Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 164
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a violent hand on clerics and that that no killer of a cleric or a monk can
be absolved, except by the pope.32 If the dating of this letter is accurate,
it is probably the earliest attestation of the canon in Old Norse-Icelandic.
guðrún Ása grímsdóttir has suggested that this letter, as well as several
of the pilgrimages to Rome mentioned in Sturlunga saga, are evidence for
the acceptance of the principles of Si quis suadente, and of the archbishop’s
right to interfere in Iceland by the early thirteenth century, even as a bishop
like Guðmundr Arason (1203–1237) had no patience for the legal niceties
involved, preferring to excommunicate his enemies directly.33
By the time of legal reforms in the Norwegian realm a century later (in
the 1270s),34 Si quis suadente and the ideas it enforced had been translated
into Old Norse-Icelandic and appeared in the new Christian lawcodes
produced in the archdiocese as well as in many statutes issued by Icelandic
bishops. The remainder of this article evaluates the ways that Icelandic
manuscript culture engaged with and interpreted the canon and explores
what this tells us about the development of local canon law, law which
looked to Rome and the standard law texts of the period but also adapted
and interpreted the law to suit local circumstances.
Vernacular laws
There are no provisions specifically protecting clerics in the earliest pre-
served Christian lawcodes from Iceland, these codes are short and are
more concerned with the protection of church property than church per-
sonnel.35 Near the end of the thirteenth century, there was a push to con-
32 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 1.218–23.
33 guðrún Ása grímsdóttir, “um afskipti erkibiskupa af íslenzkum málefnum á 12. og 13. öld,”
Saga 20 (1982): 38–43. On Bishop Guðmundr’s style of excommunication see, Elizabeth
Walgenbach, “Outlawry as Secular Excommunication in Medieval Iceland, 1150–1350,”
(Ph.D. diss. Yale University, 2016), 123–53.
34 Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, “Daughters of God and Counsellors of the Judges of Men: Changes
in the Legal Culture of the Norwegian Realm in the High Middle Ages,” New Approaches
to Early Law in Scandinavia, edited by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (Turnhout: Brepols,
214), 131–183.
35 Grágás: Islændernes lovbog I fristatens tid udgivet efter det Kongelige bibliotheks haandskrift,
edited by Vilhjálmur Finsen (Copenhagen: Fornritafjelag Norðurlanda í Kaupmannahöfn,
1852), 15–17; and Grágás: Stykker, som findes i det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 351 fol.
Skálholtsbók og en Række andre Haandskrifter, edited by Vilhjálmur Finsen (Copenhagen:
Kommissionen for det Arnamagnæanske Legat; Gyldendal, 1883), 15–17.