Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 248

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according to Jóns þáttr Halldórssonar,50 the Bishop preached a sermon
on St Þorlákr and illustrated it with an exemplum:
Skulu vér greina þessu næst eitt æfintýr er hann setti í sína predikan,
þá er hann var byskup Skalholtensis Þorláksmessu á sumarit í
Vestfirðingafjórðungi á þeim bæ er Staðarhóll heitir, ok hversu rétt-
látr var hinn sæli Þorlákr ok vandlátr at geyma Guðs lög setti hann
honum tiltekit dæmi svá fallit sem hér stendr.51
the following ævintýr (i.e. an exemplum in the vernacular) is about a rich
man who kills his nephew to punish him for adultery. on his deathbed, he
refuses to confess and is thus denied Extreme unction and communion
by a certain bishop. through a miracle, however, he turns out to be still
favoured by God, making the bishop out to be an unfair player. there is no
fully apparent connection between this episode and the saint, as exempla
would not be understood verbatim. rather, a preacher would extract more
general themes from the exemplum and connect them with elements from
the saint’s life such as the struggle for morally correct conduct.
Both accounts show that preaching in the modern style did occur in
fourteenth-century Iceland. the accounts serve a specific purpose in the
context they appear in: to illustrate the sanctity of Þorlákr, to distinguish
Iceland from norway, to illustrate the proud attitude of the norwegian
friar or to provide a backdrop for the Bishop’s story-telling skills, and all
of these functions might have affected the historical accuracy of these ac-
counts. However, the accounts also prove that the preaching of a sermon
on the occasion of Þorlákr’s translation was not considered a strange event.
Sermon preaching is described in Lárentiuss saga without further explana-
50 Jóns þáttr Halldórsonar is assumed to have been composed shortly after the Bishop’s death in
1339. It is preserved in two manuscripts, aM 624 4to (1490–1510, religious and canonistic
texts) and aM 764 4to (‘reynistaðarbók’, 1300–1399, annals, legends, miracles, exempla).
In both cases, it figures as part of a collection of religious texts with varying theological
or edifying nature. In the þáttr, the exact nature of Jón’s preaching and use of exempla is
depicted. the terminology suggests a clerical authorship and audience, and the text might
have been composed by members of Jón’s entourage shortly after his death.
51 Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ed., Biskupa sögur 3, 449–50. (“next, we shall lay out a tale that he
put into his preaching, when he was bishop of Skálholt, on St Þorlákr’s feast in the summer
in the West fjords in that place that is called Staðarhóll. and [to illustrate] how righteous
blessed Þorlákr was and [how] eager to keep God’s law, he put for him a specific example
such as here follows.”)