Gripla - 2019, Síða 222

GRIPLA222
elaborate treatment of the subject-matter. In a few introductory words it
is asserted that Guðbrandur Þorláksson’s appointment to the bishopric
of Hólar in 1570 meant the beginning of a seculum aureum a “golden age”
for the church and his fatherland. The author is anxious not to slight
Guðbrandur’s predecessor, the first Lutheran Bishop of Hólar, ólafur
Hjaltason (ca. 1500–1569), who under the auspices of the Most Christian
King Christian III (1503–1559), Christianissimi Christiani III, of Denmark
and Norway had certainly sown some seeds, but had left the crop imma-
ture at his death. More specifically, this meant that from the very moment
when he assumed this important office, Guðbrandur was confronted with
serious problems of different kinds regarding the church. The success and
perfection of the Reformation brought about by Guðbrandur with his
flourishing new printing press allows the author to refer to his episcopacy
as the beginning of a golden age or even the golden age itself; here he
emphasises the words seculum aureum by using them for the third time.
As might be expected, Guðbrandur’s episcopal duties would offer ample
material for a wordy writer, and while Arngrímur seeks to avoid such a
treatment, the weight of the subject-matter is nevertheless so great that it
demands more than a bare narrative. He explains that if we recall how we
are encouraged by the apostle not to forget what we hear but preserve it in
our memory, how could he respond more rightly than by briefly comparing
his leader, whom he calls ἡγούμενος, with the famous leaders of the church
of Israel? Obviously feeling that his comparison might sound a little hyper-
bolic, Arngrímur supports his view by referring to the words of the great
Roman poet Vergil, Parva licet componere magnis “if we may compare small
things with great” and maintaining that, just as Mantua could be compared
to Rome, so Iceland’s small churches, Ecclesiolae, could be compared to
the hierarchy of the Israelites.7 Indeed, if we take certain particulars of
Guðbrandur’s vita “life,” vocatio “vocation,” and labores “labours,” we will
find parallels in the histories of Moses and Samuel. In defence of his
choice of comparison he asserts that there is no reason for anybody who
arrogantly despises the humble to accuse him of matching things which are
at opposite poles, pugnantia secum / frontibus adversis componere, thereby
7 Vergil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I–VI, edited and translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, re-
vised by G.P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 63 (Cambridge, Mass. And London: Harvard
University Press, 1999), IV, 176.