Sts Elin of Skövde & Brynolf Algotsson

✠ Skövde, Sweden ✠ Skara, Sweden

First Wednesday after Epiphany, January 10, A.D. 2024

On July 30, since at least the 13th century, churches in Västergötland have celebrated the Ælinærmæsse. The woman they commemorate, Elin (Helen), was widowed as a young woman. She and her children managed a farming estate in Våmb, and she was well-known for her piety and devotion to the local churches. Notably, she built the church of Skövde at her own expense, including a wide sandstone portico. A saint’s relics would one day be buried there, she prophesied.

One of the other churches she visited and patronized was that of the neighboring parish of Götene. She once had a dream there that while she knelt in the church of Götene, the whole structure was lifted up into the air and flew to Skövde. Interpreting this dream to a friend of hers, she said, “In Götene I will die, and in Skövde they will bury me.”

Late in life, around the year 1160, Elin decided to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher. She traveled across Europe in coarse garments, with just enough of a purse for the journey, stopping at monasteries along her road to pray. Arriving in the Holy Land, then under the rule of crusader lords, she made the long uphill march to Jerusalem. At the Holy Sepulcher, she joined in worship other pilgrims from all over the world, including Greeks, Assyrians, and Ethiopians, and knelt in the candlelit chapel of her namesake, Saint Helena.

On her return, however, she learned that the husband of one of her daughters, a man notoriously cruel to his family, had been murdered by a rebellious servant. Elin had often confronted him about the beatings he gave her daughter; the enmity between them was well-known. When the servant was seized and tortured, he blamed Elin for inciting him to the murder.

Soon afterward, Elin went on one of her charitable visits to the church in Götene. On the way, she was ambushed by a man with a sword, one of her son-in-law’s relatives seeking blood-vengeance. He killed her on the road and left her body to be found by her friends, who carried her back to Skövde. There she was buried. But she was widely venerated in that part of Sweden as a saint, miracles were attributed to her intercession, and soon her relics were moved into the very church portico she had built.

One hundred years later, Brynolf Algotsson, bishop of Skara (which diocese included Skövde), wrote the life of Elin, whom he named the Rose of Västergötland. Brynolf himself was known throughout Sweden for his prudence, devotion, and great learning. He studied for many years at the University of Paris, and as bishop, received a precious relic as a gift from his friend Prince Håkan Magnusson of Norway: a single thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which made Skara an important Swedish pilgrimage center. Brynolf too was canonized as a saint after his death, with many miracles attributed to him, most notably, that he had turned water to wine on several occasions.

We use the title “saint” or “holy one” for great Christians of the past, R. Somerset Ward has observed, because the Church recognizes that in some way they resembled Jesus Christ, as we all ought. The generous widow unjustly murdered, the wise and miracle-working shepherd of the Church—each made of their lives a ray of light refracted from Christ’s ministry.

Read

• Speaking of R. Somerset Ward, undoubtedly one of the greatest spiritual directors of the 20th century, I have recently been exploring his life and legacy more deeply. This 1996 address by his grandson gives a wonderful overview of both. His first book, The Way, can be read free on Google Books.

• At The Hedgehog Review, “The Great Malformation” acutely analyzes what has gone wrong with technology and society.

• A couple quotes that struck me this last week:

  Saigyō in traditional poetry, Sōgi in linked verse, Sesshū in painting, Rikyū in tea ceremony, and indeed all who have achieved real excellence in any art, possess one thing in common, that is, a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature, throughout the four seasons of the year. Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon. The first lesson for the artist is, therefore, to learn how to overcome such barbarism and animality, to follow nature, to be one with nature.

  — Bashō, “The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel”

  Rostopchin had formed a mental picture of himself as the leader of popular feeling—the very heart of Russia. Not only did he imagine (as do all administrators) that he was directing the actual behaviour of all Muscovites, he really believed he was shaping their mental attitude by means of his appeals and posters, which were written in the kind of vulgar slang that is despised by the people in everyday situations and incomprehensible when it comes at them from on high.

  — Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Listen

Introducing the strange sonic worlds of Marina Herlop.

Watch

One of my favorite films, and one of the greatest films of all time…. Rewatching for the new year.