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solidate and update royal as well as ecclesiastical laws in the Norwegian
kingdom.36 During this period, many new codes were promulgated for
different regions of the kingdom as well as for different parts of the ec-
clesiastical province. It is during this time of law production that Si quis
suadente seems to have been fully incorporated into local legal sources,
including vernacular church lawcodes.37 The two codes most relevant to
Iceland are Archbishop Jón rauði’s Christian lawcode for Frostaþing and
the “new” Christian laws for Iceland, compiled by Bishop Árni Þorláksson
and accepted by the Alþing in 1275. I have chosen to include Jón rauði’s
code in this discussion because it was produced at almost the same time as
Kristinréttr Árna, by the same man who oversaw and assisted Árni in his
work. Indeed, at least one manuscript of Kristinréttr Árna actually identi-
fies Archbishop Jón as the originator of the code.38
Jón rauði’s Christian lawcode was promulgated in 1273 although it
was not always accepted as valid law.39 The version of Si quis suadente
that it preserves does not translate the entire canon word for word but
rather makes a short statement about violence against clerics: “if a person
lays violent hands on a priest or a cleric or a cloistered person, whoever
does that is excommunicated by the deed itself and no one can absolve
him except the lord pope or one of those whom the pope grants a special
authority to do so.”40 This passage in the law is clearly derived from the
canon although it is not an exact translation. The pope is still named as the
competent authority to absolve ipso facto excommunications, but the code
also mentions the possibility that this authority could be delegated at least
in particular cases. The clause nisi mortis urgente periculo “unless in urgent
mortal peril” of the Latin law is also absent from the Norse version.41
36 Sunde, “Daughters of God,” 131–83.
37 Lára Magnúsardóttir, Bannfæring, 303–38, 474.
38 Magnús Lyngdal Magnússon, “Kátt er þeim af kristinrétti,” 56–57. AM 350 fol. 107va reads:
“her byriar upp hinn nyia cristins doms rett þann er herra ion erch(ibyskup) saman setti ok
lögtekinn er vm skalh(olts) biskups dæmi.” [Here begins the new Christian laws that Lord
Jón the archbishop compiled and that are accepted as law in the diocese of Skálaholt].
39 Norges gamle love indtil 1387, edited by Rudolph Keyser et al. (Christiania: Chr. Gröndahl,
1846–1895), 2.341.
40 Norges gamle love, 2.379: “at maðr læggr hæiftugr hændr a presta. eða klerka. oc klaustrmenn.
ok huær sem þat gerer. þa er han i banne af sialfu verkinu. oc ma af ængum læysazst næma
af herra pauanom. æða nokrom þæim sem han færr æinkanlegt uald till þæss.”
41 No complete copies of Jón rauði’s code survive from Iceland. The Icelandic manuscript AM
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE