Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 203

203
ANDERS WINROTH
THE CANON LAW
OF EMERGENCY BAPTISM
AND OF MARRIAGE
IN MEDIEVAL ICELAND AND EUROPE*
at some point in the early fourteenth century, in the third week of
Lent, an Icelandic man called Þorsteinn of Hléskógar in Eyjafjörður and
his wife had a child. Immediately after its birth, the child seemed dead.
When a man called Þorgrímr attempted to let the child’s blood, it did not
bleed. Its devastated parents vowed to finance three masses for the souls
of Bishop Guðmundr arason’s mother and father, and as soon as they had
solemnized their vow, the child showed signs of life, and it was immedi-
ately given emergency baptism. Everyone rejoiced, praising God and Saint
Guðmundr. the story ends there. We do not find out for how long the
child survived, but it was probably not very long.1
this kind of family tragedy must have been common in medieval
Iceland, and indeed everywhere before the development of modern medi-
cine. typically, we do not hear much in the sources about children dying.
the story told above is preserved among the posthumous miracles worked
by Saint Guðmundr, who was bishop of Hólar in the early thirteenth
century. the point of the miracle is that the child lived long enough to be
baptized, and thus, happily, it would go to Heaven rather than Hell. the
presence of this story in a miracle collection demonstrates that medieval
Icelanders worried about the fate of children who died during the first few
days of their lives.
Emergency baptisms were regulated in canon law, and medieval peo-
ple needed to know enough about the regulations to make sure that they
1 Biskupa sögur, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson et al. (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag,
1858–1878), 615–616 (from aM 657 c 4to).
Gripla XXIX (2018): 203–229
* I wish to thank Jóhanna Katrín friðriksdóttir and Viðar Pálsson for good advice, and Emily
Lethbridge for sensitive editing. I remain responsible for arguments and conclusions.