Gripla - 2019, Page 175

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Oaths and formulas
A few copies of oaths and formulas for release from excommunication give
us some insight into how such excommunications might have been lifted,
presumably after some kind of settlement, compensation, or penance was
reached. A small number of oaths and formulas directly related to Si quis
suadente survive in Icelandic manuscripts. It seems likely that these are the
oaths or kinds of oaths that the decree of Bishop Árni mentions. they are
probably similar to the oath that Bishop Árni wants the king’s officials to
swear in the passage from Árna saga biskups evoked at the beginning of this
article. The oaths tend to occur in manuscripts of slightly later date then
the earliest copies of Kristinréttr Árna or of “vm banns verk,” many from
the very end of the Middle Ages.83 They often occur in the margins of legal
manuscripts. This might have made them easier to access and suggests that
the manuscripts were used to collect such information.
The basic form of these oaths is simple. They instruct a person to
swear, sometimes with their hand on a “holy book” either that they did not
knowingly attack a cleric (thus claiming an exception of the type listed by
Raymond of Penyafort), that they will accept the judgement of the bishop
or provosts and not repeat the offense, or that they will, if able, travel to
Rome to seek absolution or do as the bishop instructs.84 These oaths are
in Old Norse-Icelandic and use similar phrases to the translated laws in-
cluding heiptuga hnd for violentas manus “violent hands” and páfa bann for
papal excommunication, that is de jure or automatic excommunication as
stipulated in the canon.85
AM 671 4to, one of the few manuscripts whose main subject is canon
law to survive from medieval Iceland, contains a Latin formula in one of its
lower margins.86 This is also a formula for releasing an individual from ex-
communication. The formula has two distinct parts: the first is a formula
releasing those who laid violent hands on a priest or cleric (or a layman in
a church or on a feast day) from excommunication. The construction of
83 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.43–44.
84 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.46.
85 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.44.
86 This manuscript is the main subject matter of Vadum’s doctoral dissertation, “Bruk af
kanonisk literatur.”
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE