Studia Islandica - 01.06.1960, Page 25

Magnús Már Lárusson
On the so-called "Aimenian" Bishops
“In the days of Bishop Isleif, foreign bishops came to
Iceland whose doctrines were characterised by more
laxity than those of Bishop Isleif. Therefore, they be-
came popular amongst wicked people, until Archbishop
Adalbert sent a letter to Iceland, forbidding all people
to accept their services, and saying that some of them
had already been excommunicated and that all of them
had undertaken the mission without his leave.”
The above passage appears in Chapter 2 of the Hungr-
vaka, and Ari Thorgilsson writes in Chapter 8 of his
Islendingábók:
“Five others who claimed to be bishops came to Ice-
land: örnólfr and Goðiskálkr and three Armenians
(ermskir), Petrus and Abraham and Stephanus.”
Ari does not make it clear when, after the introduc-
tion of Christianity, these five men were in Iceland, but
it seems natural to conclude that he is referring to the
same bishops as those who, the Hungrvaka says, came
from abroad.
Adalbert became the Archbishop of Hamburg and
Bremen about 1043 and died in 1072, but Isleif became
bishop at Skálholt in 1056 and was in office until 1080.
The itinerant bishops, episcopi vagrantes, í’eferred to in
the Hungrvaka and the Islendingabök, must then have
been in Iceland some time between 1056 and 1702.
It has usually been considered that the three “Arme-
nian” bishops belonged to the Paulicians.1 The Paulician