Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 156
GRIPLA156
The bishop demanded that the officials swear an oath and compensate
the priest in order to be released from the excommunication. When they
would not, the bishop decided to absolve them anyway, lest they set sail
excommunicated (and perhaps drown), but said that they owed the priest
six marks.4 According to the saga, at least one of the offenders, Eindriði,
was pleased with this solution and worked to reach the best agreements
possible between Bishop Árni and King Magnús. all of the remedies of-
fered by the bishop, however, differed from those set down in the original
canon, which demanded that anyone excommunicated in this way must
seek absolution from the pope, unless in peril of death.
This article focuses on the adoption of the canon Si quis suadente in
Iceland from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. The canon
codified key developments in the sanction of excommunication during
the Middle Ages, introducing “automatic” excommunications that were
incurred instantly upon doing forbidden actions. Tracing the adoption,
translation, and interpretation of this canon allows us to assess in some
detail the ways in which Icelandic bishops and clerics interpreted the
teachings of canon law in their own dioceses and parishes, allowing us to
assess what is increasingly referred to as “local canon law” in a remote set
of dioceses.5
This article traces the legal developments of Si quis suadente as they
were incorporated into Icelandic church law, particularly in light of the
evidence provided by legal manuscripts of the fourteenth century. These
manuscripts, of which there are a great number, have remained rela-
tively understudied and unevenly catalogued, although this is beginning
to change.6 In this article I focus in particular on manuscripts containing
4 Árna saga biskups, 70.
5 For discussion of the concept see Anthony Perron, “Local Knowledge of Canon Law, ca.
1150–1250,” Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law, edited by John C. Wei and Anders
Winroth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Richard Helmholz,
“Were the English Ecclesiastical Tribunals Courts of Law?” Law and Private Life in the
Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Sixth Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History
2009 edited by Per Andersen, Mia Münster-Swendsen and Helle Vogt (Copenhagen,
DJØF Publishing 2011), 23–27; Anders Winroth, “The Canon Law of Emergency Baptism
and of Marriage in Iceland and Europe,” Gripla 29 (2018): 204–11, 221–22; and Eldbjørg
Haug, “Concordats, Statute and Conflict in Árna saga biskups,” Collegium Medievale 28
(2015): 95.
6 Kristoffer Vadum, for instance, provides a more thorough identification of the many