Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 229

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ter. With this elevated judgement on the essence of the man, we are now
prepared to hear about the sad final part of his life.
VIII. This chapter is divided more or less distinctly into sections on
his long illness, his death and the grief which it occasioned. It includes a
description of his funeral, portents of his death, and the catastrophes that
followed it. The main part of the first section, which formally deals with
the long illness that preceded Guðbrandur’s death, is in fact devoted to
his daugther Halldóra and the great piety she showed towards her father
in a most difficult situation. The rhetorical description of her complete
devotion to him and all her efforts to find a cure or at least some comfort
for him in his illness, following the stroke at the age of 82, which left him
paralysed and bereft of speech for the last three years of his life, may be
characterized as a kind of homage to this remarkable lady. But in spite of
all the care received by the old bishop the inevitable moment had to come.
On 20th July 1627 Guðbrandur Þorláksson’s life came to an end. His
constitutional weakness had been aggravated by an epidemic disease. This
event was followed by such grief, felt most intensely by Halldóra and the
bishop’s grandson, the future Bishop Þorlákur, that the author can hardly
find the proper words to describe it except through classical imagery and
in hyperbolical terms. The funeral itself, which took place on 25th July in
Hólar Cathedral, is mentioned only briefly, whereas there is much specu-
lation on the tombstone and a part of its Latin inscription, Gudbrandus
Thorlachius peccator Jesu Christi, which Guðbrandur himself composed
several years before his death.17 These meditative remarks culminate in
Arngrímur’s conclusion that Guðbrandur’s serious thoughts about death
during his long life proved that he was sapiens “a wise man.” We are in-
formed that Þorlákur Skúlason wrote an epitaph, carmen epitaphium, in
honour of his grandfather. Arngrímur hoped that it would be printed
with the eulogy although this does not seem to have been done. However,
the section on the funeral ends with an elegiac Latin poem, consisting of
twenty verses written by Arngrímur himself in commemoration of his old
patron.
17 Arngrímur quotes only a part of the inscription and that obviously from memory. The
full and exact inscription on the tombstone is: Expecto resurrectionem carnis et vitam æter-
nam Gudbrandus Thorlacius Iesu Christi peccator Anno Christi 1627 20 Iulii. “I await the
resurrection of the flesh and the life eternal Guðbrandur Þorláksson sinner of Jesus Christ
in the year 1627 20th July.”
TO TELL THE TRUTH – BUT NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH