Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 223

“Fjplkunnigri kono scallatu í faðmi sofa”:
Sex and the supernatural in
Icelandic saints’ lives::
MARGARET CORMACK
In his article “Popular culture and medieval Latin literature from Caesarius
of Arles to Caesarius of Heisterbach,” Aron Gurevich cautions against the
assumption that ecclesiastical literature was the exclusive property of the
learned class, completely cut off from the beliefs of the majority of the
population. He points out that in order to be successful, preaching had to
take its audience into consideration, and argues that the repetition of certain
types of motifs and miracle stories did not represent blind copying of texts,
but rather the attitudes and interests of the society for whom they were
intended - which was also the society of the authors themselves.1
Any medieval text will in fact present a mixture of clichés, didactic
material, and “local color;” the problem for the modern scholar is to figure
out which is which, and to determine the significance of each. In the
following I will examine a theme common in medieval hagiographic
literature, and the extent to which its appearance in Icelandic saints’ lives
reflects ecclesiastical or native attitudes and beliefs.
The theme is that of sexual temptation, a topic which can illustrate
attitudes towards both sexuality and women.2 Episodes in which saints
overcome sexual desire - or intervene to save others from succumbing - are
commonplace in hagiographic writings. While the object of such desire
(and instigator of the temptation) may be a real woman, as often as not she
turns out to be the devil in disguise.3
The most extreme example in Icelandic sources of the rejection of
* Early versions of this paper were presented at the Medieval Seminar of Harvard
University and at the International Saga Conference, Göteborg, Sweden, 1991. The
title is from verse 113 of Hdvamál. - Abbreviations: BS = Biskupa sögur, 2 vols., hið
íslenzka bókmentafélag, Kaupmannahöfn, 1858. HMS = Heilagra manna sogur, 2
vols., ed. C. R. Unger, Christiania, 1877.
1 Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, Cambridge, 1988, chapter 1.
2 For general studies of sexuality and women in Iceland in the Middle Ages, see Jenny
Jochens, “The Church and Sexuality in Medieval Iceland,” Journal of Medieval
History, 6, 1980, pp. 377-92, and Guðmundur J. Guðmundsson, “Klerkar í klípu,”
Ný Saga, 3, 1989, pp. 20-28.
3 For example Postola Sögur, ed. C. R. Unger, Christiania, 1874, pp. 383-89, and HMS
II, pp. 357 ff.
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