Gripla - 2021, Page 162

GRIPLA160
Item no. 13, “Um málaskot,” lists cases when a judge’s decision cannot
be appealed, a text that appears in well over twenty Icelandic manuscripts.
It has, however, never been noticed that the text clearly was inspired by the
procedural law that jurists of canon law developed in Bologna, notably as
codified by Tancred of Bologna around 1215. In his widely used procedural
handbook Ordo iudiciarius, Tancred reproduced a verse of three rhyming
hexameters that were designed to help law students remember the kinds
of cases that cannot be appealed:
Appellare vetant scelus, excellentia, pacta
contemptus, minima res, interdictio facta,
arbitrium, res que perit, et si longius acta.28
The first seven items in Tancred’s verse correspond perfectly to the first
seven items in the list in Belgsdalsbók:
Hann er ránsmaðr ok uill æigi aptr giallda eðr i hordomi ok uill æigi
við skiliaz (scelus)
pauinn dœmir eda konungr (excellentia)
ef þei sueria at hafa þat er domandi dømir (pacta)
ef domarinn stefnir manni til sin ok kemr han æigi (contemptus)
litit maal (minima res)
ef yfir domari segir ... at þat maal kemr æigi optar fyrir hann (inter-
dictio facta)
ef þeir kiosa menn til doms millum sin (arbitrium)29
I do not know the source of the last two items in the list in Belgsdals bók,
which do not correspond to the last two items in Tancred’s verse, although
the very last item may seem a duplication of the fourth item (pacta).
28 Pillii, Tancredi, Gratiae Libri de iudiciorum ordine, ed. Friedrich Bergmann (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 1842), 302–03. I have not found the verses anywhere before
Tancred.
29 AM 347 fol., f. 95va–b (excerpted and reorganized for clarity). Cf. the edition in DI
2.221–22, n.96, based on AM 350 fol. (Skarðsbók), which confuses the text, replacing items
4 and 7, and is also otherwise more distant from Tancred’s text.