priest baptized Gizzur, the father of the first native bishop of Iceland, but it seems that he did not generally meet with desired success, and he soon returned to Norway; where the king rebuked him for having accomplished so little, and despatched, to take his place, another priest, Thermon, whom the Icelanders named Thormodh, and whose words were accompanied with such efficacious grace of the Holy Ghost that in a short time paganism gave way to Christianity.1 His work of conversion was completed in the year 1000 by two more missionary priests from Norway, Gissur the White and Hjalti Skeggeson or Hall of Sida, who, unlike their predecessors, says Gravier, peacefully accomplished their holy errand. The first magistrate of Iceland, Thorgeir, the lögman himself, had been won over to Christianity, and nothing remained to do, in order to more firmly establish the conversion of the people, than to accept in general convention the Christian religion as the religion of the State.2

This important event took place the same year at the national Althing. The assembly of the people's representatives was greatly disturbed at first by the few who wanted still to uphold the disowned god Thor by the power of his hammer; but the calm of the Christians, the indifference of some pagans, and, above all, the authority and the prudence of Thorgeir, succeeded in having the Christian religion almost unanimously adopted by the government of the country. It was decreed that Christian worship could be practised publicly, that Sundays and the days of fast and of the greater Christian festivals should be enforced by law,

1 Maurer, S. 72; An Ancient Chronicle, ap. Storm, p. 21.

2 Gravier, pp. 48, 49; Moosmüller, S. 49.

3 An Ancient Chronicle, ap.

Storm, p. 21; Hin forna Lögbók Islendinga sem nefnist Grágás, pt. i. p. xxi; Maurer, S. 81; Langebek, t. iii. p. 37, from Annales Islandorum Regii.

and that, on the contrary, all public rites of paganism should be proscribed. The pagans, however, remained free to worship in private circles; nor was there any change made, at that time, in the ancient customs regarding the use of sacrificed horse-meat and the exposing of infants.1

It had taken the missionary priests and bishops but a few short years to work this radical and peaceful change of Iceland's religion; but it is generally observed that, already long before, idolatry had lost its hold on the Scandinavian freebooters, better informed in Ireland and Iceland itself through their daily intercourse with Christian people. The principal occupation of the missionaries had been to purify the religious practices of those who called themselves Christians already; it had not been necessary to convince the heathens of their errors, but only to instruct them in the truths of divine revelation.2

Although Iceland had now become a formally Christian country, it suffered for many more years from scarcity of clergymen; because, evidently unable yet to supply itself the priests that were needed, it could obtain but a few of those raised among older Christian nations, who were eagerly sought by the newly converted people of the mother country. To provide more efficaciously for the wants of the numerous new churches, it was usual at that time to consecrate quite a number of regionary or missionary bishops, who, without any determined see or steady residence, were going forth from province to province, establishing parishes, ordaining priests, and, as a rule, harmoniously governing the Christians under their zealous charge. The

1 Hin forna Lögbók Islendinga, sem nefnist Grágás, pt. i. p. xxi, and n. 2, ibid.

2 Cf. Maurer, S. 81, 82; Beamish, Discovery, p. xxviii.

following names of Iceland's regionary bishops have been preserved:

Frederic,' mentioned above.

Olaf.2

Bjarnvadr, son of the wise Vilrad, probably an Englishman who sailed to Iceland at the wish of St. Olaf.3 Colus, about the year 1025.*

Rudolf, from Rouen in Normandy, who labored in Iceland for nineteen years, from 1030 to 1049.5

Henry, a German, it seems, who remained on his mission at least two years; and

The Saxon Bernhard, from the year 1047 until 1066.6

7

Messenius states that in the year 1055-but more likely in 1049-Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, consecrated, as bishop of the diocese of Iceland, the Scot Jón or John, whom the Saga Hungrvaka considers as an Irishman, while in the appendix to the Landnámabók he is called a Saxon. But these different designations are easily explained: he was said to be a Saxon, because he was consecrated in Saxony, and from there he went to Iceland; and it is well known that the terms Irish and Scotch were in the middle ages used indifferently to designate the same Celtic nation.

8

Bishop John remained in Iceland four years, after which, according to Torfæus,' he went to the Greenland colony of Vinland, or to Great Ireland on the American continent, where he died at the hands of the savage aborigines. But, instead of Vinland, the Hungr

2

1 Supra, pp. 126, seq.

Gams, p. 336.

3 Baumgartner, S. 262.

Gams, p. 336.

5 Ibid.; Baumgartner, S. 262. 6 Ibid.

Scandia Illustrata, t. ix. lib. v.

cap. xxii. p. 74, ap. Moosmüller, S. 49.

8 Moosmüller, S. 49; Beauvois, La Découverte, p. 6, n. 3.

• Vinlandia Antiqua, cap. xvi. p. 71, and Introductio.

vaka Saga justly reads "Vindland" or Land of the Wendes, in Prussian Pomerania; where, at Rethra, he was martyred in the year 1066, as it is told by Adam of Bremen,' whose "Johannes Scotus" is doubtless identical with this Irish Jón. Should the Hungrvaka have intended the American Vinland, it would certainly, as was usual, have added the epithet "ed gódha.” The version which Torfæus read in the Additions to the Landnáma must be considered as a mistake or a clerical error.2 Jón is, however, generally considered as a regionary or missionary bishop only, and his departure from the island gives additional weight to this opinion.3 The ancient Icelandic manuscripts name Isleif as the first normal bishop of Iceland, having a fixed residence, -namely, at Skalholt.

Isleif belonged to one of the principal families of the country, and had been sent by his newly converted father to carry on his studies at the flourishing school of Hervorden in Westphalia. He was married and had several children; yet, when his countrymen had resolved to request from their metropolitan, the archbishop of Hamburg, a bishop cognizant of their language, the choice fell upon him, and he consented to assume the burdens of the proffered dignity. He then undertook a journey to Rome, visiting on his way the emperor, Henry IV., and his brother Conrad, whose favors he won by the present of a Greenland bear. The Sovereign Pontiff sent him back to his archbishop, Adalbert, who consecrated him on the feast of Pentecost, the fourth day of June, 1055. With his own

1 Cap. iii. pp. 49, 50.

S. 89; Gams, p. 336; Joan. Isac.

2 Beauvois, La Découverte, p. 6, Pontanus, lib. v., ad an. 1056, p.

n. 3; cf. Alban Butler.

Gams, p. 336; Baumgartner,

S. 262; Aa. passim.

Baumgartner, S. 262; Maurer,

183; Moosmüller, S. 50, who says, however, that Isleif was consecrated in the year 1067.

means he erected on his homestead of Skalholt the cathedral which he dedicated to the apostle St. Peter, after satisfying the claim of his wife upon the half of his possessions.1 His support consisted of "tollar" or taxes levied all over the land, of honoraries on the occasion of ecclesiastical functions, and of fines imposed upon the transgressors of church laws. of church laws. He was assisted and, says the unfriendly Maurer, often hampered in his ministry by the regionary bishops, who were still travelling about in Iceland.2

Isleif died on the 5th of July, 1080, and was succeeded by his son Gizurr, consecrated on September 4, 1082.3 The new bishop firmly established the diocese of Skalholt by the provident regulations which he enacted. Among these was foremost the law in regard to the tithes or taxes on personal and real estate to be paid by all owners in proportion to their sworn-to valuation of their property, a law which had been prepared with the assistance of Saemund Frode and of his son Mark Sceggius, then chief justice of Iceland; and which, through the love of all the people for Gizurr, was unanimously adopted at the general convention of the year 1096. The income of the diocese of Skalholt was so much increased by these tithes and other contributions that it sufficiently exceeded the expenses to allow the erection of a second diocese in Iceland, namely, at Holar or Holum in the North.* Gizurr ended his life just one month after the consecration of his successor, on the 28th of May, 1118.5

The first bishop of Holar was Jón Ögmundarson or

1 Maurer, S. 89; an ancient chronicle, ap. Storm, p. 19. 2 Maurer, S. 89.

For original information concerning the first bishops of Skal

holt, see the "Hungrvaka," pub

lished "Hafniæ,"-i.e., at Copenhagen, A.D. 1778.

Hin forna Lögbók sem nefnist Grágás, p. xxii.

5

Gams, p. 336.