Gripla - 20.12.2005, Síða 14

GRIPLA12
‘touch of the supernatural and larger than life: foreign countries and peoples,
marvels of the East, evil spirits, dragons, dungeons, and fiery tyrants over-
come by determined men and wise women’ (Weber 1986:423); they focus on
the ‘violent ends met by the apostles after striving against the heathen and
their deluding devils and the witchcraft of the pagan protagonists,’ and are ‘in-
variably overweighted by long speeches, sermons indeed’ (Foote 1994:81);
their influence can be seen in the royal biographies and bishops’ lives, but ‘none
of them bears much resemblance to a family saga’ (Cormack 1994a:41).8
Although such synoptical statements are reductive, they are not unground-
ed. The lives of the saints are of course well known for their broad popular
appeal, which was more often than not heightened through the employment of
varying degrees of sensationalistic elements. A reader of the lives contained in
AM 645 4to and AM 652/630 4to will recognize the sensational, ‘larger than
life’ elements in the sorcerers Zaroes and Arfaxath, flying dragons, exotic for-
eign countries, and in particular, in the lives of Sts. Clement and Peter, the
dispute with the sorcerer Simon Magus (or Simon the Evil as he is called),
which became one of the most popular legends of the Middle Ages.9 However,
in most of the Pseudo-Abdian lives found in AM 645 4to and AM 652/630
4to, as in other representatives of early medieval hagiography, the sensationa-
listic elements are never allowed to replace essential messages or to detract
from the overall edificatory scheme. The martyrdom scenes in most of the
sagas in these particular collections are brief and are hardly what could be
8 Both Cormack and William Schneemelcher (in Hennecke 1965:173) state that it must be
remembered that the apocryphal acts are not strictly biographies, and Schneemelcher goes on
to say that their focus is on displaying the ‘powers’ (or perhaps, the virtues or moral qualities)
of the apostles as revealed in their travels and conflicts. In much the same way, it might be
useful to recall that as far as the ‘form’ of the family sagas is concerned, very few of them are
‘strict’ biographies, and in fact in content and purpose (presenting common conflicts through
which characters’ virtues or lack thereof is revealed, leading toward an overall presentation
or examination of idealistic or moral lessons) they are similar to the apocryphal acts,
especially those derived from Pseudo-Abdias.
9 The Norse god Ó›inn’s shapeshifting abilities as described in chapters 6 and 7 of Snorri
Sturluson’s Ynglinga saga have some parallels with Simon’s own, giving cause to speculate
whether Simon may in fact have been a kind of prototype for literary representations of
Ó›inn (see also Roughton 2002:94-96 and 136-141). Jón Hnefill A›alsteinsson (1997:68) has
remarked that all of the arts ascribed to Ó›inn by Snorri are connected with sorcery rather
than religion, and that the portrayal of Ó›inn in Ynglinga saga was influenced by the depic-
tions of sorcerers and their arts in Iceland’s imported Christian literature.