Gripla - 20.12.2010, Síða 28

GRIPLA28
been treated sufficiently in the older version.31 A characteristic of the
B-version of the saga is, therefore, the harsh stand taken by the editor in
his prologues and additions towards St Þorlákr’s adversaries, especially
towards Jón Loptsson. This is a feature the B-version has in common with
the 14th-century office, where Jón Loptsson is called m[o]echus (fornicator,
adulterer) and heads a mad crowd (turba furens), seemingly intending to kill
St Þorlákr with his arm raised aloft to strike, only to be checked in the last
moment by a divinely intervening brachial paralysis.32 In the prologue to
the interpolated Oddaverja þáttr in the B-version, moreover, it is argued
that Þorlákr was one of those bishops who promoted divine law in the
extreme, not even protecting their own bodies “from the sword of persecu-
tion” (undan ofsóknar sverði),33 a phrase which if understood in the literal
sense may indicate a knowledge of the office.34
The language of the ecclesiastical movement Þorlákr Þórhallsson
belonged to was Latin and the canonical texts sustaining his sanctity, all of
them produced and perused in Iceland, were written in that language.
Although vernacular versions of these texts were made for readings, and
vernacular poetry composed to honor St Þorlákr, the association of his
cultus with ecclesiastical Latin was strong throughout the Middle Ages.
2. Research History of the Latin Panegyric
in AM 382 4to
The different versions of Þorláks saga helga have been the subject of schol-
arly works, although much of this scholarship suffers from the flawed
31 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Biskupa sögur II, 144, 163 et seq. See also Sverrir Tómasson, Formálar
íslenskra sagnaritara, 140–143, who discusses the introductions to the B-redaction and
Oddaverja þáttr in more detail.
32 Róbert Abraham Ottósson, Sancti Thorlaci Episcopi Officia, 79.
33 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Biskupa sögur II, 163.
34 The interpolated chapters of the saga tell a different story, viz. that an axe (øxi) and not
a sword was raised against St Þorlákr (Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Biskupa sögur II, 176–178). It is
doubtful, however, that the verse, quem mucrone iusto ferit, is to be understood as “Jón
strikes Þorlákr with a upright/just sword” because of the qualification of the weapon as
“upright/just”. The intended sense could also be metaphoric with Þorlákr as the subject
and Jón as the object: “Þorlákr strikes Jón with a just sword”, or the text could be corrupt.
Róbert Abraham Ottósson, Sancti Thorlaci Episcopi Officia, 79.