Gripla - 2019, Qupperneq 163

163
with the canon: can an abbot absolve a monk who killed a cleric before he
took orders? The pope answers no “because the excommunication preceded
his becoming a monk, he is not able to obtain absolution except through
the Roman pontiff or his delegate. However, by our dispensation you have
the power to grant him absolution and impose a fitting punishment.”29
Here the pope asserts that the case is reserved to him and then in the next
breath grants the questioner the authority to absolve the individual con-
cerned. The question revolves around violence done to a cleric and who
can absolve the excommunication that the killer automatically incurred, the
core of the original canon. In this letter the pope takes a clear stand for his
own authority but is also prepared to delegate the actual absolution.
In another early letter, Clement III, writing to the Archbishop of
Niðaróss, probably sometime between 1187 –1191, explained that clerics
who acted in disregard of their status, involved themselves in lay con-
flicts (specifically the efforts of the priest Sverrir Sigurðarson to claim
the Norwegian crown), and were killed, did not fall under the canon.30
Leaving aside the political implications of this letter, it is clear that the
pope and his correspondent are both fully aware of the canon and only
a detail of interpretation is under discussion. Here the pope decides that
these particular clerics have betrayed their vows to the point that they are
no longer protected by the canon, though they were not formally deposed
or excommunicated at the time they were killed. He calls for a penance for
the killers only a little more severe than if the slain clerics in question had
been laymen.31
The earliest letter in this context directly addressing Iceland is dated to
1173, from a similar period to the papal letters discussed above although it
is preserved in a late manuscript (AM 186 4to Hvanneyrarbók from the
fifteenth century). It is a letter written by the archbishop to the bishops
in both Skálaholt and Hólar and reminds them that it is forbidden to lay
29 Vandvik (ed.), Latinske Dokument, 86: “quod ubi precessit talis excommunicatio mona-
chatum, non nisi per Romanum pontificem vel mandato ipsius absolutionem poterit opt-
inere. Ex dispensatione tamen ei poteris auctoritate nostra munus absolutionis impendere
et pro excessu penitentiam iniungere congruentem.”
30 Vandvik, Latinske Dokument, 90: “canone late sententie laici minime coartentur.” This letter
is sometimes attributed to Pope Celestine III, although this does not significantly affect the
dating of the document. Ibid., 189.
31 Ibid., 90.
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE