Royal Saints & Blesseds - St Ragnhild of Tälje, Queen (Feast Day 24 September)

From katolsk.no (Translated by Google)

Saint Ragnhild was born at the end of the 11th century (1075) in Sweden. She is called Ragnhild of Tälje, which was the name of Södertälje until Norrtälje became a town in 1622. She was a historical figure and an early Swedish queen from the time when Christianity took root in Södermanland and Östergötland.

The line of Swedish saints as presented to us in the prologue to Erikskrönikan from the early 16th century ends with Saints Ingrid of Skänninge and Ragnhild of Tälje:

"Sancta Ingriid aff Skeninge, then hallige qvinne /aff Telie ffrw Ragnil, as ey nw hallige is mynne".

There are no sources from the early Middle Ages that mention Queen Ragnhild of Tälje. The oldest datable sources that mention her date from the 15th century. In a manuscript of "The Prose Chronicle" from the 1450s, a concise account of Sweden's history, it is said of King Inge the Younger: "Han atte drötning Ragnhildh som nw haldz helgh j Tälgia." Lilla Rimkrönikan, which is entirely based on The Prosaise Chronicle, repeats the information. These are probably based on source texts from the early Middle Ages.

The historian Ericus Olai (d. 1486) states in his Chronica regni Gothorum that Inge was married to Saint Ragnhild, whose relics are found in Tälje, and their daughter was Kristina, Saint Eric 's wife. She lived in the first half of the 12th century.

But the information that Queen Kristina, Erik's wife, was the daughter of Inge the Younger and Ragnhild, is demonstrably incorrect and is based on a confusion between the kings Inge the Elder and Inge the Younger. After the death of King Emund the Old (c. 1051-60) in 1060, Stenkil (1060-66) became king until 1066. His son Halsten (c. 1066-80) became king after him. The Christian king Inge Stenkilsson (the elder) (c. 1080-84 and 1087-1110) succeeded his brother King Halsten in 1080, and he was succeeded by Halsten's sons, kings Filip (1110-18) and Inge the Younger (1110-25) ).

Kristina was the daughter of either King Inge the Elder's daughter Katarina and her husband, the Danish prince Bjørn Jernside, or of Inge's second daughter Kristina and her husband, the Slavic prince Mstislav. In any case, she was the daughter of King Inge the Elder and a cousin of King Inge the Younger, not a daughter. So Ragnhild was not King Erik the Holy's mother-in-law, as many sources write, but it was through his marriage to Kristina that he claimed the Swedish royal crown. And it was anyway through her marriage to King Inge the Younger that Ragnhild came to Tälje. There she became an obvious figure in the foreground, loved for her piety and her compassionate work.

Johannes Magnus mentions in his Gothorum Sveonumque historia , printed in 1558, King Inge's pious wife Ragnhild, whose relics were still venerated in Tälje. Ragnhild is described in more detail by Johannes Vastovius, King Sigismund's court chaplain. In his saint's chronicle Vitis Aquilonia ("The Nordic Vine"), which was printed in 1623, he has a chapter about Ragnhild.

"Saint Ragnhild was brought up in the fear of God and purity of soul from childhood. She was married to Inge, the fourth king. She nourished her flesh with fasting and vigils, and trained her soul with prayers and contemplation of heavenly things, so that she might lead an angelic life on earth. In truth, she was a devoted mother to the poor and to God's servants. No care was more important to her than to help the needy, to favor the monks, to adorn churches and chapels and to spread faith and piety in the cities and places of her dominion as far as possible to all corners. For their help, she unceasingly practiced Christian services of love throughout her life, until, broken down by old age, she moved to heavenly joy.

However, the most detailed and interesting document about Ragnhild is the inscription on her epitaph (tombstone) in Tälje church. The epitaph itself has long been lost, but a copy, which in turn was copied from a lost late medieval copy, is preserved in Peringskiöld's manuscript collection Monumenta Sudermannia , kept at the Royal Library. The epitaph is written in Latin and in so-called Leonine verse, rhymed hexameter, a common verse meter throughout the Middle Ages. In Swedish translation it reads:

Ragnhild, the queen of oaths, a flower without thorns, / a queen for a kingdom, she goes on pilgrimage / to Rome and Jerusalem to secure a gracious hope / and to bear the victory of the cross and for all the common honors. / She wants to acquire for herself through förtjänster Helena's gracious victory wreath. / O pious lady, Täljeborna's patron saint, / work out for us Christ's good, heavenly gift. / Ragnhild, the glorious, holy, ärbara, / pious and generous woman, friend of the heavenly king. / To see holy places, she goes on a walk, but not like Dina. / Sweden's free queen sets out on pilgrimage / to Rome and Jerusalem. The seklerna must be amazed / at such a royal spiritual woman. / She who burns for the Savior and of love to his cross / travels over heaven after Helena's example, happy about the opportunity. / She founded the temple in Tälje, which she both built, / made rich with money and adorned with gifts, / she who was a daughter of Ode Halsten. / After numerous pious deeds, she enters true joy / and enjoys a life-giving mixed loveliness. / She, who is supported by her pious followers through prayers and calls / helps the sick, whether they are near or far. / You heavenly lady, adorned with the crown of life, / you holy protector, must you help us to the highest good! who is supported by his pious followers through prayers and calls / helps the sick, whether they are near or far. / You heavenly lady, adorned with the crown of life, / you holy protector, must you help us to the highest good! who is supported by his pious followers through prayers and calls / helps the sick, whether they are near or far. / You heavenly lady, adorned with the crown of life, / you holy protector, must you help us to the highest good!

The Helena mentioned in the epitaph is Emperor Constantine's mother, who, according to legend, recovered the cross of Christ during a visit to the Holy Land. Dinah is Jacob's daughter (Genesis 34), who during a journey entered into an illicit love affair. The age of the epitaph is difficult to determine, as only a copy is preserved, not the monument itself. The pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land does not imply any unreasonableness, nor does the information that Ragnhild founded Tälje church. If the Halsten who is stated to have been her father, was identical to King Halsten, then she cannot have been married to Inge the Younger, because then she would have been his sister. However, we can interpret the information as meaning that she was King Halsten's daughter-in-law.

Legend has it that on her pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land, she was attacked by robbers, who took everything they had and left them without a thread on their bodies. It was highly inappropriate for a woman in Ragnhild's position, so she called upon the Mother of God for assistance. Then Our Lord sent a couple of angels with "a heavenly garment of wonderful fabric", as it was called, and hid her nakedness. As thanks for this miraculous rescue, Ragnhild had a church built on her farm at Tälje upon her return. According to tradition, it should have been located on the spot where St. Ragnhild's church now stands.

Ragnhild's mausoleum was destroyed by Archbishop Abraham Angermannus, who in the 1590s vandalized the shrines he could get to. But her memory in Södertälje survived the Reformation. The fact that she was a living figure in popular memory even in the 17th century is probably due to the fact that the writers from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, who were so close in time, had referred to her as a queen and as a pioneer of Christianity in their time . In the Middle Ages, it was the Norwegian king Olav the Holy who stamped Södertälje's seal, but in 1628 Ragnhild was included in the city's coat of arms. As it has appeared since 1935, it depicts a female figure wearing a crown and halo and holding a pilgrim's staff.

Södertälje church has since the 17th century officially had the name St. Ragnhild's church and still has it where it is located by Stortorget. Ragnhild's original small wooden church has long since been replaced by a stone one, which has been expanded significantly over the centuries. However, the relics disappeared during Gustav Vasa's reformation in the 16th century. It is said that a skull was kept in the sacristy, but it disappeared anyway in the great church fire on 26 January 1881. A street, a gymnasium, a pharmacy, a separate guild and a ski slope also bear Ragnhild's name in Södertälje, and the same makes the district Ragnhildsborg.

St. Ragnhild, after whom Söderköping's famous health well is named, probably originally had nothing to do with Saint Ragnhild of Tälje. About Ragnhild in Söderköping, a legend tells that she was a chaste and innocent virgin, a novice at the nunnery in Söderköping [which never existed]. One day she went out into the forest to pick flowers. There she was rescued by the giant Ramunder. When she came out of the rock, she was wrongfully accused of having been Ramunder's lover and sentenced to be beheaded, despite pleading her innocence. At the place of execution, she asked God for help, and a spring immediately flowed forth with such a violent flood that it threatened to drown the whole city. Through the people's contrite prayers the flood stopped, but the spring itself remained in the same place and is now called St. Ragnhild's källa.

An improbable tradition claims that Saint Helena of Skövdewas first married to King Inge the Younger. When she returned home after a pilgrimage to Rome, she was murdered. Inge then married another pious woman, who also traveled to Rome, returned home and died, after which she became a local saint, Ragnhild of Tälje. By now Inge had obviously had enough of holy women, for he married the daughter of a Norwegian magnate, Ulfhild Håkansdotter (1095-1148), who turned out to be a truly dangerous woman, poison-murdering and scheming in a purely Shakespearean format, obviously without the slightest ambition to to travel to Rome. According to the chroniclers, it was she who, shortly after the wedding, got her husband to kill his co-regent and older brother Filip. Some time later, Inge herself fell over dead, after consuming an "evil drink". Then she married Denmark's King Niels Svendsøn, who also died shortly after under unclear circumstances. Then she married for the third time, this time to the new Swedish king Sverker the Elder (1130-56), to whom she gave a son, the future king Karl Sverkersson (1161-67) (it was the Sverker family that fought with Erik the Saint's seed about power). At that time, her bad conscience had probably finally hit her, and therefore she founded Alvastra monastery, later also what would become Nydala monastery. She died in 1148, missed by few.

King Inge the Elder died in 1110 and was succeeded by his nephews Filip (1110-18) and Inge the Younger (1110-25). But they were not of the same forceful nature as their uncle and were unable to defend the country's borders. It was said of Inge dy that he would rather sit in Vreta monastery and read than fit himself to rule. In the north, the Norwegian king Magnus III (Olavsson) Berrføtt's (1093-1103) son Øystein I Magnusson (1103-23) subjugated Jämtland and Härjedalen ("East Trøndelag"). In the south, Småland was plundered by his second son Sigurd I (Magnusson) Jorsalfare (1103-30) (Kalmare ledung 1124) under the pretext that he was going to "Christianize" the pagan Småland people, while at the same time demanding a robber's tax of 1,500 cattle.

Queen Ragnhild died around 1117 (?) and was buried in the church she had founded in Tälje. The information that she belonged to the Folkunga family, the most distinguished family of the Swedish Middle Ages, and that she lived in Vreta monastery, seems to be later embellishments of her biography and of no historical value. Legend has it that she must have had her castle at Lina, one of the oldest estates in Sörmland.

Saint Ragnhild has no known memorial day, but in Sweden, on 24 September, all of Sweden's saints who do not have their own day in the calendar are celebrated.

Sources : Lundén, Martling, sodertalje.se, sv.wikipedia.org, runeberg.org, historiska.se, aftonbladet.se, kultararvostergotland.se, lina-herrgard.se, sollidensbil.se, weather.alk.edu.stockholm. see - Compilation and translation: p.  Per Einar Odden