2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies

Abstract

The literature of medieval Scandinavia reflects a world in transition; oral culture gives way to written; regional autonomy to national monarchy; and traditional religion to Christianity, to name a few. These are macro-level transformations, but underlying and supporting them are myriad stories of the lone individual in transformation. One of these is Guðmundr Arason, a popular (yet controversial) 12th and 13th century Icelandic bishop locally recognized as a saint. This paper uses Guðmundr’s narrative in Sturlunga saga as a case study for evaluating the process by which an individual is transformed into something new—in this case, a “saintly bishop.” Medieval hagiographical texts often suggest that saints and bishops were divinely predestined as such, their inevitable rise heralded in dreams and visions at their birth. Alternately, some medieval writers seem to view the transformation of their subjects as confined within the ceremonial acts of ordination, consecration, or canonization. Both of these views minimalize the transformative process. My research uses a close reading of the text to argue that Guðmundr’s transformation is nuanced, long-term, and ongoing—beginning in his formative years and continuing well beyond his ordination and consecration. Far from a foregone conclusion, his status as both bishop and saint were challenged in his lifetime, and continue to be contested today. This paper offers a more fluid and expansive set of criteria by which Guðmundr’s transformative journey to sainthood may be recognized and evaluated. It is part of a larger dissertation, which uses the same criteria to evaluate 12th century narratives of individuals in the process of becoming bishops or kings. Through this approach, I hope to lay a foundation for broader research into other types of personal transformation, and shed light on the ways in which accumulated individual transformations contribute to the larger, macro-level transformations of the medieval Scandinavian world.

Becoming a Bishop-Saint: Personal Transformation in the Narrative of Iceland's Guðmundr Arason

There's a lot of change happening in the long twelfth century: Charles Haskins famously viewed the period as a "renaissance before the Renaissance," with large-scale shifts in education, law, bureaucracy, commerce, science and the arts. But I'm interested in change on a much smaller scale--an individual scale, actually. I'm interested in personal transformation--how does someone "become" something they were not before? How does a child become an adult? How does an apprentice become a master? How does a pagan become a Christian? How does a soldier become a crusader? How does a rural peasant become...well, mostly an urban peasant?

Unfortunately, most of these personal transformations, while they were certainly happening, were not extensively written about. But with lives of bishops and saints, on the other hand, we have a substantial body of literature that is also developing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. My research looks at how that sort of personal transformation was perceived to have happened, and how it was written about. What I find is that there tends to be a gap between those two things: The author's perception of how a person became a bishop or a saint, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the process the author actually describes in the narrative itself.

The perception, which is overly simplistic, and reflected in the literary conventions of hagiography, generally boils down to one of two things: First, in a sort of authorial hindsight, is the perception that the individual was "predestined" from birth to become a bishop or a saint. He or she was always holy, evidenced in childhood, and therefore a static character--no transformation needed. The second common perception, favored by medieval chroniclers and even present-day historians, is that an individual "became" a bishop upon consecration to the office, or "became" a saint upon canonization. The transformation is therefore instantaneous, limited to a single point in time and wrapped up neatly with an official ceremony. In both cases, the transformation is externally conferred--either by God or by a church-sanctioned entity. Both perceptions give short shrift to the agency of the individual, to wider cultural and societal influences, and to the development of the character in the narrative arc itself. Both perceptions also tend to presume that once attained--whether at birth, consecration or canonization--the process of transformation is substantially complete. One cannot "un-become" a bishop or a saint. On the rare occasion where this seems to happen, the transformation is deemed illegitimate--it never really happened to begin with.

But upon a closer reading, the narratives themselves often paint a very different picture: Personal transformation is indeed a process that unfolds over time. It is precarious, influenced by a myriad of factors (not least of which is the individual undergoing the change), and it is never quite concluded. Today, I'd like to use the narrative of Guðmundr Goði (Guðmundr the Good) as presented in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga to illustrate how those perceptions and processes unfold.

Guðmundr Arason was born in 1161 in Iceland, three nights after Michaelmas. According to the author of the saga, his birth is accompanied by a prophecy that "if it lived, the child would prove to be outstanding among other men" (II.95). All of my quotations today are from Julia McGrew's 1974 English translation of Sturlunga saga, in consultation with the 2021 Íslenzk fornrit edition in Old Norse. So here we have the first obligatory birth-prophecy, typical of hagiographic convention. Another episode related by the saga is almost certainly borrowed from the life of Saint Ambrose: Whenever young Guðmundr would play with his childhood friends, "he was given a mitre, crozier, vestments, church and altar to play the bishop, while his friends "played the soldier with axe, shield and weapons" (II.101).

Both episodes give a nod to the idea that Guðmundr was predestined to become a great bishop, but there is certainly more to his childhood: The saga also notes that Guðmundr is the product of an illegitimate birth--which meant, according to the saga, that "he could not inherit his father's property," and therefore "his kinsmen decided (my emphasis on "decided") that he would be best provided for by becoming a scholar." When put to the books, the saga also describes young Guðmundr as "very stubborn," "overbearing [in] temperament," and that he would generally "seek to have his own way" (II.100). Clearly, at least some amount of transformation is needed in order for Guðmundr to become a saintly bishop.

So where does this transformation begin? In his 19th year, Guðmundr is shipwrecked and injured on the return leg of a journey abroad. When he finally returns home, the narrator tells us "it was thought that the greatest change in his disposition had occurred during that winter when he was laid up after the shipwreck . . . Thereafter, each year saw some improvement in his conduct and behavior, so that eventually he seemed to have become quite a different man, in every way, from what he had promised to be when he was young" (II.114). Here we might flag "traumatic experiences" as a key part of the transformative process. And the mention that "each year saw some improvement" implies that the transformation is gradual.

Another traumatic experience occurs shortly after Guðmundr's ordination to the priesthood: He learns of the death of a close friend, and we are told (once again) that Guðmundr’s "nature was significantly altered,” leading to an increased commitment to devotional, confessional, and scholarly pursuits. The narrator directly connects these inward, personal developments to external ones:

"Consequently (ON: Þat fylgði ok þessu), many signs were manifested when he blessed springs and performed other special services, and many people attached great importance to these signs as evidence that his way of life was pleasing to God. The ordinary folk had no doubt in their minds about his way of life—they gave him a nickname and called him “Guðmund the Good” (II.114)

What's fascinating about this is that long before the Icelandic church proclaims Guðmundr a bishop or a saint, the "ordinary folk" (ON: alþýðu manna) confer upon him their own title, recognizing his newfound goodness, or sanctity. The word translated here as nickname is kenningarnafn, a name by which one is distinguished or set apart--which makes it similar in semantic range to the etymology for the words "holy" and "sacred." (Johan Fritzer's Old Norwegian dictionary).

For the sake of our limited time, I'm going to skip ahead in the narrative to Guðmundr's election and consecration as Bishop of Hólar in 1203. I should note that Iceland during this period, much like greater Scandinavia and continental Europe, is wrestling with the Roman church over the question of who chooses bishops, and how much authority they ought to have over local affairs. According to traditional Icelandic custom, it is the regional chieftain who chooses his bishop, and in Guðmundr's case, this happens to be his close friend and patron Kolbeinn Tumason. I suppose that if one is chosen by God or the church to be bishop, it doesn't hurt to have also cultivated the support of the right political figures along the way. Here we might flag "acquisition of allies--to include Guðmundr's support from the ordinary folk--as an important part of the process of becoming a bishop.

But even here, the conventional perceptions about transformation resurface: Upon learning of his imminent election, Guðmundr “was so disturbed in his heart that he could neither eat nor sleep with any comfort because of his fear and terror of these events” (II.131). Guðmundr's extreme reluctance to accept the office of bishop puts him in good company, along with Thomas Becket, the Venerable Bede, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, and Saint Martin of Tours, among others. In his comprehensive book on the election of medieval bishops, Robert Benson notes that anything less than extreme reluctance on the part of a potential bishop would be instantly disqualifying. The convention serves to diminish agency on the part of the candidate, and reinforce the inevitability of the selection (or at least the agency of the church).

Interestingly, the narrative does not actually describe Guðmundr's consecration ceremony, which occurs in Norway and is mentioned almost in passing. But shortly after his consecration, he is described by the narrator as “a popular man and easy going” (ON: hógværr) (I.128). If this is an indication of the completed and final status of his transformation, then his friend Kolbeinn Tumason is about to be very surprised. And disappointed. In what can only be described as yet another transformation, Guðmundr unexpectedly takes up the mantle of reformer--publicly challenging the authority of Kolbeinn, and in the process expanding the influence and authority of the church in Iceland. His popularity continues to grow among the "ordinary folk" but greatly diminishes among the aristocratic class. In the remainder of the narrative, he is at various times kidnapped, imprisoned, exiled, or simply ignored. His status as a legitimate bishop becomes contested, even in Rome. And for those who still claim him as bishop, he is often unable to exercise the basic functions of office. Here we might flag "un-becoming"--at least in some critical aspects--as part of the ongoing transformative process.

Guðmundr's identification as a saint forms an interesting "coda" to that process. After his death and the eventual triumph of the church reforms he championed, Guðmundr´s reputation underwent a transformation of its own, and recovered significantly among the aristocratic class, perhaps bolstered by the growing cult of saints elsewhere in Scandinavia, and the recognition of its economic and social profitability. At this point, Guðmundr was already widely regarded in as a saint in Iceland. But in 1234 Pope Gregory IX formalized the process of canonization in church law, requiring authorization from Rome. It is likely that the inclusion of Guðmundr's narrative in Sturlunga saga--and its introduction of certain hagiographic conventions--represents an early push for his official canonization. Several more attempts followed, each spawning another transformation of his narrative, usually with an increase in the number of miracles and other hagiographic conventions. Ultimately, none were successful. But in any case, the Church of Iceland broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1550 and became Lutheran. Classic Lutheran doctrine teaches the "sainthood of all believers," and some--both inside and outside of Iceland, continue to observe Guðmundr's feast day on March 16th, the anniversary of his death. So in other words, he's kind of a saint, but kind of not? Which I find ironic, or maybe appropriate, given Guðmundr's long, complex, and multi-faceted journey of becoming, in an age that was itself in the process of becoming.