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a marriage case from 1429 in the Bréfabók is particularly interesting.56
It contains summaries in Icelandic of some of the testimony in the case,
as well as the bishop’s verdict which, unusually for this volume, appears
in both Icelandic and Latin. the case concerned the marriage between
Þorleifr Þórðarson and Þorgerðr Böðvarsdóttir. The bride first testified
that she never had wanted to marry Þorleifr; she only wished to stay with-
out a husband for all her life. She had uttered “that little word yes” (þat litla
jayrdæ) only because others had persuaded and threatened her, and because
she was afraid of her father.
Þorleifr, the putative groom, admitted that he had first asked Þorgerðr‘s
father Böðvar if he might marry his daughter, and only later asked Þorgerðr
herself. She had then neither said yes nor no. But at the wedding itself,
she had said that “yes, her father should decide.” Clearly, Bishop Jón had
interrogated both parties carefully about exactly what Þorgerðr had said,
showing that he put great weight, as he should, on whether she had given
her free consent, or not.
What follows next in the interrogation is puzzling. “Then the lord bish-
op asked him (Þorleifr) whether he had (hafdæ) her or not. And Þorleifr an-
swered that he had not fæst (fastened/betrothed/married) her.”57 The first
sentence as written makes little sense. the bishop appears to be asking the
putative groom whether he had either betrothed or married Þorgerðr. That
was exactly the issue that the court, not Þorleifr, was meant to decide.
others have had problems with this text, too. the editor of this volume
of the Diplomatarium Islandicum, Jón Þorkelsson, felt obliged to add the
word “fæst” after “hafdæ,” which he must have interpreted as an auxiliary
verb that required a main verb to follow. I do not see that this makes the
text any easier to understand, however.
to interpret Bishop Jón’s text correctly, we must refer to the legal
context. Since the text does not make good sense, we should instead focus
56 the documents appear on fol. 13r–v of the original Bréfabók, and are edited in Diplomat-
arium Islandicum, 4.394–396, nos. 433–435B. See also anders Winroth, “Canon Law
in the arctic,” Texts and Contexts in Medieval Legal History: Essays in Honor of Charles
Donahue, ed. Sara McDougall, anna di robilant, and John Witte Jr. (Berkeley, Calif.:
robbins Collection, 2016), which contains new, corrected editions of both versions of the
bishop’s verdict. the case has been examined in previous scholarship, most recently agnes
Arnórsdóttir, Property and Virginity, 167–168.
57 “æi sidr spurdi herra biscupenn hann huortt han hafdæ hana (fæst) ædr æi. en Þorlæifr
sagdizst ecki hafua fæst hana.” See Diplomatarium Islandicum, 4.394.
THE CANON LAW OF EMERGENCY BAPTISM