University of Silesia in Katowice

Title: Monasteries on the Edge of the World: Church and Society in Late Medieval Iceland

Acronym: Monasteries

Principle Investigator: Ryder C. Patzuk-Russell

Contact: ryder.patzuk@us.edu.pl

Funding: This research is part of the project No. 2022/45/P/HS3/02670 co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 945339.

Host: The project is being carried out at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Department of Humanities, Institute of History, in the Centre for Nordic and Old English Studies (http://www.cbns.us.edu.pl/). The researchers working at the Centre for Nordic and Old English Studies of the University of Silesia (CBNS) study medieval societies of these regions by focusing on their history, culture, and literature. The research at the CBNS focuses mainly on political and social changes, the ideology of power, and on Old Norse and Old English literature. Studying the history and culture of medieval England, Scandinavia, and the territories of the Northern Atlantic contributes to a better understanding of the European Middle Ages.

Project Description: Monasteries on the Edge of the World: Church and Society in Late Medieval Iceland is a historical project investigating the monasteries and convents of the far northwestern corner of the medieval European world. In the scattered population of this isolated and rural society, the communities of monks and nuns were small and relatively poor, yet they had a powerful impact on the people around them. They were important schools and centers of learning, their graveyards were prestigious sites for wealthy patrons to seek burial in the shelter of continuous monastic prayer, and over the course of the Middle Ages, they became increasingly wealthy and powerful landowners.

While the image of the sequestered and industrious monk is an enduring symbol of the Middle Ages, very little is known about the Icelandic iteration of this compelling figure. What scholarship has been written about them is largely in Icelandic, inaccessible to the general audience, and very difficult for scholars of the medieval church and religious life to engage with. This has meant that the ascetics of Iceland have not been able to take their due place in the historical tapestry of the Middle Ages: a very small place, but a significant one nonetheless. Monasteries on the Edge of the World is part of a growing movement of recent scholarship to finding space in the larger historical narrative for the monks, nuns, canons, hermits and anchorites of this tiny North Atlantic island.

This project has two core aims: to improve our understanding of the nature of monastic culture in Iceland, and to make the sources for this fascinating field of study more accessible. It will take as its focus the later Middle Ages, c. 1262 to c. 1500, a period which has drawn the interest and attention of fewer historians of Iceland than earlier periods, but which also preserves a rich variety of sources. The most important of these sources is The Saga of Bishop Lárentíus, a narrative about Lárentíus Kálfsson (1267-1331), who during the course of his career was a cathedral schoolmaster, a Benedictine monk, a canon law expert, a wandering teacher, and finally a bishop. Alongside the story of this learned and headstrong monk, the project will illuminate a very different type of source: administrative documents. These include contracts for formal schooling, wills and donations to ecclesiastical institutions, and financial arrangements for work, housing, retirement, and burial at monasteries and churches; most of these texts have never been read by a non-Icelandic audience. With all of these tools in hand, important questions can be explored: What did it mean for a wealthy Icelander to ‘retire’ into a monastery, and why did lay people chose to live at or near religious houses? How did monastic education work? What kind of distinctions, divisions, tensions, and conflicts existed between different monastic orders in Iceland?

This project shows how monasteries impacted Icelandic society in a far greater variety of ways than has been understood. They operated within local and international ecclesiastical networks, tying this tiny island to the culture and movements of the mainland; they cultivated learning and trained students, attracted pious patrons, and exercised power in both secular and religious spheres. Understanding how these monks, nuns, and other ascetics were distinct, and how they were similar to their southern peers, helps us better understand the Middle Ages as a whole.

Project Publication Goals

• A full English translation of The Saga of Bishop Lárentíus, published Gold Open Access with Leeds Medieval Studies.
• At least three articles published in Open Access journals dealing with various aspects of the history of Icelandic monasteries, as well as other aspects of late medieval ecclesiastical life and culture.
• A book chapter on education in fifteenth-century Iceland, analyzing education at monasteries alongside other aspects and contexts of teaching and learning

Project News and Updates

June 2023: Publication of “Recent Translations of the Medieval Icelandic Bishops’ Sagas” in Scandinavian-Canadian Studies (https://doi.org/10.29173/scancan241)

June 2023: Conference presentation, (w/Dr. Yoav Tirosh) “Disability and the Icelandic Church in The Saga of Bishop Lárentíus.” The Medieval Church: From Margins to Centre at the University of York. June 26th to 27th 2023.

July 2023: Conference presentation, “Benedikt Kolbeinsson and Lay-Monastic Networks in Fourteenth-Century Iceland.” Leeds International Medieval Congress. July 3rd to 6th 2023.

August 2023: Publication of review of “Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland: The Legacy of Bishop Jón Halldórsson of Skálholt, edited by Gunnar Harðarson and Karl G. Johansson, Leiden: Brill, 2021” in Leeds Medieval Studies 3 (2023) (DOI: 10.57686/256204/25)

November 2023: Academic lecture, “Financing Piety, Work, and Retirement: Exploring Próventa and Próventumenn.” Miðaldastofa lecture series at the University of Iceland. November 9th 2023.

December 2023: Publication of review of “Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, Monastic Iceland, Routledge: London and New York, 2023” in Saga-Book 47 (2023): 177-80.

March 2024: Conference presentation, “Education and Family at a Benedictine Convent in Northern Iceland: The Case of Fifteenth-Century Reynistaður.” Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, University of Notre Dame, March 14th-17th 2024.

April 2024: Release of podcast interview, “Science, Education, Inspiration” in the Uniwersytet Śląski podcast series (https://open.spotify.com/episode/4A7qhptqs8HyTyNsELCLrE?si=a7873edb45834a36)

May 2024: Popular lecture, “The Story of the Conversion of Iceland.” May Archaeological Weekend, Slavs and Vikings’ Center Jomsborg-Vineta-Wolin, May 1st to 5th 2024.

May 2024: Conference presentation, “Fighting over Documents: Performing Church Law in Lárentíus saga.” Kalamazoo 59th Annual Congress on Medieval Studies, May 9th to 11th 2024.

June 2024: Conference presentation, “Hospitality, Excess, and Monasticism in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Drinking in The Saga of Bishop Lárentius.” Vice & Virtue Part 1: Drinking in the Nordic and Germanic Countries, Sorbonne University, June 12th to 14th 2024.

July 2024: Publication of “Icelandic Hospitals, Clergy, and Disability in the Saga of Bishop Lárentíus,” co-authored with Dr. Yoav Tirosh, in Mirator 24 (2024): 1-17 (https://journal.fi/mirator/article/view/141618/93737)

August 2024: Popular lecture, “The Story of the Conversion of Iceland.“ Festiwal Słowian i Wikingów, Slavs and Vikings’ Center Jomsborg-Vineta-Wolin, August 1st to 4th 2024.

September 2024: Conference presentation, “Bilingual Learning in Medieval Iceland: Latinity and Vernacularity in the Old Norse World.” Multilingualism and Education in Pre-Modern Europe, Prague, September 19th-20th 2024