Veneration
Strängnäs Cathedral was later built on the same site of the pagan ritual Eskil had observed. This is confirmed, since the hill where the Cathedral now stands is known to have been the ritual site and that the first wooden church built there was dedicated to Saint Eskil. The old church and burial site of Saint Eskil in Tuna later became one of the first monasteries in the region. When Tuna got priviligies, "Eskil" was added into the name, creating Eskilstuna.
Eskil probably lived during the reign of King Inge the Elder at the end of the 11th century. According to the source closest in time, a legend of the Danish king Saint Canute, authored about 1122 by Ælnoth from Canterbury, an Anglo-Saxon priest who had settled in Denmark, an "Eskillinus", an English bishop of noble origins, was killed by the "wild barbarians" (specified as the Suethi et Gothi, i.e. Swedes and Geats) among whom he was preaching the gospel.
In its more developed form, the legend of Eskil is attested from the 13th century and known from a few different sources: according to this, he was successful in his mission during the reign of King Inge, but killed by Blot-Sweyn when trying to stop a pagan sacrifice on the hill where the Strängnäs Cathedral now stands. He is said to have been killed by stoning and with axes, and the stones later became his attribute. The legend shows stylistic influence from various sources, including the legend of Saint Olaf of Norway.
The veneration of Eskil spread in Sweden and to Denmark (Odense) and Norway (Trondheim). Eskil's feast (and purported day of death) was on 11 June, but it was later moved, except in the Diocese of Strängnäs, to June 12 in order not to collide with the Feast of Barnabas. Relics of Eskil existed in the church of Eskilstuna, which was traditionally seen as his burial place, as well as in other churches within the Diocese of Strängnäs, elsewhere in Sweden, and in Roskilde and Copenhagen in Denmark.
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Famous quotes containing the word veneration:
“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
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