Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 155
155
ELIZABETH WALGENBACH
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE
AND EXCOMMUNICATION
IN MEDIEVAL ICELAND
Introduction
Árna saga biskups tells a story about a priest thrown off a ferry cross-
ing the river Ölfusá in southwest Iceland in 1277. Two royal officials were
carrying letters from the Norwegian king when they ejected the priest and
his luggage.1 When Árni Þorláksson, the Bishop of Skálaholt in southern
Iceland, later encountered the two officials, he was not pleased and gave
them a serious warning: “You have brought a papal excommunication
upon yourselves by your very act, and you are in no way absolved until you
swear the oath that the laws of the church dictate and until you compensate
the priest.”2 Bishop Árni informed these men that they had brought a papal
excommunication upon themselves by the very act, in Old Norse-Icelandic
af sjálfu verkinu, of roughing up a priest. In this, Bishop Árni was following
the doctrine set down by the canon Si quis suadente, which called for the
automatic excommunication of those who laid violent hands on clerics.3
1 Árna saga biskups, ed. by guðrún Ása grímsdóttir, Biskupa sögur vol. 3, Árna saga biskups,
Lárentíus saga biskups, íslenzk fornrit 17 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1998), 70.
I thank Anders Winroth and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
Errors are mine alone.
2 Árna saga biskups, 70: “Sé ek eptir ykkrum flutningi at þið hafit fellt páfabann á ykkr af
sjálfu verkinu, ok dugir með engu móti at þið séuð eigi leystir, ok eigi þið áðr sverja fyrir
lausnina þann eið sem lög kirkjunnar bjóða en bæta prestinum rétt sinn.”
3 Decretum magistri Gratiani, C. 17 q. 4 c. 29 (second recension text). ed. Corpus iuris canonici,
ed. by Emil Friedberg (Leipzig: Ex Officina Bernhardi Tauchnitz, 1879), 1.822. I follow
the distinction between the first and second recensions of the Decretum as argued for by
Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), 197–227. The canon is associated with increasing papal claims to power and the so-
called papal monarchy. See, richard Helmholz, “‘Si quis suadente’ (C.17 q.4 c.29): theory
and practice,” Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law,
Cambridge, 23–27 July 1984, edited by Peter Linehan (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana, 1988), 425; Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 28–29.
Gripla XXX (2019): 155–185