St. Bendt’s Church: A Royal Burial and Coronation Church in Denmark
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- Medieval
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On this page18 sections
History
Before the present church
St. Bendt’s Church is a Romanesque basilica in Ringsted, Denmark, begun in 1161 under King Valdemar I. Built by the medieval Danish kingdom in brick, it replaced an earlier Benedictine abbey church of travertine and became one of Denmark’s earliest large brick churches. Ringsted had already been a central place on Zealand during the Viking Age, when the island’s assembly met near an important sanctuary.
King Sven Estridsson founded a Benedictine monastery at Ringsted during his reign, between 1047 and 1076. Its first monks came from England. Under Sven Nordmand, bishop of Roskilde, the community began constructing an early Romanesque church of travertine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The burial of Sven Estridsson in this church is disputed. The Knytlinga saga places his grave there, while Saxo Grammaticus placed it in Roskilde Cathedral. A secondary burial attributed to Sven in a Roskilde pillar supports Saxo’s account, although the saga’s version remains possible.
Ringsted became closely connected with Knud Lavard, a Danish prince and duke of Schleswig who was murdered during a dynastic struggle. On 7 January 1131, his cousin Magnus killed him in the forest at Haraldsted near Ringsted. Knud’s relatives buried him in the choir of the monastery church after Magnus and his father prevented burial in the royal cemetery at Roskilde.
The cult of Knud Lavard
Knud Lavard’s grave became a focus of veneration. Tradition held that a healing spring appeared where his body was set down during the journey to Ringsted. A chapel was built beside the spring at Haraldsted, and both the chapel and the grave at Ringsted became destinations for pilgrims.
After Erik II Emune defeated Magnus in 1134, he promoted the cult of his murdered half-brother. In 1135 he reorganized the Ringsted monastery, granted it extensive properties, and brought monks from the St. Alban monastery in Odense to care for Knud’s grave and record reported miracles. Robert of Ely, one of the English-born monks, wrote the earliest surviving life of Knud Lavard.
Pope Innocent II confirmed the monastery’s possessions in 1139. Royal and aristocratic gifts later enlarged them, and by 1164 the monastery controlled almost the entire Ringsted district, including the town. Several parishes were subsequently incorporated into its holdings.
In 1146 Svend III Grathe was recognized as king on Zealand while Knut V, Magnus’s son, ruled in Jutland. Svend allied himself with Knud Lavard’s son Valdemar, and together they transferred Knud’s remains to a reliquary. Archbishop Eskil of Lund objected to this unauthorized canonization but prevented only the reliquary’s placement on the high altar. After Valdemar became sole ruler in 1157, he pursued official recognition of his father’s sainthood. In 1169 Bishop Stephan of Ribe obtained a papal bull from Pope Alexander III recognizing Knud Lavard as a saint.
The Valdemarian church
Valdemar commissioned the present church in 1161, before his father’s canonization. Its Romanesque design, large scale, and use of brick expressed the authority of the dynasty associated with the saint. Pilgrims’ offerings and royal patronage provided most of the funding.
Archbishop Eskil consecrated the unfinished church on 25 June 1170. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the martyr Knud Lavard, whose relics were moved from the monastery chapel to the new high altar. During the ceremony, Valdemar’s seven-year-old son Knud was crowned co-ruler and successor. He was the first Danish king crowned by a bishop in a church.
The earlier church was demolished after the 1170 consecration. The new building was substantially complete after 1177, although work continued and the apse was later raised to the height of the choir. Valdemar I died in 1182 and was buried there, establishing St. Bendt’s as the dynastic burial church of the Valdemarian line. The church formed the north wing of an approximately square Benedictine monastery, probably built at the same time. It also served as a royal coronation church and, from 1182 to 1319, as the principal burial church of the Danish kings. Royal family burials continued until 1341.
A fire in 1241 destroyed much of the church and convent buildings. The nave, transepts, choir, and apse were then vaulted, and the church was reconsecrated in 1268. Wall paintings of the Valdemarian dynasty were added in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, with special attention to the murdered King Erik IV Plovpenning, whose nickname referred to an unpopular plough tax.
The cult of Knud Lavard declined during the fourteenth century, and the church ceased to serve as the burial place of his descendants. It was later renamed St. Bendt’s Church after Benedict of Nursia, the sixth-century founder traditionally associated with Western Christian monasticism and the Benedictine order.
Reformation and restoration
The Benedictine community was dissolved during the Reformation introduced by King Christian III in 1536. The monastery’s land passed to the Crown, while the church became Ringsted’s Lutheran parish church in 1571. The former monastery later served as a royal fief and as the seat of the chief justice of Zealand. Its buildings and lands changed hands and were adapted to different uses.
A fire in 1806 destroyed the former convent buildings and damaged the church, particularly its western end and tower. Restoration in 1816 and 1817 removed the western bay, added an Empire-style west facade, and altered the building according to contemporary Neoclassical taste.
King Frederik VII ordered the royal graves opened and examined in 1855. Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, the royal antiquities inspector, led the investigation and published its results in 1858. The graves were repaired and covered with uniform slabs. Christian Hansen restored the basilica’s separate roofs and reopened windows blocked after the fire in the late 1860s. Medieval wall paintings discovered in 1868 were uncovered and restored by Jacob Kornerup in 1880.
Between 1899 and 1910, Hermann Baagøe Storck carried out an extensive restoration intended to return the church toward its Romanesque appearance. He removed later alterations, restored Romanesque windows and transept chapels, rebuilt the western bay, moved the altar to the eastern end of the choir, exposed much of the brickwork, and gave the crossing tower a pyramidal roof. This work also obscured many visible differences between the church’s successive building phases. The paintings in the apse, choir, and crossing were renovated again in 1977, and the heraldic frieze was restored in 1984 and 1985.
St. Bendt’s remains an active Evangelical Lutheran parish church belonging to Ringsted Sogn, the Diocese of Roskilde, and the Church of Denmark. A small church museum presents finds from the royal-grave investigation and excavations around 1900, including the Tabula Ringstadiensis, a medieval inventory of burials whose entries do not fully agree with the later investigation, and a copy of the 1550 Christian III Bible.
Remains
Plan, structure, and building fabric
St. Bendt’s is a three-aisled basilica on a cruciform plan. In this type of church, a high central nave rises above lower side aisles. The building is approximately 66 metres long, the nave is about 16.7 metres high, and the transept measures about 40 metres across. The relatively short nave contains six rectangular bays. A two-bay choir ends in a semicircular apse of equal height, while each transept has two eastern chapels ending in smaller semicircular apses.
The church was built chiefly from field-fired brick, probably supplied by a kiln at nearby Benlose identified archaeologically in 1982. The original walls were plastered and painted red, with the joints marked to imitate ashlar masonry. Much of the brick was exposed during the twentieth-century restoration. The design reflects Lombard and wider northern Italian influence, probably transmitted through Benedictine connections, while brick was still a relatively new building material in Denmark around 1160.
The high nave, choir, and transepts originally had flat wooden ceilings. After the fire of 1241, these spaces were vaulted. The new piers and bay arches required about half of the clerestory windows, as well as several choir and apse windows, to be blocked. Most of the church now has Neo-Romanesque quadripartite rib vaults, while the crossing vault survives from the thirteenth century.
Entrances and tower
A western tower does not survive, although a facade with twin towers may have been planned. Of the former eight portals, the reconstructed west-door portal and the portal in the north wall of the northern transept remain. The other portals were later blocked, and the porch formerly standing before the north aisle entrance has disappeared. Two spiral staircases lead to the galleries, one on the northwest side of the crossing and the other in the west wall.
The crossing tower is Renaissance in origin. Its pyramidal roof dates from Storck’s restoration in the first decade of the twentieth century, and each side carries a clock face. Two bells cast in 1816 hang in the tower. They measure 116 and 97 centimetres in diameter. A smaller bell, cast in 1833 and measuring 85 centimetres, hangs in the north gable. All three were made by J. C. and H. Gamst of Copenhagen.
Medieval paintings
The medieval lime paintings were largely covered by whitewash before their modern restoration. A fragment of a Crucifixion group from before the 1241 fire survives in the northern transept, although much of it was destroyed around 1900 when a support for the new vault was installed. Most of the remaining medieval paintings date from the rebuilding after 1268.
Shortly after the choir was vaulted, probably around 1268, four large crowned figures were painted against a blue background. They include a martyr interpreted as Catherine of Alexandria, the Virgin Mary with Christ, a fragmentary figure probably representing Knud Lavard, and Erik IV Plovpenning. Their current appearance incorporates Neo-Romanesque restoration and additions made in 1880.
A choir frieze from shortly after 1300 shows four kings against blue. Valdemar I kneels before his father’s shrine in the apse, followed by Knud VI, Valdemar II, and Valdemar the Young. Remains of a queens’ frieze survive on the opposite wall. The image of Queen Berengaria was added around 1500, while other sections were copied or reconstructed in the nineteenth century. A painting of King Birger of Sweden, who died in Danish exile in 1321 and was buried at Ringsted, occupies the southern pier between the choir and crossing.
The crossing paintings
The thirteenth-century crossing vault contains a program commissioned by Queen Agnes, the widow of Erik V Klipping. Its central subject is Erik IV Plovpenning, whose grave then lay beneath the vault. Mary and Christ occupy the eastern compartment, Erik IV appears as a crowned king in the southern compartment, and the haloed Knud Lavard is shown as a duke in the western compartment. Agnes appears in the northern compartment holding a scepter and a book inscribed with the words Ave Maria.
Latin inscriptions identify the principal figures. Erik IV is described as a king beloved by God, Knud Lavard as a duke, and Agnes as a former queen of the Danes. The wording places the image of Agnes after 1293, when she transferred the regency to her son. Smaller scenes show Erik IV’s murder at Missunde in 1250, including a drinking and board-game scene, his removal from a house, a liturgical scene, the attack by spearmen in a boat, and fishermen recovering his body from the Schlei.
Royal graves and memorials
Twenty members of the Valdemarian royal family were buried at the church between 1173 and 1341, including six Danish kings and five queens. The graves lie chiefly along the central axis from west to east, an arrangement that expressed dynastic continuity. Most were covered by uninscribed marble slabs over brick-built graves, some lined with lead and closed by vaulted masonry or tent-shaped courses of brick.
Knud Lavard’s relics were placed in a reliquary on the high altar in 1170. Part of his bones was transferred to Schleswig Cathedral in 1513, while the later whereabouts of the remaining relics are unknown. His former empty grave remains in the central aisle. Valdemar I was the first Danish king of his dynasty buried at Ringsted. His grave lay directly east of Knud Lavard’s, with his wife Sophia of Minsk and their sons Knud VI and Valdemar II nearby. A lead tablet in Valdemar’s grave described him as a restorer, keeper of peace, victor over the Slavs, and builder of the Valdemar Wall.
Valdemar II died in 1241, the year of the church fire, and was buried in the crossing. His son Valdemar the Young and Valdemar’s wife Eleonore, who died in 1231, were buried near him. Erik IV Plovpenning, murdered in 1250, was moved from Schleswig to Ringsted in 1258 and buried in the crossing. In 1520 his remains were transferred to a niche in the north choir wall, sealed by a memorial stone. A box containing bones and clothing was found there in 1855.
Erik VI Menved and his wife Ingeborg of Sweden, both of whom died in 1319, were the last reigning Danish royal couple buried in the church. The burial of King Birger of Sweden and Märta of Denmark continued its dynastic role. Märta, who died in 1341, was the last member of the Danish royal family buried at Ringsted. The tradition that Queen Blanche of Namur was buried there is unsubstantiated, although she may have died at Ringsted while accompanying her son, King Håkon VI of Norway, to his wedding in Copenhagen.
Other tombs and heraldic records
Numerous nobles were also buried in the church. Their names and arms appeared in a heraldic frieze, of which fragments survive in the southern transept. The frieze was repeatedly overpainted, and the forms of its shields indicate a date around 1500. Storck reconstructed it from drawings made in 1757. The oldest surviving tombstone, dated 1381, commemorates Jakob Jonsen Skave and his wife.
In 1535 Anne Meinstrup, daughter of the Zealand chief justice Henrik Meinstorf, was murdered during a rebel assembly at Ringsted in the Count’s Feud. She was first buried in the church and later transferred to the family crypt at Hornslet Church. The 1575 epitaph of Oluf Mouritzen Krognos and Anne Hardenberg, now in the southern apse of the northern transept, contains alabaster figures of the couple kneeling before a Resurrection relief, surrounded by their family arms. The same chapel holds a tombstone made around 1553 for Mourits Olufsen Krognos, Ellenne Gøye, and Ane Mouritsdotter. Measuring 407 by 202 centimetres, it is described as the largest tombstone of a Danish noble family.
Grave finds
The royal-grave investigations produced evidence about the people buried at Ringsted. Valdemar I’s grave contained a body more than 180 centimetres tall wrapped in leather, together with a lock of hair and a lead identification tablet. The lock and tablet are displayed in the church museum. Sophia of Minsk’s facial appearance was reconstructed from a cast of her skull made in 1855.
Dagmar’s grave survived but lost its cover during an excavation in 1683. When opened in 1855, it contained mainly remains from later burials. Berengaria’s grave held the skeleton of a woman approximately 160 centimetres tall, dressed in silk and with a gold-blond braid. A plaster cast of her skull and the braid are displayed in the museum. Eleonore’s grave contained a small lead coffin holding an infant who had suffered from scrofula and died at about six months.
The graves traditionally attributed to Knud, Duke of Laaland, and his son Erik, Duke of Halland, were not found and may have been destroyed by later burials. The grave of Agnes of Brandenburg, made of yellow brick, was uncovered in 1901 and contained parts of a wooden coffin and several pots. It has no surviving marker. Birger of Sweden and Märta of Denmark lie beneath a slab near Erik Plovpenning’s former grave. Birger’s grave was not opened in 1855, while Märta’s contained a wooden coffin and remnants of silk clothing.
Cross, font, and furnishings
The Dagmar Cross
The Dagmar Cross was found in 1683 when a grave was opened in the crossing near the burials attributed to Queens Dagmar and Rikissa. It is a small gold reliquary cross with colored enamel, measuring 4.3 by 2.9 by 0.3 centimetres, and has an opening for a relic. The front shows the Crucifixion. On the reverse, five half-length figures appear in gold-edged medallions: Christ at the center, Mary and John the Baptist beside him, and Basilios and John Chrysostom above and below.
The destruction of the royal graves made secure attribution impossible. Although tradition associates the cross with Dagmar, it is more probably connected with her sister-in-law Rikissa and may have been made in a goldsmith’s workshop at Polazk. The original was transferred to the Royal Kunstkammer in 1695 and is now held by the National Museum in Copenhagen. A copy stands beside the northeast crossing pier near the findspot.
The baptismal font
The Romanesque sandstone baptismal font dates from approximately 1153 to 1164, or broadly from around 1150, and is attributed to the Gotlandic sculptor Sighraf as one of his earliest works. Its cylindrical basin is 71 centimetres in diameter and has a drain for baptismal water. Reliefs show the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, the angel’s warning to Joseph, the Flight into Egypt, and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Angels appear between the arches. The separate square-footed support resembles an inverted capital, with animal heads at its corners and foliage on its sides.
After the 1806 fire, the font was sold and placed in the garden of the father of the painter Jørgen Roed. Roed painted it there in 1850, and the parish bought it back during renovations in the late 1860s. The brass baptismal dish is a Dutch work of 1650. Its center depicts Adam and Eve with the serpent, while human and animal figures appear among foliage around the rim.
Stalls, pulpit, and altarpiece
The oak choir stalls date from around 1420. They were moved from the crossing to the choir in 1909. Two facing rows contain thirteen folding seats each, some with misericords. Reliefs on the north side depict scenes from the Old Testament, while those on the south side illustrate the New Testament. Other carvings show John the Evangelist, the archangel Michael defeating the dragon, Saint Christopher, and Saint Gertrude. Latin-school pupils carved their names into the wood from the sixteenth century onward.
The Renaissance pulpit of 1609 hangs on the southwest crossing pier. Its four main panels show the Evangelists with their symbols. The access panels represent the four elements as female figures, while female herms symbolize Christian and other virtues. Putti decorate the sounding board. A plaque names Christian IV as donor, and the date 1669 records a later renovation.
The Baroque altarpiece dates from 1699. Its central painting represents the Last Supper and is flanked by carved figures of John the Baptist and Moses. A relief of Christ’s baptism fills the broken pediment, above a radiant sun bearing the Tetragrammaton. An inscription identifies Christian V as donor. In 1925, a side chapel became a devotional room. Its altar table incorporates a chest from the workshop of Heinrich Ringerink, carved with the Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. A crucifix stands above it.
Later installations and museum
The 1970 organ by Poul-Gerhard Andersen stands on the west gallery. It replaced a smaller instrument from 1910 and has 46 stops distributed among the Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv, swell organ, and pedal. Its key action is mechanical and its stop action electric. A smaller choir organ by the same builder dates from 1978 and has four stops without a pedal division.
The small church museum occupies the southernmost transept apse. Its displays include objects recovered from the royal graves and excavations around 1900, the Tabula Ringstadiensis, and a copy of the Christian III Bible of 1550, formerly used as the altar Bible.
