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Wandering Clerics and Mixed Rituals in the Early Christian North, c. 1000–c. 1150

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

ILDAR H. GARIPZANOV
ILDAR H. GARIPZANOV
Affiliation:
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bergen, PO Box 7800, N-5020, Bergen, Norway; e-mail: ildar.garipzanov@cms.uib.no
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Abstract

This article questions the traditional perception of early Christianisation in Scandinavia and Northern Rus' as processes separated by established confessional and institutional boundaries. Surviving narrative sources mention a number of clerical peregrinators crossing confessional borders in northern Europe in the post-conversion period, and some contemporaneous baptismal rites from Scandinavia and northern Rus' testify to their ability to influence the basic Christian rituals in both regions. These phenomena suggest that differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were in no way preventing contacts across the early Christian north in the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

The processes of Christianisation in two adjacent regions of northern Europe, Scandinavia and northern Rus', have commonly been discussed as influenced by different core regions of medieval Christendom – namely, by England and Germany in Scandinavia and by Byzantium in Rus'.Footnote 1 This conclusion is certainly valid when we take into account the gradual establishment of ecclesiastical structures in these northern regions in the first centuries after their conversion around the turn of the eleventh century. Yet, as emphasised by Lesley Abrams in relation to early Christian Scandinavia, ‘full–scale institutional Christianisation […] began to develop only in the later eleventh century, not reaching maturity in some regions until well into the twelfth’.Footnote 2 Early Christianisation thus owed much to foreign clerics arriving from abroad and shaping liturgical traditions in the places where they preached the Gospel of the eternal kingdom.Footnote 3

If we shift from macro- to micro-analysis and look at the actual people involved in the dissemination of early Christian practices, then we discover not only Anglo-Saxon and German missionaries in early Christian Scandinavia and Greek churchmen in early Christian Rus', but also certain wandering clerics whose activities do not quite fit an institutional straitjacket. Instead, they travelled across early Christian northern Europe and easily crossed the imaginary confessional lines of division. The existence of such religious peregrinators can be confirmed not only by their mention in later narratives, but also by traces of their influence on liturgical practices attested in some surviving canonical texts from early Christian Scandinavia and Northern Rus'. These two types of evidence, when analysed side by side, indicate that the growing confessional differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the ‘Great Schism’ of 1054 were in no way preventing religious contacts and exchanges across the early Christian north until as late as the mid-twelfth century.

Wandering clerics

A well-known example of a cleric wandering across the early Christian north is a certain Osmund, who, as mentioned by Adam of Bremen in the 1070s, first came from England to Bishop Sigefrid in Norway and was later sent to the cathedral school of Bremen. Thereafter, he was consecrated in Poland to become bishop in central Sweden. Adam accuses Osmund of having a cross borne before him ‘archiepiscopali more’ (‘in the manner of an archbishop’) and of teaching ‘non sana fidei nostrae doctrina’ (‘unsound teaching of our faith’) to his flock.Footnote 4 Finally, he returned to England and died in the monastery of Ely about 1070.Footnote 5 What kind of Christian rite did this bishop follow after wandering in various parts of western and east-central Europe and being exposed to diverse liturgical practices? The only certainty is that it was most likely performed in Latin.

Osmund was not unique in early Christian Scandinavia, since the Hungrvaka, an Icelandic gesta episcoporum written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, reports similar adventurous missionaries active in Iceland in the pontificate of the first Icelandic bishop, Ísleifr (1056–80):

Um daga Ísleifs byskups kómu út byskupar af ǫðrum lǫndum, ok buðu þeir mart linara en Ísleifr byskup. Urðu þeir af því vinsælir við vánda menn, þar til er Aðalbertus erkibyskup sendi bréf sitt út til Íslands ok bannaði mǫnnum alla þjónustu af þeim at þiggja, ok kvað þá suma vera bannsetta en alla í óleyfi sínu farit hafa.Footnote 6

[In the days of bishop Ísleif there came hither bishops from other lands and gave easier commands than bishop Ísleif, wherefore they found favour with evil men, until archbishop Adalbert sent his writ out to Iceland and forbade men to receive any service at their hands, and saying that some of them were excommunicated, and that all had come without his leave.Footnote 7]

This passage must be considered along with a preceding comment in the Hungrvaka stating that after the establishment of his see at Skålholt, Ísleifr was troubled by the disobedience of some people in his bishopric. This can be interpreted as an indication that some of these wandering bishops had their own followers among aboriginals who did not accept the episcopal authority of Ísleifr. In addition, the Hungrvaka mentions another wandering bishop, named Kolr, who was of such high rank that his burial at Skålholt constituted an honour to that very cathedral.Footnote 8 Bishop Ísleifr most likely celebrated the liturgy according to German traditions. But the liturgical practices of the aforementioned wandering bishops must have been very different, and hence were labelled in the narrative as more lenient.

The Íslendingabók, written in the early twelfth century, provides more names of foreign bishops active in eleventh-century Iceland, among them John the Irishman, later bishop of Magdeburg, Hró∂ólfr, later abbot of Abingdon in England, and three so-called ermskir – Peter, Abraham and Stephen.Footnote 9 Already in the second half of the fourteenth century, these three ermskir were remembered in Iceland as bishops from Armenia,Footnote 10 and this seems to have remained the most viable interpretation of the term in modern historiography.Footnote 11 In 1960 Mágnus Már Lárusson suggested that the ermskir were bishops from Ermland, on the south-eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, and that they followed a Slavonic rite.Footnote 12 Yet, as recently emphasised by several scholars, Baltic Ermland was converted to Christianity only in the thirteenth century, which makes it very implausible that the missionary ermskir could have come from that region in the eleventh century.Footnote 13 Furthermore, there is ample textual evidence showing the presence of Armenian religious peregrinators in Italy and France in the late tenth and the first half of the eleventh century.Footnote 14 At the turn of the eleventh century they must have arrived in western Europe by ship, landing in southern Italy, but by about 1026–7 a safer land route between Byzantium and the west via Hungary and Bavaria became available for long-distance travellers.Footnote 15 The grave of an Armenian archbishop named Gregory in a convent church at Niedernburg, Passau, in Bavaria, dated to 1093, which Margaret Cormack discussed in her recent article, shows the presence of Armenian ecclesiastics on this route (halfway to Iceland) as late as the late eleventh century.Footnote 16 In addition, in the same century Armenian trading colonies are known to have existed in the Crimea and Kiev – that is, on another route leading to Scandinavia via the Baltic Sea.Footnote 17

It seems that the same ermskir who were mentioned in the Íslendingabók were also referred to in the Grágás, in its Christian Laws Section compiled and approved between 1122 and 1133.Footnote 18 The section which discusses foreign priests coming to Iceland (chapter vi) mentions priests or bishops not learned in Latin, such as hermskir and girskir,Footnote 19 who – as suggested by Fedor UspenskyFootnote 20 – can be interpreted as representatives of the Armenian and Eastern Orthodox Churches. People were allowed to listen to their sermons, but not to employ them for major ritual events, such as the consecration of a church or the confirmation of a child. This mention of Eastern priests in the Grágás must be seen along with another canon in this law code, which could have been introduced with reference to foreign priests of Eastern origin. The latter norm prohibited a priest from wearing fashions forbidden by the bishop and demanded that he ‘have his moustache and beard cut off and be tonsured once a month’.Footnote 21 This clause is important, since from the late ninth century onwards the habit of shaving beards in the west gave rise to a significant visual difference between Latin and Eastern clerics.Footnote 22

As in Scandinavia, wandering clerics (or religious people of obscure status) crossing imaginary confessional borders can be found in early Rus', and these people are as elusive as their counterparts in the Nordic countries. An example familiar to most Slavists will be Anastasios (Nastas), originally from the Greek town of Cherson, in the Crimea. This person, of a rather obscure status, came with Prince Vladimir to Kiev in 988 – that is, right after his baptism – and the prince appointed him to supervise the most important Kievan church in the first decades after the official conversion, the royal Tithe Church (consecrated in 996).Footnote 23 In 1018, amidst a civil war between the princes Jaroslav and Sviatopolk, the Polish king Boleslaw i Chrobry entered Kiev as an ally of the latter, but with changing fortunes had to flee to his homeland. From Kiev he snatched princely treasures and appointed Anastasios to look after them.Footnote 24 The sources never mention Anastasios returning to Kiev, and he must have stayed in Poland close to the royal court in the later years of his life. B. N. Floria has even speculated that Anastasios might have planted the practice of Orthodox liturgy at the court of Boleslaw. What is more important, however, is that, as noted by Floria, the presence of Anastasios at the Polish court should be viewed in the context of a wider interest in Byzantine culture – inspired by Ottonian Germany – among the Polish ruling elite at the turn of the eleventh century.Footnote 25 The same context explains the practice at the court of Boleslaw's son, King Mieszko ii, in which the liturgy was celebrated not only in Latin and Slavonic but also in Greek, as Mathilda of Swabia mentioned in a letter to Mieszko written in 1025.Footnote 26

A more controversial case is the mission of Bruno of Querfurt, a German missionary bishop active on behalf of St Peter in regions east of Poland and Hungary in the first decade of the eleventh century.Footnote 27 In the final years preceding his martyrdom in 1009, he visited the court of Prince Vladimir in Kiev, embarked on an unsuccessful mission to the Pechenegs, and finally met a premature death at the hands of pagans somewhere in the border zone between Poland and Rus'. This place has traditionally been identified as Prussia, from where Boleslaw i – seemingly his royal patron – is thought to have brought Bruno's relics to Poland.Footnote 28 Yet Darius Baronas has recently presented a strong argument setting Bruno's last actions, as well as his premature death, within the borders of early Rus'. Firstly, ‘Bruno must have received some authorisation from the metropolitan of Kiev for his mission to the Pechenegs in 1008.’ Secondly, his final trip was into a pagan region ‘on the western fringes of Rus'’ controlled by a rex russorum, who might have been a local ruler on the periphery of Rus' independent of Kiev. Finally, Bruno's corpse never seems to have been translated to Poland, and if we believe Peter Damian, this saint could have been venerated in Rus' as late as the 1040s.Footnote 29 Baronas's revisionist interpretation thus suggests that several decades after the official conversion in 988 some peripheral regions of Rus' remained an open field for western missionaries.

A less known example of a western peregrinator is Þorvaldr Koðránsson, whom the thirteenth-century Kristni saga credited as being the first Icelander to be baptised. The Kristni saga (chs i–iv) describes him as accompanying the Saxon missionary bishop Friðrekr in Iceland and preaching in Old Norse in the late tenth century.Footnote 30 After the conversion of Iceland in 999/1000, Þorvaldr travelled to Jerusalem, Constantinople and finally Kiev. Thereafter, as the Kristni saga states with a reference to an older skaldic verse (ch. xiii), he died in Rus' near Polotsk and was buried there at the church of John the Baptist, and local people called him a saint (‘ok kalla þeir hann helgan’).Footnote 31 As in the case of Bruno of Querfurt, no trace of this holy Icelander can be found in early Rus' written sources. Yet the possibility of Christian Scandinavians being venerated as saints in early Rus' can be confirmed by the story of the two Varangian saints, a father and his son, recorded in the Primary Chronicle under the year 983. According to this early twelfth-century text, they also came from Constantinople, and concealed their faith during Vladimir's ‘pagan reaction’. According to the narrative, the Kievan pagans chose the son by lot for sacrifice to pagan deities, and in the following dramatic story they were both murdered while resisting the pagans, and hence venerated as martyrs.Footnote 32 Later hagiographic sources from Kievan Rus' provide the name of the son, John, and the date of their feast, 12 July.Footnote 33

A case closer in time to the Icelandic ermskir is the story of St Anthony the Roman, the founder of one of the first monasteries in the Novgorodian Land in the early twelfth century. His Slavonic vita was written in the late sixteenth century in connection with the translation of his relics, and many details of the text are clearly anachronistic for the twelfth century.Footnote 34 But it purports to have been written by Anthony's pupil Andrew, who is known to have succeeded him as abbot in 1147, and thus the vita could be based on an earlier hagiographic story. Hence, it may contain some motifs from the twelfth century, although this is difficult to determine.Footnote 35 According to the vita, Anthony was born in Rome into a family following the Eastern rite. The account then relates that the persecutions of the followers of the Greek rite in Rome after the Great Schism forced Anthony into eremitic exile on a rock on a remote seashore. One day the rock that he was praying upon was miraculously carried over the sea and brought to Novgorod, where he founded the Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the early twelfth century. The motif of miraculous sea travel on a stone occurs in the Lives of Irish saints. They were also renowned in the early medieval west for their proficiency in Greek, and Anthony's vita mentions him learning Greek. It has thus been suggested that St Anthony could have been an Irish monk, and that his nickname could have referred to his western origin.Footnote 36 Unfortunately, this hypothesis cannot be corroborated by the direct references to Abbot Anthony in the older recension of the First Novgorod Chronicle between the years 1117 and 1147, which mentions neither his western origin nor his (probably sixteenth-century) nickname.Footnote 37

Yet there is other indirect evidence that may be interpreted as pointing to the western origin of Anthony. The Mstislav Gospel, written for Mstislav, prince of Novgorod, is the only Rus' Aprakos-Gospel that lists the feast of Benedict of Nursia, the founder of western monasticism, according to the western liturgical tradition on 21 March.Footnote 38 The uniqueness of this feast among East European liturgical books may suggest that its addition to the Mstislav Gospel could have been an expression of the local Novgorodian context. St Anthony is the prime suspect here, since the possible dates of the production of the Mstislav Gospel – either in 1106 or, more likely, in 1117 – correlate strikingly with his activity. According to his vita, he arrived in Novgorod in 1106, when Mstislav was prince of Novgorod. Furthermore, a more reliable record in the First Novgorod Chronicle mentions Abbot Anthony founding a stone church in the monastery of the Holy Mother of God in the summer of 1117, and its completion two years later. Such a historical event would not have happened unless St Anthony held a prominent position in the Novgorodian community and maintained friendly relations with local power figures. Thus, the prominent position of the abbot with a western background may explain why the feast of St Benedict was celebrated according to the Latin liturgical calendar in early twelfth-century Novgorod.

Furthermore, the frescoes painted in the monastery church in 1125, which survive in fragments with images of some unidentified saints, are believed by art historians to be unrelated to Byzantine art, but representative of Romanesque. The closest parallels are with the paintings in the Roman Church of St Croce in Gerusalemme (1144) and book miniatures produced in the schools of Reichenau and Regensburg.Footnote 39 It is necessary to stress in this context that Anthony's monastic community seems to have been independent of the local bishop at the time that the monastic church was founded and its walls painted, and its iconography can thus be considered to be fairly representative of the artistic tastes of Anthony and his community.Footnote 40 It is only in 1131 that the First Novgorod Chronicle mentions Archbishop Niphont installing Anthony as abbot, and his vita states that over the period of one day Niphont made Anthony deacon, priest and abbot, and confirmed the status of his monastic followers.Footnote 41 This evidence suggests that Anthony did not have any formal status within the Novgorodian ecclesiastical hierarchy prior to this event, which likely created a kind of formal affiliation between his monastery and the Novgorodian archbishop.

The presence of western clerics in northern Rus' and eastern churchmen in the Nordic world is rather less surprising than it might at first seem if considered within the wider context of social communication in north-eastern Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries along the so-called ‘Route from the Varangians to the Greeks’. Old Norse, early Rus' and Byzantine narrative sources mention a great number of people (predominantly of Scandinavian origin) travelling along this route connecting Scandinavia and the Byzantine world via the Baltic Sea, the waterways of eastern Europe leading to the Dniepr River, and the Black Sea.Footnote 42 This evidence can be further corroborated by Swedish rune-stones that mention people embarking on such trips and runic inscriptions left by such travellers all the way to Constantinople.Footnote 43 Of course, most of these travellers were lay people, but some of them – especially those of higher social status such as Harald Hardruler – could have been accompanied by priests or holy men on their way to the south or back to Scandinavia.Footnote 44 Furthermore, in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries the ‘Route from the Varangians to the Greeks’ was also used for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, thus becoming a means not only of socio-economic and political but also of religious communication.Footnote 45 From this perspective, the dissemination of the cults of some saints – such as St Olaf, St Clement and St NicholasFootnote 46 – along that route in the post-conversion period was also hardly accidental.

Mixed rituals: baptism

As such cases of clerics wandering across the early Christian North demonstrate, the narrative sources of the time are rather ambiguous about these peregrinators. This is not surprising, considering that the narratives were written along established confessional or institutional lines of division. Yet, as the examples from the Mstislav Gospel and the Grágás demonstrate, these wandering clerics did indeed leave their imprints on liturgical texts and Christian legislation. We should not forget in this regard that, prior to the establishment of parish systems across the early Christian north, Christian rites and practices were disseminated via personal, rather than institutional, channels. The wandering clerics brought their own liturgical experience and understanding of proper Christian norms, and were thus able to influence basic religious rituals in the recently-converted communities in which they worked.

Baptism was one of the most important among these rites, and probably the one which affected lay people the most. Some priests may have had short descriptions of the baptismal rite and/or baptismal formula in written form,Footnote 47 but in many cases the sequence of the ritual was something a priest would learn and teach in everyday practice. It is in these liturgical practicalities that clerical peregrinators left traces of their presence in early Christian Scandinavia and Northern Rus', as demonstrated by several examples from the first half and the middle of the twelfth century.

The first example can be found in the Old Christian Law of Borgarting from eastern Norway, which was probably compiled in written form in the early twelfth century.Footnote 48 Chapter ii of this law discusses the case of emergency baptism, with reference to a child being born on a journey and dying before a priest can be reached:

2.2. Nv liðr opt at barne a uæghum uti sva at hætt er við dauða. Af skulu þau klæðe rækkia. mæla kalmaðr firir en kona æftir. næfna barn a nafn: ‘Ek skiri þik i nafne faður oc sunar oc andans hælga’. oc mæla sua þrysuor. Skal kalmaðr rækia i lova ser. oc taka up raka sin með þumals fingri, riða j kross i krismu stað a briost oc millim hærða inasar oc øyru oc i hiarsa.Footnote 49

In these circumstances, the godfather is supposed to conduct a ceremony that generally corresponds to western European baptismal rites. He uses his spittle instead of chrism to mark out the child's 1) chest, 2) area between the shoulder blades, 3) nose, 4) eyes, and 5) top of the head. All of these parts of the body are listed in various Carolingian and Ottonian baptismal rites. What is unique about this ceremony is that, as noted by Torgeir Landro,Footnote 50 the marking of the body parts occurs after the immersion. In all western rites, the anointing of the body parts or the touching of them with spittle always takes place before the immersion – except for the top of the head, which is anointed with sacred chrism during the post-immersion ceremony.Footnote 51 As noted by Landro, the consecration of body parts with chrism after the immersion is a feature of eastern baptismal rites. For instance, the fourth-century baptismal rite of Jerusalem mentions 5) the forehead, ears, 3) nose, and 1) chest in this procedure.Footnote 52 A Byzantine baptismal rite preserved in the Barberini Euchologion (c. 790) adds to this list the mouth and 4) eyes.Footnote 53

Yet it is the Armenian rite, known from a ninth-century manuscript, that includes all the elements of the emergency baptism from the Law of Borgarting in its description of the post-immersion anointment: the 5) forehead, 4) eyes, ears, 3) nostrils, mouth, palms of the hands, 1) heart, 2) backbone, and feet. Significantly, one of the manuscripts which includes the Law of Borgarting (NKS 1642 4°) replaces the top of the head in the baptismal list with the feet, which makes the similarity with the Armenian baptismal rite even more striking.Footnote 54 In short, even though the emergency baptismal rite in the Christian law from eastern Norway follows the general features of the Latin tradition, the sequence of actions indicates an eastern influence, which could have happened only if a wandering eastern priest, of Armenian or other origin, was somehow involved in the creation of the baptismal tradition reflected in this source. It is noteworthy that this eastern influence on east Norwegian Christian law appeared in the case of emergency baptism, which was supposed to be performed outside Latin churches and in the absence of officially authorised priests. It is precisely in this case that the Icelandic Grágás makes an exception to its prohibition on unauthorised foreign priests baptising children:

Ef vtlendir prestar koma vt hingat. þeir er eigi hafa her fyr verit. oc scal eigi tiþir at þeim kaupa. oc eigi scolo þeir skira born. nema sva se siúkt at ölœrþir men ætti at skira. heldr scolo þeir scira enn ölœrþir menn. ef eigi nair avþrvm presti.Footnote 55

[If foreign priests come here who have not been here before, they are not to be paid for services, and they are not to baptise children unless a child is so sick that otherwise a layman would have to baptise it; rather than laymen do it, they are to baptise the child if no other priest can be reached.Footnote 56]

These examples of wandering eastern priests affecting Scandinavian baptismal practices can be compared to the concurrent evidence from Northern Rus'. In mid twelfth-century Novgorod, a canonical text known as the Inquiries of Kirik (Voproshanija Kirika) was composed. It was written in the form of the answers of several hierarchs, most notably Archbishop Niphont of Novgorod (1130–56), to the questions of Kirik, Sabba and Ilya concerning various norms of Christian law and proper liturgical practices.Footnote 57 Among other things, this text discusses proper baptismal procedures and includes two short descriptions of them:

Kirik 41: Попови достоить, хотѧчe погроужати въ водѣ, роуцѣ собѣ завити, а[ть] не омочитъсѧ опѧстъѥ, такоже и пелена. А на водѣ г҃ кресты творити порѧдоу; мюромъ помазати чело, и ноздри, и оуши, и сердце, и ѥдиноу рукоу правоую.Footnote 58

[When the priest wants to immerse [a baby] into water, he shall roll up his sleeves so that he does not make his wrists wet, as well as swaddling-clothes. He shall make three crosses on the water in a row, [and] anoint with myrrh the forehead, nostrils, ears, heart, and the right hand.]

Sabba 16. Попови крестѧще дѣтѧ, къ собѣ лицемь обратити; аще великъ человѣкъ, погроужати ѥго г҃ шьды и кресты три створити порѧдоу, а мюромь помазати чело, ноздри, оуста, оуши, сердце, ѥдиноу роукоу правоую, долонь възнакоу.Footnote 59

[When a priest baptises a child, he shall turn [the child] to face himself; if he is a big man, the [priest] shall immerse him thrice and make three crosses in a row, and anoint with myrrh [his] forehead, nostrils, mouth, ears, heart, and the right hand with the palm facing upward.]

Thus, the two passages mention the following parts of the body to be chrismed during a post-immersion procedure: the forehead, nostrils, ears, heart and right hand. The second list adds the mouth, and specifies that it is the palm of the right hand that shall be chrismed.

Interestingly, the main elements in the Novgorodian list of post-immersion anointments follow the baptismal rite of Jerusalem. At the same time, the anointing of the eyes used in the Byzantine tradition is not mentioned in the Inquiries of Kirik at all. This absence is striking, given the presence of all the elements of the Novgorodian list in the Armenian rite. This should not necessarily be interpreted as traces of wandering Armenian priests, since these elements could have reached Novgorod via an intermediary eastern baptismal ordo in which the elements of the baptismal rites of Jerusalem and Constantinople were mixed. What is more important here is the emphasis on the right hand as the final place of chrismation; and in the second passage this place is described with even more precision: the open palm of the right hand. The closest parallel to this feature can be found not in the Christian east, but in the west – namely in the Stowe Missal written for monastic use in Ireland around 800. Its baptismal rite mentions that after a person is dipped into the baptismal font or sprinkled with baptismal water, his forehead is chrismed and he receives a white robe. Thereafter

Et dicit prespiter apiriatur manus pueri dicens: Signum crucis Christi + accipe in manum tuam dexteram et conservet te in vitam æternam · respondeat · amen :Footnote 60

[the presbyter says, Let the hand of the boy be opened, and then he says: Receive the sign of the cross of Christ upon your right hand and may it preserve you into eternal life. Let him reply, Amen.Footnote 61]

The editors of this rite argue that certain features of the rite indicate that the Gallican document used by the compiler of the Stowe Missal must have been composed quite early, ‘when the baptism of adults was normal’.Footnote 62 Since the early Celtic liturgy is thought to have been greatly influenced by eastern tradition, it might thus be argued that this particular baptismal element must have derived from an eastern liturgical practice. Yet in the absence of any eastern parallel, an Irish influence on the Novgorodian baptismal rite is as possible as an eastern one.Footnote 63 This influence could have come either directly from the British Isles or indirectly via Italy, France or Germany where Irish monks were active in the early Middle Ages. This brings us back to the hypothesis of the western origin of Anthony the Roman, who settled in Novgorod in the early twelfth century. If he – as well as some of his monastic followers – indeed arrived from western Europe, their liturgical experiences might have influenced baptismal rituals around the Novgorodian monastery founded by him. These could, in turn, have appeared in the canonical inquiries of the hieromonk Kirik, who was a monk in St Anthony's monastery in the 1130s.Footnote 64 Furthermore, this monastery seems to have established especially close relations with the local archbishops, starting with Niphont, and to have provided them with clerical secretaries. It has been argued persuasively that not only Kirik, but most other annalists of the twelfth-century archiepiscopal annals of Novgorod as well were affiliated with St Anthony's monastery.Footnote 65

Such procedural borrowings in the baptismal rite are all the more possible since they would not have been considered non-canonical in twelfth-century Novgorod. In eastern polemic literature against Latin Christians, starting with a letter by Patriarch Michael Keroularios in 1054, one of the main procedural differences distinguishing the Orthodox baptismal rite from the Latin one was the use of three immersions in the former, instead of the one immersion ascribed to the latter. Yet this assertion, which is repeated in other eastern polemical works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is not entirely true, since three immersions were used in western baptismal rites as often as one.Footnote 66 Moreover, this difference is mentioned neither in the Inquiries of Kirik nor in the list of disagreements with the Latins in the earliest Rus' canonical text of Metropolitan John ii of Kiev, written in 1080. The only difference that John notes is the western tradition of episcopal confirmation, which had been referred to in Byzantine polemical literature since Patriarch Photios's encyclical letter to the eastern sees (867).Footnote 67 Thus, there was no canonical objection to the inclusion of some procedural elements of western rites in the baptismal ritual in twelfth-century Novgorod under the influence of wandering western clerics, as well as the Latin priests in the Varangian church of St Olaf which existed in Novgorod at that time.Footnote 68

Indirect evidence in favour of such borrowings can be found in the comment on baptism in the so-called Instructions of the Novgorodian Archbishop Ilya (Pouchenija novgorodskogo arkhiepiskopa Ilji), dated to 1166, which reiterates the relevant passages of the Inquiries of Kirik, but adds an additional ruling: ‘не мозити обливати дѣтий, нъ погружайте’ (‘you should not sprinkle children [with water], but dip [them]’).Footnote 69 This is the earliest norm of that kind in Rus', which was later repeated at the Councils of Kiev (1273) and Vladimir (1274). The habit of sprinkling babies during baptism instead of dipping, which persisted in the lands of Novgorod and Pskov through the fifteenth century,Footnote 70 could have arrived there from the Latin liturgical tradition, in which infusion and immersion were used in the baptismal rite interchangeably, as shown, for example, in the Stowe Missal. The same norm can also be found in the description of the aforementioned emergency baptism in the Law of Borgarting:

Ef vatn er sua mikit at þau megho barn i hylia. þa skal døyfa i þrysuor oc i drepa […]. En ef æigi er sua mykit vatn. þa skal kalmaðr riða a með hende sinni. vatne ef vatn er dog ef dog er snio ef snior er sio ef sior er.Footnote 71

[If there is so much water that they can dip the baby entirely, then they should dip [him] three times […]. But if there is not so much water, then the man shall rub, with his hands, water if there is water, dew if there is dew, snow if there is snow, seawater if there is seawater.]

The ruling of Archbishop Ilya in 1166 thus indicates that a western custom of sprinkling with water during baptism had become so widespread in Novgorod that he felt it necessary to add a note prohibiting this unorthodox practice.

These liturgical examples from early Christian Scandinavia and Northern Rus' are all the more important in that the baptismal rite was one of the most important Christian rituals in the conversion period, and a psychologically important experience in defining one's Christian identity. From this perspective, the presence of eastern elements in the earliest Scandinavian baptismal rites and of western elements in the earliest records of Novgorodian baptismal rituals suggests that, despite the confessional differences between the western and eastern Churches, a number of clerics travelled across the early Christian north and influenced early Christian communities in Iceland, eastern Norway and Novgorod in the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth centuries. These personal imprints should not be discarded in studies of early Christianisation across northern Europe, which tend to focus on the establishment of national Churches and institutional contacts with their religious metropolia.

The twelfth and early thirteenth century witnessed the increasing institutionalisation of Churches in Scandinavia and Kievan Rus' and growing hostility between Catholics and Orthodox Christians resulting from the first crusades and culminating with the sack of Constantinople in 1204. The confrontation between northern crusaders and the Novgorodians in the first half of the thirteenth century made the confessional division easily felt across the Baltic Sea. The possibility of inter-religious exchange was thus gradually circumscribed and the memories of earlier contacts faded away. In later processes of active remembrance, the Latins and eastern Christians were seen as sides sharply divided as early as the eleventh century, and the memories of foreign clerics arriving from the other side of Christian Europe and becoming actively involved in the creation of the first Christian communities of their new homelands were effectively obliterated.Footnote 72 The example of the Armenian bishops in Iceland provides a good illustration of this active process of remembrance and forgetting. Thus, a reference in the early twelfth-century Íslendingabók to the three Armenian bishops active in Iceland at the time of the first bishop, Ísleifr, was replaced in a later Icelandic gesta episcoporum, Hungrvaka – written c. 1200 – with a mention of anonymous foreign bishops supported by local evil men. Finally, the Kristni saga, describing the Christianisation of Iceland around the mid-thirteenth century, does not mention any foreign bishops active in the pontificate of Ísleifr, and the latter is presented as the bishop unanimously supported by all the people of Iceland.Footnote 73

References

1 For more details and references see Abrams, Lesley, ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia’, Anglo-Saxon England xxiv (1995), 213–49Google Scholar; Sverre Bagge and Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, ‘The kingdom of Norway’; Michael Gelting, ‘The kingdom of Denmark’; Nils Blomquist, Stefan Brink and Thomas Lindquist, ‘The kingdom of Sweden’; and Jonathan Shepard, ‘Rus’, all in Nora Berend (ed.), Christianization and the rise of Christian monarchy, Cambridge 2007, 121–66, 73–120, 167–213, 369–416.

2 Abrams, Lesley, ‘Eleventh-century missions and the early stages of ecclesiastical organisation in Scandinavia’, Anglo-Norman Studies xvii (1995), 21–40Google Scholar at p. 23. It is true that the metropolitan see and bishoprics were established in Rus' more quickly than in Scandinavia, but as noted by Andrzej Poppe in regard to the post-conversion period, ‘[t]he Christianization and ecclesiastical administration of a broad territory, often separated from the seat of the bishop by hundreds or even a thousand kilometers, was nearly impossible’: ‘The Christianization and ecclesiastical structure of Kievan Rus' to 1300’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies xxi (1997), 311–92 at p. 353.

3 Abrams, ‘Eleventh-century missions’, 26f, 33f.

4 Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum iii.15, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum ii, 1917, 155f.

5 It has even been suggested that Osmund was consecrated in Rus' and therefore attempted to establish a national Swedish Church with Byzantine associations. For further details and references on Osmund see Abrams, ‘The Anglo-Saxons’, 234–6. But this interpretation lacks sufficient corroborative evidence.

6 Hungrvaka, in Biskopa sögur II, ed. Àsdís Egilsdóttir (Íslenzk fornrit xvi, 2002), 8f.

7 Origines Islandicae, ed. Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. Yorke Powell, Oxford 1905, i. 425–57 at p. 429.

8 On the identity of this Bishop Kolr see Vésteinsson, Orri, The Christianization of Iceland: priests, power, and social change, 1000–1300, Oxford 2003Google Scholar, 23 n. 13.

9 Íslendingabók: Kristni saga, trans. Sian Grønlie, London 2006, ch. viii, p. 10 n. 77f.

10 Uspensky, F. B., ‘Marginaliji k voprosu ob armianakh v Islandiji (xi vek)’, Scando-Slavica xlvi (2000), 61–75Google Scholar at p. 63.

11 For an overview of the debate and references see Dashkevich, Ja. R., ‘Les Arméniens en Islande (xie siècle)’, Revue des études arméniennes xxii (1986–7), 321–6Google Scholar; Hagland, Jan Ragnar, ‘The Christianization of Norway and possible influences from the eastern Churches’, Paleobulgarica xx/3 (1996), 3–18Google Scholar, and ‘Armenske biskopar i Norden på 1000–talet?’, in Henrik Janson (ed.), Från Bysans till Norden, Skellefteå 2005, 153–63; and Marit Myking, Vart Noreg kristna frå England?, Oslo 2001, 126–8.

12 ‘On the so-called “Armenian” bishops’, Studia Islandica xviii (1960), 23–38.

13 Dashkevich, Ja. R., ‘Armiane v Islandiji (xi v.)’, Skandinavskij sbornik xxxiii (1990), 87–97Google Scholar at p. 89; Uspensky, ‘Marginaliji’, 66f; Margaret Cormack, ‘Irish and Armenian ecclesiastics in medieval Iceland’, in Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams (eds), West over sea: studies in Scandinavian sea-borne expansion and settlement before 1300, Leiden–Boston 2007, 227–34 at pp. 231f.

14 Gérard Dédéyan, ‘Les Arméniens en occident fin xe–début xie siècle’, in Occident et orient au Xe siècle: actes du IXe congrès de la société des historiens médiévistes de l'enseignement supérieur public (Dijon, 2–4 juin 1978) (Publications de l'Université de Dijon xvii, 1979), 123–39.

15 Françoise Micheau, ‘Les Itinéraires maritimes et continentaux des pèlerinages vers Jérusalem’, ibid. 79–104.

16 Cormack, ‘Irish and Armenian ecclesiastics’, 232f. The German route of the Armenian bishops would also correspond to the Hungrvaka's mention of them arriving in Iceland against the will of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen.

17 Dashkevich, ‘Les Arméniens’, 328. Hagland follows Dashkevich's interpretation and connects the presence of the Armenian bishops in western Scandinavia with Harald Hardruler's contacts with the eastern Church and his conflict with the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen: ‘Armenske biskopar’, 159f.

18 Laws of early Iceland: Grágás, trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote and Richard Perkins, Winnipeg 1980–2000, i. 5, 50 n. 95.

19 Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid, ed. Vilhjálmur Finsen, Copenhagen 1852, i. 21f; English translation in Laws of early Iceland, i. 37f.

20 Uspensky, ‘Marginaliji’, 232f.

21 Laws of early Iceland, i. 37.

22 Kolbaba, Tia M., Inventing Latin heretics: Byzantines and filioque in the ninth century, Kalamazoo 2008, 133–5Google Scholar.

23 Later sources refer to him as bishop. This title is absent in earlier sources and, as noted by V. Ya. Petrukhin, his administrative functions clearly outweighed his so-called ‘ecclesiastical’ duties: ‘Khristianstvo na Rusi vo vtoroj polovine x – pervoj polovine xi v.’, in B. N. Floria (ed.), Khristianstvo v stranakh Vostochnoj, Jugo–vostochnoj i Central'noj Evropy na poroge vtorogo tysiacheletija, Moscow 2002, 60–132 at p. 96. On the role of Anastasios in early Christian Kiev see also Franklin, Simon and Shepard, Jonathan, The emergence of Rus, 750–1200, London–New York 1996Google Scholar, 226f.

24 ‘Lavrentjevskaja letopis’ (Polnoje sobranije russkikh letopisej i, 1926–8), cols 109, 116, 121, 124.

25 B. N. Floria, ‘Khristianstvo v drevnepol'skom i drevnecheshskom gosudarstve vo 2–j polovine x – 1–j polovine xi v.’, in Floria, Khristianstvo v stranakh Vostochnoj, 190–266 at pp. 248f.

26 ‘Quis enim prędecessorum tuorum tantas erexit aecclesias? Quis in laudem dei totidem coadunavit linguas? Cum in propria et in latina deum digne venerari posses, in hoc tibi non satis, grecam superaddere maluisti': Kürbis, Brygida, ‘Die epistola Mathildis Suevae an Mieszko ii. in neuer Sicht: ein Forschungsbericht’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien xxiii (1989), 318–43Google Scholar at p. 337. For a detailed discussion of this letter, its dating and relevant historiography see pp. 318–37.

27 For a detailed account of Bruno's missionary activities see Wood, Ian, The missionary life: saints and the evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050, Harlow 2001, 226–44Google Scholar, and Baronas, Darius, ‘The year 1009: St Bruno of Querfurt between Poland and Rus’, Journal of Medieval History xxxiv (2008), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter work also provides a critical overview of earlier historiography.

28 Wood, The missionary life, 233.

29 Baronas, ‘The year 1009’, 14–19.

30 Kristni saga, in Biskupa sögur I, sí∂ari hluti – sögutextar, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson and others (Íslenzk fornrit xv/2, 2003), 3–13.

31 Ibid. 36f. Although they differ in chronological details other Old Norse narratives agree on the place of his burial. For more details see Blöndal, Sigfús and Benedikz, Benedikt S., The Varangians of Byzantium, Cambridge 1978, 197–9Google Scholar, and Jackson, Tatjana, Austr í görðum: drevnerusskije toponimy v drevneskandinavskikh istochnikakh, Moscow 2001, 136–40Google Scholar.

32 Lavrentjevskaja letopis, cols 82–3.

33 For details and references see Elena Melnikova, ‘Varangians and the advance of Christianity to Rus in the ninth and tenth centuries’, in Janson, Från Bysans till Norden, 97–138 at pp. 120–4.

34 For the text of the shorter version see Buslajev, Fedor, Russkaja khrestomatija: pamiatniki drevnej russkoj literatury i narodnoj slovesnosti, 10th edn, Moscow 1907, 139–48Google Scholar.

35 See Kljuchevskij, V. O., Drevnerusskie zhitija kak istoricheskij istochnik, Moscow 1871, 306–11Google Scholar, and Colucci, Michele, ‘The image of western Christianity in the culture of Kievan Rus'’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies xii/xiii (1988/9), 576–86Google Scholar at pp. 581f; cf. Gerhard Podskalsky, Khristianstvo i bogoslovskaja literatura v Kievskoj Rusi (988–1237 gg.), trans. A. V. Nazarenko and ed. K. K. Akentjev, St Petersburg 1996, 237f; and Konrad Onasch, ‘Zur Vita Antonijs “des Römers”’, in Orbis scriptus: Dmitrij Tschiževskij zum 70. Geburtstag, Munich 1966, 581–5, who discounts any twelfth-century origin for this Life and explains it entirely in the context of the polemics of the sixteenth century. According to them, both the Roman origin of Anthony and the corresponding nickname are products of the sixteenth century.

36 See, for example, Murjanov, Mikhail, ‘O novgorodskoj kul'ture xii veka’, Sacris erudiri xix (1969–70), 415–36Google Scholar at p. 427; A. G. Kuz'min, ‘Zapadnyje tradiciji v russkom khristianstve’, in Vvedenije khristianstva na Rusi, Moscow 1987, 21–54 at p. 49; and P. A. Simonov and V. V. Mil'kov, ‘Istochniki uchenosti Kirika Novgorodtsa’, in P. A. Simonov and others (eds), Kalendarno-khronologicheskaja kul'tura i problemy eje uzuchenija: K 870–letiju ‘uchenija’ Kirika Novgorodtsa: materialy naychnoj konferentsiji. Moskva, 11–12 dekabria 2006 g., Moscow 2006, 13–25 at pp. 18f.

37 Novgorodskaja pervaja letopis' starshego i mladshego izvodov (Polnoje sobranije russkikh letopisej iii, 1950), 20–2, 27f.

38 Loseva, O. V., Russkie mesjatseslovy XI–XIV vekov, Moscow 2001, 297Google Scholar. For more details and references on this codex see Garzaniti, Marcello, Die altslavische Version der Evangelien: Forschungsgeschichte und zeitgenössische Forschung, Cologne 2001, 397–400Google Scholar. For dating see N. N. Lisovoj, ‘K datirovke Mstislavova Evangelija’, in Mstislavovo Evangelije XII veka: Issledovanija, Moscow 1997, 710–17. Lisovoj prefers the later date of 1117.

39 Lazarev, Viktor, Old Russian murals & mosaics from the XI to the XVI century, London 1966Google Scholar, 97f, 246f; Murjanov, ‘O novgorodskoj kul'ture xii veka’, 425f; Simonov and Mil'kov, ‘Istochniki’, 20.

40 A charter of ownership of the monastery's land indicates that Anthony bought it from two Novgorodians as a private individual. Furthermore, the testament of Anthony emphasises that he received nothing from the local prince or bishop except for a blessing from Bishop Nikita, and that his monastic community should elect its abbot without any interference from the outside: Gramoty velikogo Novgoroda i Pskova, ed. S. N. Valk, Moscow–Leningrad 1949, nos 109–10, pp. 159f.

41 Novgorodskaja pervaja letopis', 22; Murjanov, ‘O novgorodskoj kul'ture xii veka’, 425–8; Simonov and Mil'kov, ‘Istochniki’, 19f.

42 The literature on this subject is too vast to be cited here; for example see Blöndal and Benedikz, The Varangians, passim.

43 Ibid. 224–33; Mel'nikova, E. A., Skandinavskije runicheskije nadpisi: novyje nakhodki i interpretaciji, Moscow 2001Google Scholar; Kristel Zilmer, ‘He drowned in Holmr's sea – his cargo-ship drifted to the sea-bottom, only three came out alive’: records and representations of Baltic traffic in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages in early Nordic sources, Tartu 2005, 144–63, 223–6.

44 For example, an early thirteenth-century monastic narrative from Kiev mentions that a certain Varangian of noble origin, known as Shimon, came to that town with a great number of followers, including priests, and thereafter he and his household converted from the Latin faith to Orthodox Christianity: The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, trans. Muriel Heppell, Cambridge, Ma 1989, 5.

45 Abrams likewise points to the trade and political communication via the North Sea as an important factor in the spread of early Christianity in north-western Europe: ‘Eleventh–century missions’, 21–4. For a more general overview of that subject see Hudson, Benjamin, Viking pirates and Christian princes, Oxford 2005, 107–204Google Scholar.

46 For details and references see Tatjana Jackson, ‘The cult of St Olaf and early Novgorod’, and Ildar Garipzanov, ‘Novgorod and the veneration of saints in eleventh-century Rus': a comparative view’, in Haki Antonsson and Ildar H. Garipzanov (eds), Saints and their lives on the periphery: veneration of saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c. 1000–1200), Turnhout 2010, 147–67, 115–45, and Garipzanov, Ildar H., ‘The cult of St Nicholas in the early Christian North (c. 1000–1150), Scandinavian Journal of History xxxv/3 (2010), 229–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 A good example of such a text is a short eighth-century baptismal formula in Saxon surviving in a Carolingian manuscript: Interrogationes et responsiones baptismales, in Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius, MGH, Legum ii, 1883, i. 222.

48 For a general overview of the literary context at the time when this law was written down see Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘Den formative dialoge mellem latinsk og folkesproglig literature, ca 600–1250: Udkast til en dynamisk model’, in Else Mundal (ed.), Reykholt som makt- og lærdomssenter i den islandske og nordiske kontekst, Reykjavík 2006, 239–71 at pp. 254–6; cf. Rindal, Magnus, ‘Kristninga av Noreg og dei norske kristenrettane’, Misjon og teologi iii (1996), 76–99Google Scholar at p. 84, who advocates an earlier date.

49 De eldste østlandske kristenrettene, ed. Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen and Magnus Rindal, Oslo 2008, 122.

50 Torgeir Landro, Kristenrett og kyrkjerett – Borgartingskristenretten i eit komparativt perspektiv, PhD diss., Bergen 2010.

51 See Keefe, Susan A., Water and the word: baptism and the education of the clergy in the Carolingian empire, Notre Dame 2002, i. 80–115Google Scholar.

52 Day, Juliette, The baptismal liturgy of Jerusalem: fourth- and fifth-century evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt, Aldershot 2007, 110fGoogle Scholar; E. C. Whitaker, Documents of baptismal liturgy, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson, Collegeville 2003, 32.

53 Whitaker, Documents, 123.

54 De eldste østlandske kristenrettene, 162.

55 Grágás, i. 22.

56 Laws of early Iceland, i. 38.

57 For details on the controversial nature of this source, its authors and dating see Simonov, P. A., Kirik Novgorodets – uchenyj XII veka, Moscow 1980, 21–7Google Scholar.

58 Voprosy Kirika, Savvy i Ilyi, s otvetami Nifonta, episkopa novgorodskogo, i drugikh ierarkhicheskikh lits, in Pamiatniki drevne-russkogo kanonicheskogo prava, ed. A. S. Pavlov and V. N. Beneshevich, St Petersburg 1908, i, cols. 21–62 at col. 33. For comments and German translation see Kirchenrechtliche und kulturgeschichtliche Denkmäler Altrusslands nebst Geschichte russische Kirchenrechts, ed. and trans. Leopold Karl Goetz, Stuttgart 1905, 253f.

59 Voprosy Kirika, col. 55. For comments and German translation see Kirchenrechtliche und kulturgeschichtliche Denkmäler, 318.

60 The Stowe Missal: MS. D. II. 3 in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, ed. George F. Warner, Woodbridge 1989, ii. 32.

61 Whitaker, Documents, 281f.

62 Ibid. 282 n. 1.

63 It is important to note in this regard that some norms in the Inquiries of Kirik have been interpreted as influenced by western penitential norms, and by the penitential norms of Boniface in particular. For details see Murjanov, ‘O novgorodskoj kul'ture xii veka’, 422, and Kuz'min, ‘Zapadnyje tradiciji v russkom khristianstve’, 46f. For the original discussion see Suvorov, N. S., Sledy zapadno-katolicheskogo tserkovnogo prava v pamiatnikakh drevnego russkogo prava, Jaroslavl´ 1888Google Scholar; Pavlov, A., Mnimyje sledy katolicheskogo vlijanija v drevnejshikh pamiatnikakh jugo-slavianskogo i ruskogo tserkovnogo prava, Moscow 1892, 114Google Scholar; and Nikol'skij, N. K., ‘K voprosu o zapadnom vlijanii na drevnerusskoje tserkovnoje pravo’, Bibliograficheskaja letopis' iii (1917), 110–24Google Scholar.

64 Simonov and Mil'kov argue that the entire literary production of Kirik was influenced by an Irish intellectual tradition fostered in that monastery: ‘Istochniki’, 14, 24f.

65 For details see Timofey Guimon, ‘Christian identity in the early Novgorodian annalistic writing’, in Ildar Garipzanov (ed.), Historical narratives and Christian identity on a European periphery: early history writing in northern, east-central, and eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), Turnhout 2011, 255–75 at pp. 271–2.

66 Kolbaba, Tia M., The Byzantine lists: errors of the Latins, Urbana–Chicago 2000, 43f, 192Google Scholar.

67 Kanonicheskije otvety mitropolita Ioanna II, in Pamiatniki drevne–russkogo kanonicheskogo prava, i, cols 1–20; Kolbaba, Byzantine lists, 175f.

68 For details and references see Jackson, ‘The cult of St Olaf’.

69 Pamiatniki drevne-russkogo kanonicheskogo prava, i. cols 359–60.

70 Almazov, Aleksandr, Istorija chinoposledovanij kreshchenija i miropomazanija, Kazan 1884, 310–15Google Scholar; Senyk, Sophia, A history of the Church in Ukraine, Rome 1993, i. 358fGoogle Scholar.

71 De eldste østlandske kristenrettene, 122.

72 For a similar point about early links between western Scandinavia and the eastern Church being obliterated in Old Norse literature see Hagland, ‘The Christianization of Norway’, passim.

73 Kristni saga, 38–40. This active process of forgetting continues to affect modern Icelandic scholars: for example in his Christianization of Iceland, Orri Vésteinsson does not mention Armenian bishops at all.