Anders Sunesen

Anders Sunesen (ca. 1160–1228) was a member of an extremely wealthy and well-connected family, and as such received a full academic training abroad. He became Master of Theology in Paris before becoming chancellor to the king of Denmark and finally archbishop of Lund. He headed the Danish church for over two decades and played an active role in the Danish crusades in the eastern Baltic region. His main work is a versified summa theologiae, the Hexaemeron. Apart from that, he is usually credited with the authorship of a Latin paraphrase of the Scanian Law. A couple of sequences have also been attributed to him. By birth Anders belonged to the top echelons of Danish society. His father, Sune Ebbesen, was one of the biggest land-owners of the country. One of his father’s cousins, Absalon, was bishop of Roskilde 1158–1191 and archbishop of Lund 1177–1201. He had at least six siblings, one of whom, Peter, succeeded Absalon as bishop of Roskilde. In his youth Absalon had been to Paris for purposes of study and so had Peter round about the early 1180s. Though unambiguous evidence is lacking, there can be no doubt that Anders also studied in Paris, but the first firm date in his life is 1195 when he is attested as Danish chancellor. The only source that speaks of his career before the chancellorship is Saxo’s Gesta Danorum. In a preface addressed to Anders, Saxo says: Tu Galliam Italiamque cum Britannia percipiendæ litterarum disciplinæ colligendæque earum copiæ gratia perscrutatus post diutinam peregrinationem splendidissimum externæ scholæ regimen apprehendisti tantumque eius columen evasisti, ut potius magisterio ornamentum dare quam ab ipso recipere videreris (OLRIK & RÆDER 1931, 1, 3). (Having pursued and gathered a store of learning in France, Italy, and Britain, after long travels you obtained the notable direction of a foreign school and supported it so firmly that you appear rather to have shed glory on your office than received it. Translation by Fisher, in DAVIDSON 1979) As archbishop Anders was an able administrator and politician on good terms with both Pope and king. A later legend, modelled on the story told about Moses in Exod. 17, credits him with doing the praying that secured Danish victory in the decisive battle against the Estonians at Lyndanis on 15 June 1219. This legend is often combined with another, according to which the Danish flag, Dannebrog, was sent from heaven during the battle. GERTZ, M.CL. 1892: Andreae Sunonis Filii Archiepiscopi Lundensis Hexaëmeron libri duodecim, Copenhagen (includes edition of the sequences). • EBBESEN, S. & MORTENSEN, L.B. 1985–1988: Andreae Sunonis Filii Hexaemeron. Post M.Cl. Gertz, CPhD 11. 2 vols., Copenhagen (vol. 1 contains an English introduction about Sunesen and his work). For the commentary on Genesis Anders’s main sources were Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica and Richard of St. Victor’s Allegorie; for the remaining part of the work Stephen Langton’s Summa and Quaestiones (MORTENSEN 1985a and 1985b). The poem seems to have had a very limited diffusion, probably because of the extraordinary demands it makes on its reader. It is not an introduction to Christian theology, rather it is a summary of what was taught and discussed in theology classes in Paris when Anders studied and taught there. Its purpose was rather to refresh the memory of things already learned than to teach something new. It moves on a high theoretical level that only a few highly educated men mastered among Andreas’s contemporaries. Moreover, as theology was a fast developing discipline, many of the problems, views, and conceptual tools that Anders presupposed his reader was acquainted with had become obsolete and largely forgotten a few decades after the composition of the poem. The Hexaemeron’s strictly limited accessibility did not invite spontaneous copying. A few copies, possibly all paid for by the author or his family, were deposited in important cathedral and monastery libraries in