Gripla - 20.12.2010, Síða 20

GRIPLA20
es emphasize Klængr’s bad health but they are mysteriously silent about
his keeping a concubine.2 We are told that the new bishop dressed like the
archbishop and was considered by him to be a perfect, indeed, a saint-like
candidate for the episcopacy. There are also indications that Þorlákr’s sanc-
tity was arranged in Icelandic ecclesiastical circles, clerics of both dioceses
being conspicuous in reports of early miracles.3 In 1198, a few weeks
before Þorlákr’s remains were translated from his grave to the church in
Skálholt, Bishop Páll Jónsson of Skálholt (1195–1211) announced at the
Alþingi that the subject of Þorlákr’s sanctity had come up and that vows
could be made to him. The following summer, he had St Þorlákr’s written
miracula proclaimed at the Alþingi and a new mass day (December 23) was
added to the Church calendar. The recognition of Þorlákr’s holiness by Páll
Jónsson, his successor and highest local authority of the Catholic Church,
was sufficient to confirm the saint’s sanctification.4 Additionally, Arch-
bishop Eiríkr Ívarsson (1189–1205), who succeeded Eysteinn, and had been
present in Nidaros at Þorlákr’s ordination in July 1178, sent a letter to
Bishop Páll affirming Þorlákr’s sanctity.5 For the church in Iceland,
St Þorlákr played an important role in the next two centuries as a symbol
of assertive church policy. Although recognized as a saint at least in
Norway in late medieval times, St Þorlákr first received papal recognition
on January 14, 1984, when Pope John Paul II declared him patron saint of
the Icelanders. This papal declaration marks the recognition of Þorlákr’s
sanctity by the modern Catholic Church.6
2 Björn Þórðarson, “Móðir Jóru biskupsdóttur,” Saga 1 (1949): 289–346.
3 Margaret Cormack, The Saints in Iceland. Their Veneration from the Conversion to 1400
(Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1994), 164.
4 Papal confirmation of sanctity was only gradually imposed, beginning with the attempts
made by Pope Alexander III in a letter to King Kolr of Sweden in 1171 or 1172. The
historical process is thoroughly documented by André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later
Middle Ages [Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge], trans. Jean Birrell
(Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 13–57.
5 Gottskálk Jensson, “Nokkrar athugasemdir um latínubrotin úr Vita sancti Thorlaci episcopi et
confessoris,” Pulvis Olympicus. Afmælisrit tileinkað Sigurði Péturssyni, eds. Jón Ma. Ásgeirsson,
Kristinn Ólason and Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2009), 98;
Gottskálk Jensson, “The Lost Latin Literature of Medieval Iceland: The Fragments of the
Vita sancti Thorlaci and Other Evidence,” Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004): 168.
6 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ed., Þorláks saga helga. Elsta gerð Þorláks sögu helga ásamt Jarteinabók og
efni úr yngri gerðum sögunnar (Reykjavík: Þorlákssjóður, 1989), 51 et seq.; Gottskálk Jensson,
“Nokkrar athugasemdir,” 98.