Guðmundur Arason

Guðmundur Arason (; 1161 – March 16, 1237; ) was an influential 12th and 13th century Icelandic saintly bishop who took part in increasing the powers of the Catholic Church in medieval Iceland. His story is recorded in several manuscripts, most notably '' Prestssaga Guðmundar góða''. He is often referred to as ''Guðmundur góði'' (, ; Guðmundr or Gudmund the Good).

Life

Guðmundur was born an illegitimate child in 1161, in Grjótá in Hörgárdalur, Iceland. He was ordained as priest in 1185 at the age of 24. A decade later, he had become one of the most influential clergymen in the Icelandic commonwealth, culminating in his election as bishop of Hólar (the northern one of the two Icelandic bishop seats) in 1203.

He served for some time as house priest to Kolbeinn Tumason, an Icelandic chieftain. In his years as a simple priest, he did not exhibit any interest in strengthening the Church as an institution, and did not seek wealth or other worldly goods. However, he acquired a reputation as pious and devout man, and even as a miracle-worker.

Upon his appointment as bishop, he was committed to continuing the work of his predecessors: namely, preserving the power structure of the Church. However, things quickly went awry. He was amongst the clerical visionaries who praised the virtue of poverty and believed the Church had been led astray by the acquisition of wealth. Both his contemporaries and later generations compared him with Thomas Becket. Guðmundur was generous with the Church's holdings, and soon a great number of impoverished dependents settled around Hólar. His generosity aroused the ire of local chieftains, and tensions escalated, leading to disputes concerning the judicial powers of the see. Guðmundur wanted the see to remain independent from the chieftains who had elected him, and made the first documented attempt in Iceland to maintain the judicial powers of the church over its own members.

Conflict with the Chieftains

Although later legends portray Guðmundur as a peace-seeking bishop, his time in office was marked by frequent political interference, provocative behavior, and refusal to cooperate with the very chieftains who had elevated him. Chief among these was Kolbeinn Tumason, the Orthodox-leaning leader of the Ásbirningar clan and patron of Guðmundur’s early clerical career.

Tensions escalated when Guðmundur asserted unilateral judicial authority over clergy, disregarding existing political agreements and the Icelandic tradition of cooperation between secular and ecclesiastical leaders. In 1208, a confrontation known as the Battle of Víðines broke out after Guðmundur's forces resisted a legal summons issued by Kolbeinn concerning a priest’s misconduct. The battle resulted in Kolbeinn Tumason’s death — crushed by a rock — and marked the beginning of Guðmundur’s political downfall.

Far from being a passive victim, Guðmundur’s escalating behavior contributed significantly to this bloodshed. Several sources, including Sturlunga saga, portray him not as a martyr for justice, but as a divisive and stubborn bishop whose legal rigidity and economic mismanagement strained the Church’s stability and drew condemnation even from the archbishop of Norway.

Guðmundur spent 1214-1218 in Norway, by order of the archbishop, and when he returned home, he played things more delicately. Nevertheless, a large group of poor people were soon living on the Church's charity again. Arnór Tumason, the new leader of the Ásbirnings, travelled to Hólar and scattered the bishop's impoverished followers—Guðmundur remained Arnór's captive for a year. He then travelled around Iceland for three years with his followers. Upon the death of Arnór, Tumi Sighvatsson rose to power in Skagafjörður and claimed Hólar as his own. The bishop's men murdered Tumi in 1222 and Guðmundur was forced to flee to Grímsey, where he was intercepted and made a captive once again. Again, he was sent to Norway to face the archbishop's wrath. He returned to Iceland an old man, and played no significant further part in politics to his death in 1237.

Sainthood

The story of Guðmundr was very much to the Church's advantage. His disputes with the chieftains soon faded from collective memory, but his piety and generosity remained a legend. Within living memory, he was regarded as a holy man (or saint), and in 1315 his physical remains were interred in a grand ceremony under the auspices of Auðunn rauði Þorbergsson, the bishop of Hólar. Guðmundr thus became a sort of national saint, although the Roman Catholic Church has to this day not acknowledged his sainthood. By the time a concerted effort was made to establish Guðmundr's sanctity in the first half of the fourteenth century, papal permission was necessary - and expensive. The steady development of different versions of his saga included the incorporation of miracles not in the earliest versions, such as the story of his encounter with the demon Selkolla.

While local tradition grew around his name, there is no evidence that Guðmundur Arason was ever canonized by the undivided Orthodox Church. His cultus developed centuries after the East–West Schism, primarily under Latin influence, and remains absent from Orthodox calendars. Some Orthodox researchers view the promotion of his sanctity as a posthumous rehabilitation to obscure his role in the violent power struggles of medieval Iceland — particularly his part in the death of Kolbeinn Tumason, a chieftain remembered for his Orthodox hymnody and Christian piety.See ''Sturlunga saga'' (Íslenzk fornrit edition), and Árni Daníel Júlíusson et al., ''Íslenskur sögu atlas'', which document both the ecclesiastical ambitions and political consequences of Guðmundur’s tenure.

Further reading

* Margaret Jean Cormack. 2020.
Gvendarbrunnar of medieval Iceland
in Sacred Waters: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells. Routledge.
*

References

* Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Jón Ólafur Ísberg, Helgi Skúli Kjartansson ''Íslenskur sögu atlas: 1. bindi: Frá öndverðu til 18. aldar'' Almenna bókafélagið, Reykjavík 1989
* ''Saga Guðmundar Arasonar, Hólabiskups, eptir Arngrím ábota''. In: Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Jón Sigurðsson, Þorvaldur Bjarnarson & Eiríkur Jónsson (eds.): ''Biskupa sögur'', gefnar út af hinu íslenzka bókmenntafélagi. Annat bindi. Kaupmannahöfn: í prentsmiðju S. L. Möllers, 1878. pp. 1–220.

Specific

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gudmundur Arason
Arason, Gudmundur
Arason, Gudmundur
12th-century Icelandic people
13th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Iceland
Icelandic Roman Catholic bishops