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law-bound form happened in Iceland by the fourteenth century,89 although
the sources that underpin this development were present and discussed in
Niðaróss province as early as the end of the twelfth century.
Vadum and Perron emphasize in different ways that the range of canon
law sources available to Scandinavian clerics, while more extensive than
is sometimes supposed, was nevertheless meagre compared with centers
of learning like Paris, Bologna, or Rome.90 The degree of knowledge cir-
culating in Niðaróss is, in other words, also a matter of perspective, with
even a person versed in all of the sources known to have been in Niðaróss
province having a narrower perspective than a clerk in the papal chancery.
Nevertheless, a great variety of material focused on the issues raised by Si
quis suadente survives from medieval Iceland. Indeed, one is struck by the
sheer volume of texts that address the specific issues of automatic excom-
munications. It appears not only in lawcodes or letters but also in fre-
quently copied texts and in formulas added to the margins of manuscripts
as well as at least a few fourteenth-century legal cases. Most of the sources
about the canon in Niðaróss can be identified as translations from com-
mon Latin sources, but they are also translations that often explicitly only
address cases that were likely to have local relevance. They were pastoral
texts that local priests should heed lest they fail to refer appropriate cases
to the bishop. In Iceland we are in general not in a position to know a lot
about the individual conflicts in which these laws might have been applied
although the case from 1357 suggests that it was not uncommon in prop-
erty disputes connected with the church.
There has been some discussion as what the phrase guðs lög “God’s laws”
might refer to in these texts. Eldbjørg Haug discusses guðs lög in these texts
as, “a concept of political theology,”91 while Lára Magnúsardóttir has ar-
gued, focusing on the political and historiographical implications, that they
refer to the general body of canon law, which was valid law in Iceland.92
I would like to emphasize how these citations, though vague, refer to
written works of law. These laws are sometimes said to stendr ritað “stand
89 Helmholz, “Excommunication as a Legal Sanction;” Vodola, Excommunication, 36–43,
192–93; and Lára Magnúsardóttir, Bannfæring, 381–450.
90 Perron, “Local Knowledge of Canon Law;” Vadum, “Canon Law and Politics,” 178.
91 Haug, “Concordats, Statute and Conflict,” 92–96.
92 Lára Magnúsardóttir, Bannfæring, 370–440.
THE CANON SI QUIS SUADENTE