Greenland . . . Eric, 1121." That he was a bishop at that time is, indeed, universally accepted; and that he left Greenland, or had left it already in that year, for the American continent appears from numerous reliable evidences, as we shall see hereafter.

The "Lögman's Annals" give this prelate the surname Upsi, which should more correctly be Gnupson, from his father, known by the name of Gnup. His ancestry, as recorded in the Landnámabók, ascends to the ancient "herses" or chiefs of the province Sogn in Norway, and shows that Orlyggr the Old, who so zealously contributed to the conversion of Iceland,1 was one of his honored forefathers, who had, for more than a century, occupied the southern portion of Reykiadal, near the present capital of that island."

4

6

Lögman Snorri3 tells us that Eric Gnupson was the first bishop of Greenland, and the "Rimbegla" places him at the head of the bishops of Gardar. The latter saga is followed by several modern writers, although in the Flateyarbók his name is more truthfully mentioned third, inasmuch as he seems to have been the third bishop of Greenland, though not of Gardar. He may, indeed, be the first Greenland bishop who resided for a while near the capital of the eastern province, but the greater number of authors assign him yet to the see of Steines or Straumnes in the western settlement; and this view appears to be the more correct when we read the particulars of the erection of the diocese of Gardar in the year 1123 or 1124. In fact,

Eric ought to be still reckoned among those regionary or missionary bishops who had neither certain revenues nor a determined see, but were assigned by the metropolitan of the province to more or less circumscribed districts, in which they travelled about, preaching, erecting churches, and ordaining priests; choosing for their habitual head-quarters, when they wished, some locality or church, better fitted than others for their personal comfort or the success of their ministrations; as we may presume Steines was during the first century after Greenland's conversion."

1

Whether Eric went over to Gardar, after having resided some time at the former see, is doubtful; nor is it even certain whether he ever was in Greenland at all. We only know that, if he was there, he left the island in or before the year 1121, never to return; as perambulating bishops were apt to do.

Uncertainty and doubt are the rule in all matters pertaining to the history of the northern regionary bishops; and this proceeds from the fact that they were not chosen or appointed by the court of Rome, where ancient records are religiously preserved, but by the metropolitans of Bremen and of Lund, whose sees and archives have been repeatedly destroyed by the barbarians of the North and the Reformers of the South.

There is no need of saying that the primeval Christianities north of Ireland and Scotland originally were under the jurisdiction of the archbishops of Great Britain, and in particular of the archbishop of York; 2 but after Gregory IV. had made St. Ansgar archbishop of Hamburg and his delegate to all the northern countries in the year 835,3 the jurisdiction of the prelates of

1 Torfæus, Gronl. Ant., cap. xxvi. p. 239; Adam Bremensis, ap. Pertz, t. vii. p. 314.

2 Cf. Beauvois, Origines, p. 27. 3 Supra, p. 47.

Hamburg-Bremen gradually expanded, along with the conquests of the Scandinavians in the North Atlantic Ocean. It was to Adalbert of Bremen, as to their supreme pastor, that towards the middle of the eleventh century all the islanders of the North applied for priests and bishops.1

The authority over all the Danish and Scandinavian nations and over their settlements in the Northwest had been repeatedly confirmed by the Roman Pontiffs in favor of St. Ansgar's successors, and in particular by Benedict IX. in the year 1044, by Leo IX. in 1053, and by Victor II. in 1055, in behalf of Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen.2

Pope Paschal II. made an important change in the hierarchy of the North. At the request of King Eric the Good, who visited Rome in the year 1098, Pope Urban II. had promised to discontinue the spiritual subjection of the northern provinces to the archbishops of Hamburg and to grant them a metropolitan of their own. His successor fulfilled the promise by appointing Ascer or Adzer, bishop of Lund in Sweden, as archbishop of that place and metropolitan of all the Scandinavian Christianities. Adzer received the pallium in A.D. 1104, or 1106, as Moosmüller claims,* at the hands of Alberic, the pontifical delegate in Denmark. In the year 1122 Adzer was still the primate of all the North." In consequence of this fact, we can easily admit that, as some writers state, Eric Gnupson was consecrated a bishop by the metropolitan of Lund."

It is not necessary for our present purpose to remark that the ancient rights of the archbishops of HamburgBremen were restored to them by Calixtus II. in the year 1123, and more completely by Innocent II. in 1133,1 that Adzer of Lund was ordered to submit again to the authority of Adalberon, the metropolitan of Hamburg, and that the Hamburgian prelates freely exercised their rightful powers all over the North, until the erection of the archdiocese of Drontheim in the year 1148.

But it is of importance to notice more attentively the unusual privilege which the northern metropolitans had obtained from the Supreme Pontiff,-namely, of erecting new dioceses in their immense ecclesiastical province, and of consecrating, either as resident or as missionary bishops, such of the priests as they might select themselves, or whose presentation by the people they might approve and confirm. It was, indeed, this great power which made Bremen like another Rome, and Archbishop Adalbert like another Pope, as Adam of Bremen remarks; and it was also the very motor and source of the wonderful progress made by Christianity among the Scandinavian nations from the time of St. Ansgar until the total conversion of Greenland.

Gregory IV., in the year 835, and Sergius II., more explicitly, in 846, gave authority to St. Ansgar to "establish churches in convenient places, to consecrate priests, and to ordain bishops for determined districts, of all of whom he should be the archbishop.

993

In like manner did Pope Agapitus II. depute Adaldag, archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, on the 2d of January, 948, to consecrate, in his stead, bishops for

1 Jaffé, Loewenfeld, t. i. pp. 811, 860; Diplomatarium Islandicum, p. 176, n. 27.

2

Jaffé, Loewenfeld, t. i. p. 860.

3

Supra, p. 47; Document LI.

Denmark and for all the countries of the North.1 The zealous prelate made ample use of these faculties.2

3

A bull to the same effect was issued on January 6, 1053, by St. Leo IX., in behalf of the famous Adalbert of Bremen ; and the metropolitan of this see, in the year 1217, was still confirmed in the ancient privilege by Pope Honorius III.*

It is most probable that the archbishop of Lund, Adzer, enjoyed like faculties during the few years of his primacy over the North, and that he rightfully approved the selection which the Greenlanders had made of Eric Gnupson to be their leader in spiritual affairs and, likely also, their adviser in temporal

concerns.

1 Pertz, t. vii. cap. 1. p. 307.

2 The names of the regionary bishops whom he consecrated were still preserved at the end of the eleventh century, although the records did not show to what spe

cial localities they had been assigned. (Pertz, cap. lxix. p. 314 of t. vii.)

3 See Document LII.

Potthast, t. i. p. 493; Raynaldi, t. xx., ad an. 1217, n. 46.