Coins in Churches

Archaeology, Money and Religious Devotion in Medieval Northern Europe

Svein H. Gullbekk, Christoph Kilger, Steinar Kristensen, Håkon Roland, Svein H. Gullbekk, Christoph Kilger, Steinar Kristensen, Håkon Roland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367557065
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000410686
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book focuses on the formative period of Church reform in the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, when the Church paved the way for the development of money economy on its own doorstep.

Church archaeology provides evidence for patterns of monetary use related to liturgy, church architecture and devotional culture through the centuries. This volume encompasses Alpine European evidence, with emphasis on Gotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, which opens up a new field of research on religion and money for an international audience. Based on 100,000 single finds of coins from the 11th to 18th centuries from 650 Scandinavian churches, the volume offers an in-depth discussion of the concepts of ritual, liturgy and devotional uses of money, monetary space and spiritual economy within the framework of Christendom, the medieval church and church architecture.

Written by international scholars, Coins in Churches will be a valuable resource for readers interested in the history of religion, money, the economy, and church architecture in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages.

Part I
Money and religious devotion

1 Money and religious devotion in medieval Northern Europe

Svein H. Gullbekk, Christoph Kilger, Håkon Roland and Steinar Kristensen

What is this book about?

Why produce a book dedicated to coin finds in medieval churches? One obvious reason is that, in total, the number of coin finds from medieval churches in Northern Europe is greater than from any other defined archaeological context. In sum, more than 120,000 single finds of coins have been recorded from Scandinavian and Swiss churches. Not even urban archaeology has produced greater numbers of medieval single finds of coins than those produced through archaeological work in churches. There is simply no easier way of finding systematic empirical examples of the relative importance of coinage and its distribution in medieval societies than by following the money found inside churches, especially within rural societies. The single framework within which all these coins have been recorded suggests a strong relationship between Christianity and monetisation. Furthermore, studying the devotional use of money in medieval churches provides opportunities to investigate questions of how the medieval Church and church congregations navigated the Economy of Salvation on socio-economic, religious, and everyday terms.

This volume examines the subject of medieval economy first and foremost from spiritual and sacred approaches. First, chapters detailing archaeological excavations and investigations of church floors develop a starting point for the analysis of individual churches as case studies. Research is drawn from specific churches within the medieval borders of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, i.e., roughly within the borders of today’s Scandinavia. Second, chapters take on diverse theoretical perspectives, from exploring theological logics rooted in money to the interplay between epistemology and praxis in terms of monetary exchange within the Church and its manifestations through the variety of parish churches where devotional practices were carried out.

This is not meant as a handbook on archaeology or a history of Christendom in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages. Rather, the present contributions aim to form a relatively cohesive collection of articles which use archaeology as a starting point for engaging with coin finds in churches as a material basis for making broader insights into monetary production and consumption at the intersection of secular and religious life. It also includes discussions of a broad range of archaeological concerns around coin finds and documentation of their contexts. As such, this volume builds a framework for comparison between churches across a similar chronological range (c. 1100–1700) and across a broadly heterogeneous geopolitical and cultural landscape – medieval Scandinavia – against the backdrop of coalescing monetary economies in medieval Northern Europe. This enables a fuller and richer assessment of the devotional culture and its economy within the churches presented. From these insights, wider questions are drawn.

The case studies address surveys of coin finds and their contexts in churches from throughout Scandinavia and offer an overall survey of coin finds and scholarship on the subject of such finds in churches in the Alpine region, with an emphasis on Switzerland. Looking at these two regions within Western Christendom provides a broad base of evidence for the use of money within a religious context while conveniently contextualising the Scandinavian finds with analogous finds from elsewhere in Europe, and vice versa. Presenting the churches and the material evidence of offerings from the medieval and early modern periods in this way makes an extensive body of material both accessible and relevant to a broader scholarly community.

Figure 1.1 Scandinavian churches and church sites mentioned in this book. Map: Steinar Kristensen, UiO: Museum of Cultural History.

The final aim of the volume is to highlight the advantages and necessities of interdisciplinary work. This work represents the first time that the finds presented here have been studied within a wider medieval and early modern, and not merely Scandinavian, context. Questions of a more general character have been generated using the data from the volume’s geographical and chronological framework which takes new and innovative approaches to the archaeology of medieval Christianity to interpret devotional practices. The articles are all offsprings of the project “Religion and Money: Economy of Salvation in the Middle Ages,”, which deliberately encouraged participants to combine the traditional historical emphasis of Christian archaeology with social archaeological questions to enrich the traditional historical emphasis with questions that focus on social and religious practice. The research questions deal not only with the physical environment, and how and where people worshipped, but also with how particular religious contexts and practices influenced changing relationships between individuals and groups, the negotiation of values and power, and the movement of people and objects. Ultimately, it is our hope that this contribution inspires more questions and further discussion.¹

As the contributions cover a range of issues relating to money, its use and significance, and the relationship between tenets of the medieval church and the monetised aspects of value and faith, here we offer a brief introduction to some of the major concepts dissected in the volume. These include concepts surrounding medieval Christian notions of salvation and exchange; ways in which coin finds and other material sources reflect changes in liturgical practice; how the introduction of money economy affected change in various aspects of devotional practice and Church interiors; the function of money and coins as metaphors in early Christian thinking; and church archaeology and coin finds.

The Church, salvation, and money

In medieval Christian theology, communion reflects the actualisation of mankind’s salvation through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The sacrifice of Christ and the performance of communion belong to the most circumscribed theme of medieval religious epistemology.² This theoretical discourse is kaleidoscopic in its breadth and depth, often so much so that observing and understanding it through an archaeological lens becomes near impossible. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is not repeated but is made alive to believers at Mass, where the priest essentially acts in the place of Christ, in persona Christi, during the Eucharist. One quintessential aspect of Mass during the medieval period became the collection of offerings either in kind or in money. At the heart of religious belief in the Middle Ages was the concern with finding the way from the agony of earthly existence to heavenly salvation, as so eloquently expressed in a Norse homily from the twelfth century: “Since we’re going to be here in the world just a short while, good brothers […]. And the Kingdom of Heaven is so good that no human can imagine it or portray it to anyone else.”³Another driver in the medieval belief system was the concept of purgatory and the quest to shorten one’s stay in this painful intermediate state after death through various acts of penance.⁴ To succeed in these endeavours, people had to act as good Christians.⁵ Through indulgence, the Church offered guidance on how to be a good Christian along with pardons for sins.⁶ The logic of indulgence required the sinner to perform acts of penance. The making of offerings was part of this performance and fulfilled the Church’s expectations of what being a decent and pious Christian looked like.⁷

Offering itself was regarded as an individual act of devotion, embodying the Christian belief in resurrection and salvation. ‘To offer’ comes from the Latin transitive verb offerre, meaning ‘to bring before, to present, to bring forward, to dedicate, to offer.⁸ The verbal expression itself signifies the performative act of moving towards the altar and placing something on the shrine itself. In medieval ecclesiastical texts, the accomplished offering and the things given as a result of this performance are referred to as oblationes. One central and communal act of Mass was the offertorium, during which participants carried and presented their offering to the high altar under the eyes of the congregation. As a ritual, it is mentioned in Swedish law texts from the fourteenth century, which also provide one of the few descriptions of monetary offerings in the shape of coins:

On these solemn days, the peasants and their wives will offer their sacrifice to the altar, the farmer one penny and the wife another: on Christmas Day, Candel Mass, Easter Day, Pentecost Day, the Last Spring Eve, the Sabbath Mass, and the Church Day. And the wives also offer their altar gifts […].⁹

As discussed by the authors in this contribution, there existed a wide spectrum of instances and occasions where offerings of coins were performed when people visited churches.

Figure 1.2 A selection of coins from Lom stave church, Oppland County, Norway.

Photo: Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo

Such offerings were, of course, made during the ordinary church services that every peasant was expected to attend, but they were also made during local trade fairs, a common phenomenon in the medieval economy. Trade fairs and church holidays, described extensively in medieval sources, were another key factor in the implementation of coinage and monetisation of medieval society. Importantly, these gatherings were not only nexuses facilitating the exchange of goods, services, and money, but were also presided over by the Church. The purpose of Church holidays was to celebrate patron saints and feast days, and they developed into pilgrimages that attracted people from beyond the parish seeking to attend Mass and provide offerings for the saints. These church holidays were boosted by indulgence letters issued by various Church authorities and by offering penance for sins to those willing to participate.¹⁰

Through this multifaceted relationship between the Church and the people in the med...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Part I Money and religious devotion
• Part II Coin finds in Scandinavian churches
• Part III Coin finds in churches in Central Alpine Europe
• Bibliography
• Index