Gripla - 2023, Side 128

126 GRIPLA
were secular law. Church law was to be reformed and issued as an inde-
pendent body of law alongside these secular codes, including regulations
of episcopal administration and visitations. The location of the article on
slimesitting within secular law therefore reinforces the understanding that
it was principally meant to regulate secular political culture. It is easy to
imagine, nonetheless, that in practice there may not always have been a
straightforward separation in people’s minds when they felt bishops to be
overbearing or costly during their visitations.
The Old Christian Law, Kristinna laga þáttr in Grágás, gives no in-
structions on the practicalities and logistics of episcopal visitations, aside
from the obligation of farmers hosting the bishop to provide horses if
necessary. The law simply commands that the bishop of Hólar shall survey
his diocese annually and the bishop of Skálholt shall survey his diocese
every three years, that is one-third annually.32 Bishops occasionally ap-
pear on a visitation in the bishops’ sagas and contemporary sagas (biskupa
sögur and samtíðarsögur). According to Guðmundar saga dýra in Sturlunga
saga, Bishop Brandr Sæmundarson of Hólar (b. 1163‒1201) gisti every
other church farm when he surveyed his diocese. In most cases, however,
it remains unclear to the saga audience whether and how the presence
of a bishop, such as when he is seen feasting, was in connection with
his inspection.33 King Eiríkr Magnússon (r. 1280‒99) and Bishop Árni
Þorláksson of Skálholt (b. 1269‒98) reached a general agreement on the
limits of visitations by the Concordat of Ögvaldsnes in 1297, according to
which the bishop should survey (vísitera) his region evenly and only after
the Mass of Peter and Paul on June 29.34 The bishop of Hólar continued
to survey his region annually until at least the early fourteenth century.
Regulating episcopal visitations (yfirfǫr/yfirferð/yfirsókn), such as the size
of the bishop’s retinue and proper notice of its schedule, remained a work
in progress in the later Middle Ages, well past the commonwealth era and
32 Grágás, Ia: 19, II: 22‒23, III: 20‒21, 69, 113‒14, 163‒64, 207, 246‒47, 288, 324‒25.
33 For example, such as when Bishop Brandur accepted a feast (boð) at Helgastaðir or when
Bishop Magnús Gizurarson of Skálholt was hosted at a feast (veizla) by Órækja Snorrason
in Vatnsfjörður in 1233. See Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason,
and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols. (Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946), 1: 161‒62, 362‒63.
34 Diplomatarium Islandicum: Íslenzkt fornbréfasafn, sem hefir inni að halda bréf og gjörninga,
dóma og máldaga, og aðrar skrár er snerta Ísland eða íslenzka menn, ed. Jón Sigurðsson,
Jón Þorkelsson, Páll Eggert Ólason, and Björn Þorsteinsson, 16 vols. (Copenhagen and
Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1857−1972), 2: 325.