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In the past few decades, scholars have focused on the interrelation be-
tween the old norse and the Latin biographies in order to establish their
chronological and intertextual coherence.11 The literature on St Þorlákr
– not only the lives, but also a poem12 – served to prove the vividness of
Icelandic Latinity and to encourage the revision of earlier research and
prejudiced convictions.13 A Latin sermon on St Þorlákr, the Sermo de beato
Thorlaco episcopo, transmitted in MS uppsala uB C 301, however, has
gone more or less unnoticed. up until the present, only the norwegian
liturgist Lilli Gjerløw has discussed the sermon in a study of fragments
pertaining to the liturgical history of medieval Iceland. She considers the
Þorlákr sermon in the context of the collection in which it survives, i.e.
the Themata sermonum by nicolas de Gorran, and describes it as a mere
adaptation of an unknown continental sermon.14 Subsequently, the sermon
has attracted less scholarly interest than it indeed deserves: it is not even
mentioned in recent studies.15 apart from Gjerløw’s judgement, the lack
of any connection with other Þorlákr literature may have rendered the ser-
mon of little interest to old norse scholars, while Latinists and sermonists
continue to struggle with the overwhelming number of transmitted Latin
sermons and have no need of additional material.
as the only known surviving Latin-Icelandic sermon, however, the
Sermo de beato Thorlaco episcopo is a most important witness to the religious
reality of medieval Iceland. In this article, I will analyse the sermon and
demonstrate how established continental patterns of sermon composition
and performance were executed in Iceland. ultimately, the sermon will
emerge as the sole survivor of the active and vivid preaching culture of
fourteenth-century Iceland, and as a composition that situated the island
within the intellectual heritage it shares with the rest of medieval Europe.
11 Gottskálk Jensson, “nokkrar athugasemdir um latínubrotin úr Vita sancti thorlaci episcopi
et confessoris,” Pulvis olympicus, ed. Jón Ma. Ásgeirsson et al., (reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan,
2009), 97–109; “*revelaciones thorlaci episcopi,” 133–75.
12 aM 382 4to, see Gottskálk Jensson and fahn, “the forgotten Poem.”
13 Gottskálk Jensson, “the Lost Latin Literature of Medieval Iceland: the fragments of the
Vita sancti Thorlaci and other Evidence,” Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004): 150–70.
14 Gjerløw, Liturgica Islandica, vol. 1, 72–73.
15 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, “St Þorlákr of Iceland”; Gottskálk Jensson, “nokkrar athugasemdir”;
“*revelaciones thorlaci episcopi”; “Lost Latin Literature”; Gottskálk Jensson and fahn,
“forgotten Poem.”
FORGOTTEN PREACHING