medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Thorlak Thorhallsson (Thorlac; Ţorlákr Ţórhallsson; Ţorlákur Ţórhallsson) is Iceland's patron saint. Prior to his consecration as bishop of Skálholt in 1178 by the bishop of Nidaros he had been abbot of the recently founded (1168) house of Augustinian canons at Thykkvibaer. He opposed simony and lay patronage, was celibate when many Icelandic clerics were not, and left an interesting penitential discussed in John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, _Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principal _Libri Poenitentiales_ and Selections from Related Documents_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), pp. 354-358.
Thorlak died in 1193. Numerous postmortem miracles were ascribed to him; a Latin _Vita et Miracula_ (now surviving only in fragments and abbreviations) came into existence by the end of the century. Here's a particularly Icelandic example from among those recounted in the early thirteenth-century _Ţorláks saga helga_ as translated by Armann Jakobsson and David Clark (_The Saga of Bishop Thorlak_; London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2013):
"One young man rode carelessly where there were volcanic vents and his horse’s feet were burned so that people thought it would die. Then the blessed Bishop ţorlákr was invoked and in a few days the horse was completely healed. They gave thanks to God and to the holy Bishop ţorlákr for this incident."
<http://www.medievalists.net/2015/07/10/miracles-from-medieval-iceland/>
In 1198 bishop Páll Jónsson of Skálholt (Thorlak's nephew and successor) enshrined Thorlak's relics his cathedral. In the following year Thorlak's cult was officially extended to the entire country with a feast on 23. December. The shrine was destroyed during the Reformation. Thorlak was canonized papally in 1984 when St. John Paul II proclaimed him patron saint of Icelanders. Today (23. December) is Thorlak's feast day in Iceland and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
St. Thorlak Thorhallsson as depicted (second from right; from left, those figured are an angel, Bl. Gudmund [Guđmundr] Arason, St. Jón of Hólar, St. Thorlak, and an angel) on a fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century embroidered frontal from the cathedral of Hólar, now in the National Museum of Iceland:
http://tinyurl.com/h99xknp
Detail views (Thorlak Thorhallson):
http://tinyurl.com/zk833ns
http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/saint-thorlak.png
Detail view (Gudmund Arason and Jón of Hólar) for the object's texture:
https://thebrookses.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/img_0306.jpg
Gleđilega Ţorláksmessu!
--John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
|