Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 178
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written.”93 or to be in a “law book of the holy church” as in the Stock. Perg.
26 4to version of “vm banns verk.”94 It is difficult to say precisely what the
phrase meant to those who wrote it but it was often referring to a specific
written source, which can sometimes, as in these cases, be precisely identi-
fied. These texts are not only works we now think of as being part of the
canonical Corpus iuris canonici, but also commentaries on these works such
as Raymond of Penyafort’s Summa de paenitentia.
Although formally associated with doctrines that privileged papal au-
thority over the traditional rights of bishops, indeed it is often called páfans
bann the “papal ban,” in practice it was a way for bishops to claim authority
for themselves (not least over local priests and other clerics) while invoking
a distant power. Parish priests are consistently reminded of the limitations
on their authority in many of the different Old Norse-Icelandic texts ad-
dressing automatic excommunication. This limitation at the same time
required them to have at least some knowledge of the types of cases that
they needed to defer to the bishop or his appointed officials (umboðsmenn).
The archbishop is occasionally mentioned (or his influence can be inferred,
as when he sent visitatores to Iceland), but he is not frequently mentioned
in the Kristinréttr Árna or these other texts. Indeed, even statutes promul-
gated by archbishops focus on the role of bishops. Jón Halldórsson in his
list from 1326 provides a telling exception to the rule that these cases could
be handled locally. In the event that a bishop was attacked, imprisoned, or
outlawed, the resulting automatic excommunication could only be lifted
by the pope.95
The gap between a canon that formally reserves all rights of absolution
to the pope and a body of legal evidence that clearly points to the bishop as
having the main say over such cases and how they should be resolved is not
just a matter of local canon law or adaptation to local geographic realities
but also, as Helmholz has emphasized, a matter of the difference between
the theoretical law and its practice.96 In Iceland in the late-thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, “papal” excommunications were administered by
bishops and their agents while the average priest was expected to have a
93 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.176: “sva stendr ritað j guðz lögum ok manna.”
94 “Suo segir laugbok hæilagar kirkiv.” fol 4v.
95 Diplomatarium Islandicum, 2.591. These prohibitions might be compared with the tribula-
tions of Bishop Guðmundr Arason in the thirteenth century.
96 Helmholz, “English Ecclesiastical Tribunals,” 27.