Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

311

ART. IV.-1. Biskupa Sögur, gefnar út af hinu Iskuzka Bókmenta fèlagi. Kaupmannahöfn, 1858-1862.

2. Kristni Saga, nec non Thattr af Isleifi Biskupi. Hafniæ, 1773.

3. Hungurvaka Saga, ok Thattr af Thorvalldi Vidförla. Hafniæ, 1778.

4. Historia Ecclesiastica Islandia. FINNI JOHANNEI. Hafniæ, 1772-1778.

5. Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume. KONRAD MAURER. München, 1855-56.

PROBABLY no nation is as rich as the Icelandic in records of the everyday acts of private and social life in times far removed from our own. Iceland having no political position and history, the chroniclers of the island occupied their pens in detailing all particulars that could be of any interest in the lives of their chiefs, bishops, and lawgivers; so that in their writings we have set before us a minute picture of the social life of the Norsemen from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries.

[ocr errors]

If the wars and political changes which wrecked and reconstructed Europe affected the remote frozen island hardly at all, there were yet quarrels and changes, small and insignificant enough when compared with those being carried out on an extensive scale elsewhere, but equally calculated to elicit manly virtues as high and pure as those which characterised the heroes of chivalry, and incidents as striking and poetical as any which European history has made famous. Adam of Bremen (A.D. 1067), in his Ecclesiastical History, speaks thus: Spending a 'holy life in great simplicity, since they seek for nothing beyond 'what nature yields, the Icelanders can cheerfully say with the "Apostle, "having food and raiment, let us be therewith con'tent." For they have their mountains for towns, and springs 'for their delight. Happy, I say, the race whose poverty no one 'envies, and happiest in this, that they have now all received 'Christianity. There are many remarkable points among their customs, especially charity, from which it comes that, with 'them, all things are common both to strangers as well as to 'natives. For a king they have a bishop, and to his nod all the 'people attend. Whatever he has laid down, whether from God

[ocr errors]

'or from Scripture, or from the customs of other nations, that 'they have for law.'

The Icelandic Literary Society has been rendering historians a good service in publishing the Lives of the Ancient Bishops from the MSS. which had long been lying neglected in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, and we can only regret that the Society has not added a Latin translation, so as to render them accessible to those who are not familiar with the old Norse tongue.

As affording us an insight into the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Church when establishing herself on fresh soil, and adapting herself to the peculiarities of an intelligent and vigorous people, they are of singular interest.

Iceland accepted Christianity as the established religion in the year 1000, at the National Council, or Althing. At that time there were many Christians in the island, and already buildings had been erected as oratories, but were not served by priests. There was also a large party of men disposed to favour the new religion, not from conviction of its truths, but swayed by political motive. The Icelanders were a merchant-people, and their paganism interfered prejudicially with their trading between Christian ports.

Three missions had been sent to Iceland, but none had succeeded in doing more than converting a few natives here and there; but when King Olaf Tryggvason sent an embassy to the island insisting on its becoming Christian if it wished to trade with Norway, and threatening death to those who ventured into his harbours unless they were baptized, the National Council felt that whatever might be the advantage in another world of accepting the religion of the Cross, the advantage in this world was too palpable to be rejected, and Christianity became established by law before there was a priest in the island.

The Church had now simply to occupy the field opened freely to her, and to which she was cordially invited. The manner in which the task was accomplished is curious.

The heathen commonwealth of Iceland had been patriarchal in government. In each fjord lived a great chief, with numerous retainers. Small farmers became clients of the chief of their district, If he refused to take up their quarrels they were at liberty to transfer their allegiance to some other chief; and where the land was rich, and there were many wealthy men, the rivalry between the chiefs was great, and entailed long-standing feuds. Each chief of a district was a godi or priest, and offered sacrifice in behalf of his clients. The number of these priests was limited, and if a chieftain lost his wealth and friends. he often was relieved of his priesthood as well, by an aspiring neighbour.

The possession of a godord, or temple-right, was the highest honour a man could obtain next to being elected lawgiver for the whole island. The godi was not priest and chieftain merely, but he was magistrate for the district as well, and settled lawsuits which were not of such importance as to be referred to the great council held once in the year at Thingvalla.

Directly that Christianity became the established religion, a spirit of rivalry sprang up among the chiefs, who vied with one another in building churches, each being eager by that means to secure for himself a pre-eminence in his fjord or valley, as being the one who possessed the church, and the one therefore who, under the new order of things, would occupy a position analogous to the godi of former times: to this was also added the hope that, by securing the burials of his clients in the churchyard of his own dedication, he would attach their relatives to him by a right which they would hardly venture to dispute. The Eyrbyggja Saga also tells us that an impression prevailed, that the man who built a church had as many places to dispose of in heaven as there were seats in the church he erected on earth.

The law did not enjoin the building of sacred edifices, but required that those who built them should maintain them in repair, and should provide for the necessities of public worship. Each church, inasmuch as it was built on land belonging to a chief, became the personal property of that chief, and those who attended it did so by his permission, and were thereby laid by him under an obligation.

The number of missionaries sent over from Norway being very few, there were but two ways open to the chiefs of supplying the altars they had set up with priests to officiate at them. One was by being ordained themselves; the other was by obtaining the ordination of one of their clients, or domestic servants. A priest had no fixed salary. All he had to live upon was what his lay master chose to allow him, or what he could get by fees. The patriarchal system of the old religion had accustomed the Icelanders to expect their chiefs to act as priests, and consequently we find many of these large farmers-for they were nothing more-ministering to their retainers, relatives, and clients in the churches they had themselves erected. On these men their priestly character necessarily sat light, and their lives were rather those of worldlings than of clerics. We read of an acolythe Kalfr, who was the largest farmer in the north land' (Sturlunga S. v. c. 27); of a priest Ingimund, who commanded a merchant-vessel trading in wine, corn, honey, and clothes (Sturlunga S. iii. c. 6); of several priests invested with the magistracy, and even with the office of supreme lawgiver.

[ocr errors]

The churches that had been built were invariably of wood. As late as the thirteenth century it was a matter of amazement that the cathedral of Holar did not fall when all the bells were rung; and then a stone church was the greatest rarity.

[ocr errors]

The old Church laws of Iceland mention cases where a chief had possession of a church, and provided for his educating a youth to be priest in it. It is permitted to the man to have a little priest trained for the church. He must make the agreement with the youth himself when he is sixteen years old, but 'if he is younger, then the covenant must be made with his legal 'protector. And the agreement shall be held inviolate that they 'make with one another. No further engagement is made than 'that the man takes lawfully a priestling, and he is bound to 'support and educate him, and so to bring the youth up that it may not bring discredit on the lad or his relations; and he 'must treat him as his own child. But if the young man will 'not learn, and if he hates his books, then he is to be set to 'other work, and used hard, but not so that he may in any way 'be wounded or bruised. And if he wishes to return to his learning, then he is to be kept to it. And when he has been ordained, and is a priest, then the man who had him educated is bound to provide him with vestments and books for the The priest is to serve the church for which he has 'been educated, and there every holyday he is to sing a mass 'and matins and vespers, unless reasonably hindered. The 'man who is churchwarden (i.e. the guardian and proprietor of 'the church) has the power, if he is dangerously ill, of making over his priest to his relations; and in that case, should the 'churchwarden recover, the priest is free. But when the priest 'dies and leaves property behind him, then the church and the 'churchwarden inherit three hundred ounces, and if he has 'more, the rest goes to the relatives of the deceased.'

6

6

'mass.

This law is exceedingly curious. It shows us how completely the chaplain was the slave of the master, and how absolute was the ancient power of the churchwarden. These priests were necessarily under the entire control of their patron, and they were by him, as appears in the civic laws, regarded in precisely the same light as hired labourers. Thus the Sturlunga Saga' tells of a priest who was employed by his master in housebuilding; and in the numerous quarrels between the chiefs during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the clergy dealt blows in their patrons' behalf as stoutly as other domestic servants. So we hear of Priest Knutr always going armed; of Priest Hogni chopping a man down who would not lend him his boat; of another priest, Adalrikr, killing a farmer who had charged him with theft; and of a Priest John, who took part in

a fray and killed his master's adversary when asking to be allowed to confess.

The position of the bishop was hardly less beset with difficulties than that of the priest. The bishops were at first simply missionary bishops, ad hoc ipsum ordinati, ut gentibus prædi'casent verbum Dei' (Theod. Monachus, c. 8), without fixed sees; so that we find the same man at one time in Denmark, at another in Norway, then in Iceland, and afterwards in Greenland.

The first resident bishop in Iceland was Isleif, son of Gizur the White. Later, the episcopal residence was fixed at Skalholt; and later still, a second bishopric was established at Holar. For the maintenance of the bishops the old temple-tax was awarded; this was a small rate which had been levied in heathen times on all landowners, for the support of the ancient religion and its rites, and it became now the revenue of the bishop. But the sum was too small for the purpose, and it was of neces sity that the head of the Icelandic Church should be a man of large private means. Of Isleif we are told :-' He was pinched in his housekeeping, in such demand was his money; the incomings were small and the outgoings great, consequently his housekeeping was a matter of difficulty' (Hungurvaka, c. 2); and again:When he returned to his bishop's seat he was at Skalholt, but, because half his land was the personal property ' of Dalla his wife, it was difficult for him to manage; for at 'that time there was no tithe, but a rate was laid on all land' (Isleif's Thattr). When Gizur, the second bishop, fixed the episcopal residence at Skalholt, he endowed it with his own property, and the rights of his mother Dalla were again an impediment to his liberality, as they had been to his father and predecessor in the see.

6

[ocr errors]

'At first, during a portion of his episcopate, he could not occupy all the land at Skalholt, as Dalla, his mother, claimed half as her own during life; but when she was dead, and the bishop inherited the whole of the property, then he made it over to the church at Skalholt, and which he himself erected. This church was thirty ells long, and he dedicated it to the Apostle Peter; many other costly gifts did he give to this church, lands and moveable property, and made all over to it, on condition that it should be for ever the bishop's seat, as long as Iceland is inhabited and Christianity is maintained. Bishop Gizur gave the church at Skalholt the white vestment with purple, which since has been used as the best.'— Hungurvaka, c. 5.

The condition of the Church was greatly improved by the introduction of the tithe, which was imposed on all the land in 1097, during the reign of Gizur. The Hungurvaka' gives this account of it:—

« PredošláPokračovať »