Gripla - 2023, Side 158

156 GRIPLA
for the Church (and so for Salvation). Thus, for instance, St Augustine
says in his Tractate (no. 45) on St John’s Gospel 10:1–10, ‘Keep hold of
this, that Christ’s sheepfold is the Catholic Church’.55 The reference to
the ‘meek lamb’ connotes Christ’s sacrifice, and the wolves, the Church’s
diabolical enemies. Magnús’ presence in the church on Egilsay is therefore
elevated to a sacrifice for the Church in general.
In Magnúss saga lengri St Magnús becomes associated with the Church.
This association is supported by the earl shedding his secular ways for a
life of holiness (including adopting chastity). The transformation is ac-
companied by clear echoes of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom.56 Take for
instance, Edward Grim’s account of Becket’s martyrdom, which represents
the earliest and arguably most influential account of this event.57 Grim
notes the loud and vulgar commotion that followed the entry of the four
knights, while he likens Becket to a sacrificial lamb and his attackers to
wolves. Hákon’s four henchmen who burst into the church in Egilsay are
manifestly modelled on the four knights who enter Canterbury Cathedral
as the archbishop prepares for vespers. The archbishop’s slaying in 1170
encapsulated, of course, the most egregious attack on the Church’s liberty.
The obvious allusion to Becket’s martyrdom in Magnúss saga lengri
brings us to this text’s composite elements. Apart from the authorial
prologue, Magnúss saga lengri combines two texts: Orkneyinga saga, in
a version close to the Flateyjarbók text of this saga, and a lost Latin
Life of St Magnús which Magnúss saga lengri attributes to ‘Meistari
Rodbert’ (‘Master Robert’). The identity of Robert is uncertain. Finnbogi
Guðmundsson, the editor of the St Magnús material in Íslensk fornrit,
suggested he was Robert of Cricklade (ca.1100–1174/79), a prior of St
Frideswide’s priory in Oxford.58 Finnbogi’s reasoning centred on Robert
55 Tractates on the Gospel of John/St Augustine, trans. by John W. Rettig (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 190.
56 Haki Antonsson, ‘Two Twelfth-Century Martyrs: St Thomas of Canterbury and St
Magnús of Orkney’, in Sagas, Saints and Settlements, ed. by Paul Bibire and Gareth
Williams (Leiden: Brill 2004), 56–57.
57 James Robertson (ed.). Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury
(Canonized by Pope Alexander III, AD 1173), 7 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1875–1885), vol.
2, 80–82.
58 Finnbogi Guðmundsson (ed.). Finnbogi’s insights in this matter were likely prompted by a
footnote in A. B. Taylor’s English translation of Orkneyinga saga. Orkneyinga saga: A New
Translation, trans. by A. B. Taylor (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1938), 75 (fn. 1).