When God became man and when he died on the cross he humiliated himself, and this he did in order to make man understand the importance of humility and to give man an example to imitate, an example that would convert him and lead him onto the right path.12 Anders speaks in an inciting manner of the sufferings of Christ and how they ought to make one feel humble and grateful, and he asks, “Who can consider these terrible sufferings in his heart and still be without love of God?”13 When man understands that Christ saved him on the cross, he will also understand that he has to carry his own cross for Christ. This cross is not as hard as his, however, it is the crux dulcis amoris, the cross of sweet love.14 In Anders Sunesen’s Hexaemeron, taking up the cross for Christ means to have love of God, to humbly submit to his commandments, and to live according to the virtues.15

9The idea of imitation of Christ and of walking in his footsteps was a very popular motive in twelfth and thirteenth century religion, in fact it might be termed one of the single most influential and characteristic motives of medieval spirituality, and it appears in different versions evolving around the exegesis of different texts in the New Testament that refers to imitation of and following Christ.16

10With regard to the crusades the notion of taking the cross to follow Christ became one of the most central ones. It refers to Matthew 16, verses 24–25, which reads: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”17 In all probability this was the very text on which Pope Urban II himself was preaching when he proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095. At least it is mentioned in two of the reports of Pope Urban’s sermon in the chronicles written after the First Crusade, and the text also appears in a number of other chronicles of the crusade.18

11The notion of taking the cross was also linked to the crusading movement because it became a technical term. It meant to take the vow to go on crusade, which was the act that secured the special crusading privileges, first of all the indulgence and the protection of the Church. This was called “taking the cross” because it involved a ritual where the person who took the vow received a small cross of cloth to carry on his front or on his shoulder until he had fulfilled the vow.19 Thus the crusader had quite literally taken the cross to carry.

12To Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached the Second Crusade in 1146–1147, this piece of cloth represented a very good bargain, as he explained in one of the letters he sent out to princes and peoples all over Europe to encourage their participation. Here he says: “Take the sign of the cross and you will obtain remission of all the sins you have confessed with a contrite heart. This cloth itself does not cost much if it is bought, but if it is put faithfully on the shoulder it is certain to be worth the kingdom of God.”20 Bernard of Clairvaux might almost be termed a founding father of the medieval spirituality of imitatio Christi. He elaborated on the theme in many of his writings, including his liturgical sermons, and the De laude novae militiae (In Praise of the New Knighthood), which he wrote in exhortation for the Templars in the 1120s. Unfortunately, none of his crusade sermons is extant, and we are left with gathering Bernard’s crusade theology from the letters he wrote to promote the Second Crusade. In these, however, the theme of imitating Christ is not very prominent. Instead, the prevailing motive is the service and loyalty which the Christian knight owes to Christ who is the King of Kings. Bernard is urging his audience to consider that their “Lord of heaven is losing his land, the land in which he appeared to men, in which he lived amongst men for more than 30 years”.21 He is admonishing them “to restore to him his heritage”22 and further, “Let those of you who are loyal to him arise and defend their Lord against the shame of such imputation.”23

13In the tract for the Templars that Bernard wrote 25 years earlier, he set up the ideals for the perfect Christian knighthood, the milites Christi, who “ceaselessly wages a twofold war both against flesh and blood and against a spiritual army of evil in the heavens.”24 In contrast to the worldly knights, the true Christian knights are secure on every side and “may safely fight the battles of their Lord, fearing neither sin if they smite the enemy, nor danger at their own death; since to inflict death or to die for Christ is no sin, but rather, an abundant claim to glory.”25 In this tract Christ is described as an example both to the Templars in particular and to every Christian. The Templars have their quarters in the Temple of Jerusalem where Bernard reminds us that Christ himself “armed his most holy hands, not indeed with a sword, but with a whip”26 in order to drive out the merchants. Thus, the Templars moved by their King’s example have devoted themselves to keeping out the infidel from the holy places. More generally, Christ is a model of the virtues to be emulated by every Christian, who may be guided by his example in every aspect of their existence, since he “taught us how to live by his life and how to die by his death.”27

14Such admonitions to imitate the life or death of Christ do not appear in Bernard’s crusade letters, but both these and the De laude novae militiae became important sources for later crusade ideology and propaganda. Bernard’s ideas and phrases pop up again and again in crusade sermons and papal letters from the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries, and these texts also link crusading and the imitation of Christ in a very direct way.

15At the time of the Third Crusade, perhaps as a response to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, the rhetoric of serving and of following Christ was intensified in the papal crusading bulls. The crusaders were now admonished to imitate the example of Christ “who taught by his own action that one ought to lay down one’s life for one’s brothers”, as Gregory VIII pointed out. In his bulls for the Third Crusade Christ is a teacher and an example—as he gave himself up for us on the cross we are now to set him as our example and not waver from giving life and soul for Christ.28

16A fully elaborated vision of what “taking the cross to follow Christ” means in the context of crusading is unfolded in the bulls of Innocent III. Quia maior, from 1213, opens with the image of Christ hanging on the cross, and as he was dying he was crying out with a loud voice that he would save us from the torments of eternal death. Now he is crying out to us again, the bull asserts, this time in his words as quoted in Matthew 16, v. 24: “He also cries out in his own voice and says, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me,’ as if he were saying: whoever wants to follow me to the crown must also follow me to that battle that is now put forth for every one as a test.”29

17The idea of the crusade as a test reveals the inspiration from Bernard of Clairvaux, who had made the point that God, who is almighty, does not need the crusaders in order to liberate the Holy Land. If he wanted, he could send twelve legions of angels, or just say the word and save his land. God, however, wants to save the sinful knights and therefore he has set up the crusade as a test. “For God has pity on his people and on those who have grievously fallen away and has prepared for them a means of salvation. [...] He puts himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, so that he can help you satisfy your obligations towards himself. He puts himself in your debt so that, in return for your taking up arms in his cause, he can reward you with pardon for your sins and everlasting glory. I call blessed a generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this, blessed to be alive in this year of jubilee, this year of God’s choice.”30 These Bernardian notions of the crusade as a test of loyalty and as a year of jubilee were much favoured by Innocent III, and they appear in several of his crusading bulls.31

18Innocent III also gave a new tenor to the imitiation of Christ in relation to crusades—thus in the bull Plorans ploravit from 1198, he claimed: “Who will deny to die for him, who for our sake was made obedient unto death, death even on the cross?”32 This obligation to do as he did and take the cross for Christ who died on the cross for us is also found in two preaching manuals from around the time of the Fifth Crusade that was preached from 1213. One is the model sermons by Jacques de Vitry, the other is the anonymous Brevis ordinacio de predicatione s. crucis in Anglia.33 Both of them link crusading and crucifixion. In the sermons of Jacques de Vitry the crucifixion was an expression of Christ’s love for man. Through his self-sacrifice he redeemed man from the devil, and forced us to love him back when he streched out his arms on the cross.34 Man’s proper response to Christ’s crucifixion and his means of expressing love for Christ and gratitude for salvation is then to take the cross for the crusade. The same theology permeates the Brevis ordinacio, which expresses it even more emphatically when it admonishes its audience to “take the cross, so that on the day of Judgement you will be able to say: Lord, you were on the cross for me, and I on the cross for you, you died for me, and I for you!”35

19Returning to Anders Sunesen we will see some interesting similarities between his account of the redemption and crucifixion and the crusade propaganda of his time.

20As already mentioned, Anders claims that man has a cross to carry for Christ, though it is a lighter and sweeter cross than his. Anders does not say that this means that we should take up arms and go on crusade, but how easily this theology could be used to promote crusading is illustrated by the fact that the same contrast between the hard and the soft cross is found in a letter from Innocent III to Duke Leopold of Austria in 1208. In this letter the pope explained what it meant that the duke had taken the cross by contrasting it to the crucifixion: “For you accept a soft and gentle cross; he suffered one that was bitter and hard.”36 In fact, Jacques de Vitry used the same image in a crusade sermon, but drew the parallel between Christ and the crusader even closer when he stated that God the Father had signed Christ as the first crusader. Christ’s cross, however, was fixed to his flesh with hard iron nails, but it was the same cross as the one that was fixed with a soft thread to the coat of the crusader when he took the vow.37

21Another passage in book 10 of the Hexaemeron seems to indicate that Anders Sunesen’s use of the imitatio Christi motif was inspired by the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. Within the discussion of the redemption Anders has a section of three lines that runs:

Mors Christi mortem destruxit vitaque vitam
instruxit; nobis est morte redemptio mortis
et Christi vivendi regula facta.38

(The death of Christ destroyed death and his life
instructed life; for us the death of Christ has become
[redemption from death
and his life a pattern for living.)

22M. Cl. Gertz, who provided the first printed edition of the Hexaemeron in 1892 and who wrote a commentary on the work, pointed to the Sententiae of Peter of Poitiers as the source for this statement, but the verbal similarity is very slight.39 In fact, Anders’sentence has a much closer parallel in the De laude novae militiae of St Bernard: Vita Christi vivendi mihi regula exstitit, mors a morte redemptio. Illa vitam instruxit, ista mortem destruxit.40 (The life of Christ has furnished me with a pattern for living, but his death has delivered me from death. The one prepared life, while the other destroyed death.41) Bernard of Clairvaux or De laude novae militiae have never been mentioned among Anders Sunesen’s sources in the literature on the Hexaemeron, but the verbal similarity is striking on several points. In particular, both sentences express the contrast between the works of destruction and instruction that rhymes so well in Latin– destruxit and instruxit. Despite this obvious rhyme, however, I have only found ten other instances of this combination of words in the entire Patrologia Latina Database, and only one of these instances forms a real parallel to the sentences found in Anders Sunesen and in St Bernard.42 This third instance occurs in a sermon on Lamentations, 4: 20, included in the works of Hildebert of Le Mans in the Patrologia Latina, but which has since been established to be a work of Peter Lombard.43 This sentence runs: vita Christi, nobis regula vivendi; mors Christi, nostra est a morte redemptio et liberatio. Vita Christi nostram instruxit; mors Christi nostram destruxit.44 This is the only parallel among the ten retrieved by the Patrologia Latina Database that also has the regula vivendi.

23Since Peter Lombard has long been established as a major source of material for the Hexaemeron he perhaps appears to be the most obvious source of direct inspiration in this case. After all, the Lombard was a protégé of Bernard, and a simple theory of the sequence of borrowing would then be from Bernard to the Lombard to Anders.

24Such a theory would probably be too simple, however. The idea of the lessons that man might learn from the life of Christ, as well as the point that he saved man both by his life and by his death, were popular and widespread among twelfth-century theologians. Taking into consideration that the majority of the texts and sermons that were available to Anders Sunesen have not been preserved it may well be impossible to ascertain exactly from which text Anders Sunesen picked this sentence.

25On the other hand, what we may say is that it is not a mere coincidence that a sentence that originated in a work of Bernard ended up in the Hexaemeron. Anders’method might be termed eclectic, because he combines pieces from many different authors, but he chose them with care, and tried to work them into a non-contradictory whole. As already noted, Anders used elements of the theories of both Anselm and Abelard, as well as some other material in his account of the redemption. The instruxit-destruxit sentence in the Hexaemeron points to Bernard of Clairvaux as a possible first origin of some of these elements. If we look at the contexts of the two quotations we will see that even though there are no other obvious verbal concordances between the texts, there are several points of agreement in the theologies of the authors. Bernard’s sentence appears in chapter 11 of the De laude novae militiae in which the redemption and the question of why God became man is discussed. Apparently Bernard found it important to explain these points to the Templars. According to Bernard, Christ saved man in a three-fold way: first, he taught by his example how man should live, secondly, he paid the debt for man’s sins by dying, and thirdly, he granted man the remission of sins, and without the latter the first two would have had no effect.45

26Bernard stated his views on the redemption again in 1140, this time in direct opposition to Peter Abelard. Before the council of Sens, which condemned Abelard’s teachings on 19 issues, Bernard wrote the Tractatus de erroribus Abaelardi, in which he argued that Christ did not come into the world only to be man’s instructor, but also to liberate man. He was indeed meant to be an example, but of humility as much as of love. This example, however, would have been useless without the sacramental aspect of the redemption. In order to gain salvation, man must not only follow Christ’s example and be true to him, he must also consume (manducare) Christ in the eucharist.46

27Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard were thus also at odds on the issue of the redemption, but to the theologians of the next generation the differences may not have seemed quite as insoluble. After all, both authors found that Christ came in order to be an example to man. Anders Sunesen indeed found room for both interpretations in his account. He stated that Christ was crucified because this was the best way to teach man the love of God so that he would love God back and thus be justified—which is a clear accession to Abelard’s theory.47 At the same time Anders also stressed the role of Christ’s humility and what man ought to learn from it.48 Thus he agreed with Bernard that Christ did not come only to be an example of love but also of humility. He also agreed that Christ did not come only to be a teacher, but also to liberate and to redeem the debt for sin, and this aspect also gets its due in the account.49 This did not make Anders abandon the interiorised Abelardian concept, however, and to him the explanations supplemented each other.50

28The fact that themes and expressions from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux pop up in the works and sermons of the Paris-trained theologians in the last decades of the twelfth century and the first decades of the thirteenth, should probably be regarded as evidence of a Bernardian, Cistercian undercurrent among the scholastic theologians. If this seems surprising it is perhaps due to the fact that twentieth century scholarship to a large extent has focussed on the differences between the monastic and the scholastic approach to theology, rather than on the similarities. It is to be hoped that future studies on the two environments will cast more light on the interaction between them and on possible channels of inspiration. Such studies might possibly even be able to explain how the instruxit-destruxit sentences ended up in a sermon by Peter Lombard, as well as in the Hexaemeron.

29We cannot reconstruct the crusading sermons of Anders Sunesen by reading his Hexaemeron, but an examination of it in this light indicates that he may well have preached the crusades as an imitation of Christ, along the same lines as Jacques de Vitry, and as indicated by Innocent III. We know that he had been educated in the same circles, and the Hexaemeron proves that he was in accordance with a contemporary theology of the cross and the crucifixion that could well be employed for the crusades when he became archbishop and gained political and religious responsibilities.