Medieval Icelandic bishops' lives

The article discusses the information given at the end of Jómsvíkinga saga, where Búi digri after the battle of Hjǫrungavágr is said to have transformed into a dragon. This story is analysed in the light of some other sources which might elucidate the episode: Jómsvíkingadrápa, which confirms that the story of Búi’s transformation is essential in the Jómsvíking story, Þorskfirðinga saga, which ends in a similar way with the hero transforming into a dragon, Árngrímr abóti’s Guðmundar saga byskups, and Árni Jónsson’s Guðmundardrápa, which both relate bishop Guðmundr’s encounter with the dragon in Hjǫrungavágr. The article argues for a direct connection between Jómsvíkinga saga and Þorskfirðinga saga and uses this connection to question the standard picture of Þorskfirðinga saga as a late, “post-classical” saga influenced by fornaldarsögur. The treatment of the dragon story in the two works about bishop Guðmundr is used to interpret how the story about Búi was perceived by the contemporary audience.

""Malgré un paysage rural marqué par l'aridité du climat, des conditions de vie âpres et difficiles et un peuplement dispersé qui ignore le rassemblement en village, l'Islande médiévale a su produire une institution originale, les hreppar. Cette organisation que nous traduirons en français par "communauté d'habitants" offre un modèle unique d'assistance aux pauvres et de solidarité rurale dans l'ensemble du monde nordique. L'institution obéit à des codes très précis, comme l'atteste la section consacrée aux indigents, dans le recueil de loi rédigé en langue vernaculaire (vieil-islandais) et connu sous le nom de Grágás. On y apprend par exemple que les membres se réunissent deux fois par an pour célébrer une libation et un festin rituel et offrir des "dons de nourriture" (matgjafir) aux indigents.

Le présent article reprend le dossier concernant l'origine des hreppar tout en proposant une nouvelle explication tenant compte d'autres structures contemporaines, comme les ghildes norvégiennes ou anglo-saxonnes et les institutions charitables de l'Église. L'introduction de la dîme et sa codification au tournant du XIe siècle semble marquer la véritable naissance du hreppur comme organisation de secours mutuel et d'assistance, offrant un encadrement des individus les plus pauvres et leur permettant de survivre malgré leur précarité.

L'article ne s'occupera que de la première phase de développement des hreppar. Il ne prendra pas en compte les développements ultérieurs des communautés d'habitants, notamment en rapport avec la nouvelle société seigneuriale qui se développe dans l'Islande du XIIIe siècle.""

This work attempted to offer a new reading of the society of medieval Iceland through the prism of the communities of inhabitants. Using concepts from historians of the medieval West and a thorough examination of the corpus at our disposal, we managed to discover how the communities of inhabitants came to existence and function during the 11th and 13th centuries. They assumed with the adoption of the Tithe Laws the functions that parishes could perform in other parts of the medieval West. Around 1100, we observe a change within a society where large landowners became local chieftains and assumed power based on their control of the territory and the community. During our period, the Icelandic society was complex and could be approached through the elites, the peasants and the needy or in other words: verticality, horizontality, and charity.

By the early 14th century, when Icelandic sagas and poetry had matured into an impressive literary system of their own, a new generation of saga writers seem to have developed a taste for importing themes, motifs, and story patterns into their sagas that were evidently picked up from continental literature, mainly those of Latin and French. In the best of these sagas we see a cultivation of playful virtuosity in the style, an increased richness of descriptive language, alliteration, and parodic exaggeration; even an ironic narrative stance, though the underlying meaning of the irony may defy definition. Equally decisive for the development of the art of the Icelandic saga in this period is the emergence of structural unity. In the early sagas, what unity there was in the narrative as a whole tended to derive from the organic unity inherent in an individual's life story, and a certain balanced vision of human existence. Though difficult to generalize, the narrative structure of these early sagas is highly episodic, rendering them rather amorphous as texts, a quality they share with most of contemporary Latin narratives. But starting from the 14th century, Icelandic literary artists begin increasingly to glue narrative episodes together, as it were, by employing such Aristotelian plot artifices as 'hidden identity,' 'recognition,' and even 'apparent death' (from classical romance), not to mention recurring significant items, such as rings, weapons, armor, and clothing. The most favoured structural innovation of this period was the bridal-quest scheme, an overall story pattern so loved by saga writers and their audiences that it soon became near irresistible.1 Another very useful scheme of this kind, especially important for the present study, is 'frame narrative,' sometimes called 'Rahmenerzählung' from its frequent use in German 19th-century story collections. Although this structural artifice did not become popular in Icelandic sagas, it was occasionally used, and deserves study because of its potential for revealing the precise sources of the new practitioners of saga writing. As is well known, earlier scholars of Old Norse-Icelandic literature were sometimes baffled by these innovative imports, into what they regarded as a pristine and indigenous tradition, complete and not in need of embellishment, though their censure differs substantially depending on whether they are 17th-century Lutheran historicists, 18th-century belletrists, or the romantic nationalists cum folklorists of more recent times. What should not be forgotten, of course, in the often critical evaluation of 14th-century innovations in Icelandic saga narrative, is the fact that from the early 12th century Icelandic literature had developed its distinctive features in a formative dialogue with Latin letters. Thus, by the 14th century it had already incurred a considerable debt to the figures and schemes of Old and New Testament narrative, Latin hagiography, historiography and pseudohistoriography. It is not for nothing that The Prose Edda and Ynglinga saga derive the origins of Nordic culture from 'Turkey' and Troy, as did the Franks theirs, and later, the French in imitation of the Romans (who in turn built on early Greek legends about the foundation of Rome). Already in the 11th and 12th century the most learned Icelanders of whom we have records, the bishops Ísleifr and his son Gizurr, Saemundr of Oddi, Teitr of Haukadalr, and his son Gizurr the lawspeaker, St Þorlákr, and Páll his successor as bishop of Skálholt, were educated not in Iceland or even Scandinavia, but on the continent or even in Norman England. Icelandic book production in general-the Gothic script derived from the Carolingian script, and the advanced systems of denotation, abbreviations, and ligatures that came with it-was imported to Iceland and borrowed from continental literacy. And yet no other literature has, to the same extent as the Icelandic medieval corpus, defined, both in prose and poetry, the peculiar qualities that count as the essence of Nordic or Germanic culture and identity. Indeed, the Icelandic skalds and saga writers almost single-handedly created what we know as the Nordic and Germanic medieval heritage. Even the 14th-century genre of rímur, Icelandic verse romances which in form and outlook ultimately derive from the French verse romance, respects

"Dominicans in the Medieval Society of Northern Europe
- Friars and Sisters of the Dominican Order and Their Interaction With the Rest of Society in the Northern Provinces"

Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Order of Preachers, this conference aims to explore the multiple ways in which the Dominican Order engaged with the rest of medieval societies in the northern provinces of the Order. This is meant to involve all sorts of encounters, positive and negative, with all groups of lay society as well as the rest of the Church, secular and regular clergy alike. The conference will be interdisciplinary, including written sources as well as archaeology, architecture and art, taking off in anything from theology to economy, from ideals to practice, and from macro studies to the individual. The northern perspective is chosen in order to analyse and discuss the role of the Dominican Order outside its traditional centre in southern France and north-central Italy, in a collective and comparative range across the northern provinces (Anglia, Francia, Saxonia, Teutonia, Bohemia, Polonia and Dacia). Focus will also be directed at the female branch of the Dominican Order, a topic that remains widely unchallenged by scholarship, but still holds very promising questions for future studies.

Conference venue: University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Date: 7-8 November 2016.
Paper proposal (max. 200 words) to Johnny G.G. Jakobsen ([email protected]) by 15 December 2015

The conference is organised by Lars Bisgaard, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Southern Denmark,
and Johnny G.G. Jakobsen, Centre for Dominican Studies of Dacia, University of Copenhagen,
as "The 37th Symposium Organised by Centre for Medieval Studies".

For an online version of this CfP: http://jggj.dk/OP2016CfP.htm

BLURB: Episcopal power permeated European society between 900 and 1400 through the participation of bishops in a range of ecclesiastical and secular activities. Indeed, the centrality of the episcopal office in medieval society has piqued the interest of many scholars in the activities of bishops during this period.  However, their attention has often been drawn towards extraordinary episcopal personalities whose power dominated their respective political or cultural milieu. The purpose of this volume is to consider the foundation of episcopal power in medieval Europe by examining its development at the level of local society.  Its essays are divided into three sections: essays in the first section examine the construction of episcopal power in local society; in the second, the essays look at its augmentation; and in the final section, some of the ways episcopal power was expressed in local society are considered. The essays have a broad geographical scope and include studies focused on English, French, Italian and Icelandic dioceses.


ESSAY ABSTRACT: Melissa Julian-Jones, ‘Sealing Episcopal Identity: The Bishops of England 1200-1300’, Episcopal Power and Local Society 900-1400, eds. Peter R. Coss, Angelo Silvestri, Melissa Julian-Jones and Chris Dennis, (forthcoming, proposal currently with Brepols)

From the thirteenth century onwards, bishops of England began to connect themselves more explicitly with their secular kin than in previous centuries, until by the fourteenth century the display of heraldic devices on bishops’ seals and coats of arms above effigies had become standardized practice. Focusing on the socio-political background of the Barons’ War and the turbulence of Henry III’s Minority, this essay will explore the ways in which visual expressions of episcopal identity began to shift, with special reference to the seals used by the thirteenth century bishops. The essay will consider the factors that influenced this shift, and seek to identify avenues of future study with reference to the world of sigillographic historiography.

The article discusses the information given at the end of Jomsvikinga saga, where Bui digri after the battle of Hjǫrungavagr is said to have transformed into a dragon. This story is analysed in the light of some other sources which might elucidate the episode: Jomsvikingadrapa, which confirms that the story of Bui’s trans­formation is essential in the Jomsviking story, Þorskfirðinga saga, which ends in a similar way with the hero transforming into a dragon, Arngrimr aboti’s Guð­mundar saga byskups, and Arni Jonsson’s Guðmundardrapa, which both relate bishop Guðmundr’s encounter with the dragon in Hjǫrungavagr. The article argues for a direct connection between Jomsvikinga saga and Þorskfirðinga saga and uses this connection to question the standard picture of Þorskfirðinga saga as a late, “post-classical” saga influenced by fornaldarsogur. The treatment of the dragon story in the two works about bishop Guðmundr is used to interpret how the story about Bui was perceived by the contem...

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on epistolary culture as it had developed in the ecclesiastical milieu surrounding the Hólar diocese by the close of the fourteenth century. Additionally, it further aims to establish whether connections to other kinds of administrative literacy, such as the exchange of written communications from the Niðarós archdiocese, influenced this practice. The article seeks to achieve these aims through the comparative treatment of four works by Einarr Hafliðason (c. 1307-1393), a priest, steward and officialis of Hólar who produced diverse administrative, historical, and narrative writings throughout his scribal career. The fact that we may attribute the authorship of these four works to Einarr with a fair degree of certainty allows for a unique investigation of attitudes to and anxieties about charter practice as they appear in his authorship. Einarr’s narrative voice has revealed itself as preoccupied with what he deems proper conduct within epistolary culture. He seems to advocate for a higher level of respect for the physical charter while remaining aware of the limitations of the written word, both when it comes to its judicial power and its communicative potential.