Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Síða 90
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INTRODUCTION
not necessarily be continued by a successor. Bishop Jón Halldórsson,
O.P., and Bishop Jón Eindriðason, o.s.B., both Norwegians, died in
1339 and 1341 respectively (DN XVII B:l, 264-65). The former had
been bishop since 1322 and his association with literary work is well
known (see e.g. Alfred Jakobsen, Studier i Clarus saga, 16-22); the lat-
ter’s brief tenure hardly allowed him to make much impact on his see.
The next bishop was an Icelandic monk, Jón Sigurðarson, who was
elected and went abroad in 1341 and retumed after consecration in
Norway in 1343. He was in Norway again in the winter 1347-48, and
he died at Skálholt in December 1348, apparently a victim of the
smallpox epidemic which affected the whole of Iceland after starting
in the south in 1347 (DN XVII B:l, 265; IslAnn., 213, 353-54, s.a.
1347, 1348; Jón Steffensen, Menning og meinsemdir, 279-80). There
had been no smallpox visitation since 1310 and the rate of infection
was high: the disease ‘for ... sva gersamliga yfir sveitimar at hon tok
naliga hvem yngra mann enn fertugan. ok marga ellri’ (IslAnn., 213,
s.a. 1347; Jón Steffensen, Menning og meinsemdir, 314-18, and
Nordisk medicinhistorisk ársbok 1977, 44). Gullbringusýsla, Ölfus
and Flói were hard hit, so Skálholt cannot have escaped: ‘var sva til
reiknat at nær .cccc. manna andaðiz i henni milli Hvitskeggs huams ok
Bótz ár. sva ok vm Floann ok Aulfusit með sama móti’ (IslAnn., 213,
s.a. 1347).
Jón Sigurðarson was a notably active bishop. There is good reason
to suppose that he was a Benedictine. The only church he is known to
have consecrated was at Alviðra in Dýrafjörður in 1344 (cf. Árbók
Hins ísl. fornleifafélags, 1981, 106-09), and there he included St
Benedict in the dedication, the only Benedict dedication in the country
other than Munkaþverá (DI II, nr 510; Cormack, 84, 172). (It may be
noted as a parallel that it was doubtless one of the Dominican bishops,
Jón Halldórsson (1322-39) or Vilkin Henriksson (1394-1405), who in-
cluded St Dominic in the dedication of the church at Kolbeinsstaðir,
also the only such dedication in Iceland; Cormack, 93, 205; Magnús
Már Fárusson, Saga 1962, 472, saw some chronological reason to as-
sign the dedication to Jón Halldórsson.) Jón Sigurðarson also reorgan-
ised the Augustinian house on Viðey as a Benedictine community; that
too was in 1344, within a twelvemonth of his coming to Skálholt
(IslAnn., 210, 352, s.a. 1344). Precisely how the reorganisation was
managed is obscure (cf. Guðbrandur Jónsson, Saga 1949-53, 414-26),