Olaf

ON ST. OLAF, KING AND MARTYR,

AT NIDAROS IN NORWAY.

In the year 1030.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Olaf, King and Martyr, in Norway (St.)

BY P. B.

§ I. The antiquity and propagation of his cult.

Holy Olaf, king and martyr, Norway venerates on this day—nay, venerated of old, when it had not yet fallen away from the true religion; and this especially at Nidaros, the chief city of the whole kingdom, long since far and wide celebrated not so much for the throne of very many kings, The public veneration of St. Olaf at Nidaros as for the tomb of this one man. Another Olaf, surnamed Trygguinus, or son of Tryggvi, had founded it a few years before, when, by his death having fallen into decay, our Olaf restored it more illustriously and adorned it, by the testimony of Peder Claussøn Undal in Torfaeus, History of Norway, part 1, book 2, chapter 21. It took its name from its situation; for it occupies the mouth of the river Nid, which by the Norwegians in the genitive case is inflected Nidar; hence Nidarosia, and by syncope Nidrosia. But also from the tract over which it presides, Thrandia, it is read everywhere called Throndemonis, Throndemnis, Throndemis, Drontheim, Trontheim. It sits by the Thrandene bay, where it receives the Nid, at about the sixty-fifth and a half degree from the equator. It began to have bishops under St. Olaf the king, until the year of Christ 1152, in which it was raised to an archiepiscopal see, according to the same Undal there, chapter 19; where also a catalogue of its prelates is exhibited. That year of the erected archiepiscopate—and indeed in honor of St. Olaf—Torfaeus confirms, History of Norway, part 3, book 9, chapter 12, against Miraeus, Pagi, and others, who from the History of the Goths of Johannes Magnus, book 18, chapter 18, refer it to the year of Christ 1148. But now Baudrand and other geographers assert that this city is very far from its former splendor.

[2] At Nidaros, I say, the heavenly honors were first decreed to Olaf, decreed scarcely a year after his martyrdom; and this only one year and five days after his martyrdom; when his body, taken from the tomb, and brought to the altars in the church of St. Clement, and exposed to the veneration of all by bishop Grimkell, as will be more fully narrated below. Nidaros in a short time all Norway followed: for scarcely had his son Magnus obtained the place of his holy Father, about the year of Christ 1035, when he applied himself to promoting his cult: and so, besides other things regarding it, he effected this, according to Torfaeus cited, part 3, book 3, chapter 16, that presently through all Norway the feast of the memory of St. Olaf, a law being passed and a day promulgated which returns every year in the month in which he was slain, was instituted and consecrated, to be venerated forever with a veneration equal to the most famous saints. Nor indeed did human authority contribute so much to establishing or keeping this law as divine: for it was assiduously confirmed by so many prodigies that foreigners, to whom it had not been given, at once eagerly and of their own accord embraced it.

[3] This certainly Adam of Bremen testifies, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 43, in these words: "Therefore Olaf, king and martyr, was consummated by such an end, and presently celebrated throughout all the North on this day. and his body in the great city of his kingdom, which is called Throndemonis, was entombed with fitting honor; where until today, by the several miracles and healings which are done through him, the Lord has deigned to show of how great merit he is in heaven, who is thus glorified on earth. But he reigned twelve years. Whose festivity of his passion is kept on the fourth day before the Kalends of August, memorable with eternal cult to all the peoples of the Northern ocean, the Swedes, the Goths, the Sembi, the Danes, and the Slavs." These things Adam wrote in the same century in which the Saint lived. With him agrees the near-contemporary Saxon Annalist, lately published in the Historical Corpus of the Middle Ages by the illustrious man Johann Georg Eccard, volume 1, column 491, when he says: "This is blessed Olaf, king and martyr, whose festivity is kept on the fourth day before the Kalends of August, memorable with eternal cult to all the peoples of the Northern ocean, the Normans, the Swedes, the Goths, and the Danes, and the Slavs."

[4] and indeed with a peculiar cult, Nor indeed did he obtain among them on this day any sort of cult, but altogether a singular one, as one whom they chose as the Patron of their kingdoms: and of the Normans or Norwegians this is plain from what has been said: but of the Swedes the proper Offices of the holy Patrons of the kingdom of Sweden make faith, drawn from the ancient Breviaries of the same kingdom; at the instance of the most serene Sigismund III, king of Sweden and Poland, recognized and approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites, by Apostolic authority; and granted to all dwelling both in the said kingdom of Sweden and also of Poland; that they may freely and lawfully, the other Offices which occur on the same day being transferred or omitted, be recited and be valid. So has the inscription of those Offices in the Plantin edition of the year 1651. But among them St. Olaf, king and martyr, has his own on the 29th of July, and indeed of a double rite, with a proper prayer, antiphons, lessons, and some responsories; which, because they are commonly extant, we here pass over. Hence meanwhile it is established that, even according to the ancient Breviaries of the kingdom, he was honored by the Swedes as a Patron, and that his peculiar veneration is now besides extended to the Poles.

[5] such as in Sweden To those ancient Breviaries, which we do not have, corresponds the Swedish Missal, which is with us, printed, as we gather from the type, about the end of the fifteenth century: for there, in the preliminary Calendar, in a rubric is noted the feast on the fourth day before the Kalends of August, of Olaf the king, double. Then in its place a proper Mass is exhibited, from which it is at least not irksome to excerpt the Sequence, which is thus read:

"A joyful Light has shone, An illustrious Light, a pleasant Light, A Light worthy of proclamation. Into a solemn joy Let the sincere devotion Of the faithful burst forth. Glorious today The Martyr of Christ, raised To the throne of glory, For earthly and brief joys Exchanged joys By a happy exchange.

Notable is the notable glory of the Martyr, Sweet is the material of a sweet joy. Insist on canticles, mother Church; With heavenly jubilation touch the heavenly things.

Freed among cares, King Olaf, established On the summit of the kingdom, Sighed for the eternal, Flew forward to the supernal With the desire of his mind. Touched of Christ in odor, Taking strength from languor, With heart, deeds, and voice's mouth, He worshiped Him whom he loved. But neither by threats, nor by the terror Of death broken, nor by labor, From the error of idols, With much sweat indeed, He rescued his nation.

He bore from the impious nation mockeries, Threats and hatreds, penalties, exiles; But with steadfast mind, with wonderful constancy He overcame all things; happy, migrating to happy Joys with a noble palm.

Before the day of his passion, For the violence of the imminent contest Animated by the solace Of a divine vision, What he loved, he foretasted, Being foretasted, he desired it more, Being more desired, he claimed it By an illustrious martyrdom.

O King and triumphal Martyr, Our special guardian, May thy spiritual offspring Be, thee protecting, free From the evils of this world. Those whom carnal violence assails, General corruption, A powerful and deadly pest, Us, safe under thy wings, May thy right hand save. Amen."

[6] To the same tend the things which a recent author teaches, in this matter by no means suspect, it had already of old, as being alien from the ancestral and true religion; when, in his edition of Vastovius's Vitis Aquilonia, which in the year 1708 at Uppsala he undertook to reprint and illustrate, page 22, he relates these things concerning the ancient cult of our Martyr among the Swedes: "The cathedral church of this our metropolitan city (Uppsala) was of old consecrated to his memory (St. Olaf's), as also to that of St. Eric, and Lawrence the martyr, after the manner of those times: and not a few rural churches of this diocese today keep the effigy of Olaf. An annual tribute too, for the veneration of the King, was long thence transmitted to the temple of Nidaros. But Nicholas Katilli, surnamed the White, the twelfth archbishop of Uppsala (who according to Johannes Magnus sat from the year of Christ 1305 to 1314), deservedly claimed the same for his church." Thus he.

[7] Of the Danes there is scarcely need to say; since they once had the same king as the Norwegians, and in Denmark, the son of St. Olaf, namely Magnus the Good, to whom nothing is said to have been equally at heart as the veneration of his most holy Parent among his subjects; which it was most easy to persuade all, on account of the frequent miracles then celebrated everywhere. The same, however, can also be proved both from a Danish codex, whose announcement you will find among the additions to our Usuard at this day, and from the ancient Calendars of the same people, once written in Runic letters, which afterward Ole Worm subjected to the press and illustrated at Copenhagen in the year 1643: for in them the feast of Olaf is assigned on the 29th of July, and indeed expressed in a rubric, as others which are commonly proposed to be celebrated with a more solemn cult than the rest. To these add the Breviary of the church and diocese of Schleswig, printed at Paris in the year 1512; where on the same day, besides six lessons in the first and second nocturn contracted from his Acts, a proper collect too is recited: but in the Calendar which is prefixed, the feast is noted partly in red, partly in ink, as of certain other Saints whose memory in Denmark was once more famous. And indeed that servile works were of old forbidden there on that day will be clear from the miracles below.

[8] Nay, that even beyond their own borders, all the way to the English and Scots, the Danes propagated the same cult? in Scotland, in England, Of Scotland we have as witness Hector Boece, History of the Scots, book 11 toward the end; where he commemorates a bloody battle in Buchan between the Danes and the Scots, and presently the laws of a holy compact among them, and these among others: "That the field on which the bloody battle had recently been fought should be made sacred to the Christians

dedicated to burial, by the work of the pontiff. In it were buried the Danes recently slain (for they themselves had a little before received the doctrine of Christ); and, a temple being there built, priests were appointed to perform the sacred rites daily for them to God the best and greatest. Then Hector narrates this was done; and subjoins: "Of that old temple, consecrated some times afterward to St. Olaf (in whose protection the kingdom of the Danes and Norwegians is) ... there are extant, even in this century, vestiges ..., the temple being overwhelmed by a multitude of sand, driven by the impulse of the winds (as more frequently happens in those places), and another not unlike it rebuilt in a more convenient place." These things he refers to the times of Malcolm king of the Scots, whom he teaches to have died about the year of Christ 1040: whence you may gather the antiquity of the Danish and Scottish devotion toward St. Olaf; which is said to be preserved there even now among the Catholic Scots, while they recite the litanies. And why should not the same Danes be believed to have introduced this too during those times, while they held England? It certainly flourished there very greatly; since the city of London alone (from which conjecture is easy about the rest) once displayed several churches, and those parochial, dedicated under the name of St. Olaf. Nor is there doubt, therefore, that he was long ago enrolled in the sacred Fasti of that kingdom; which may also be gathered from the additions to Usuard: for he is noted on this day in the Altemps codex, which we showed in the preface to have belonged to the church of Winchester in England.

[9] But that his cult was ancient and widespread in Belgium also, in Belgium, Gaul, etc. shines forth from the same additions to Usuard on this day; as from the Anchin codex, which in the preface we judged not to seem later than the thirteenth century; from the Rosweyde one, which, as was there indicated, once belonged to the church of Blessed Mary of Utrecht, and is referred to the twelfth century; from the manuscript Florarium of the Saints of the year 1486; and finally from the Lübeck-Cologne editions of the year 1490, and the Greven one of the year 1515. Whence or when the same cult flowed into Gaul, is uncertain; yet at Paris and at Rouen it flourishes, as will be narrated § XI, number 126: it is a wonder if it was not introduced thither long ago by the Normans: for through the same it is said to have penetrated even into Spain from the thirteenth century; namely through Christina, daughter of Hakon king of Norway, who, married to Philip, brother of Alfonso king of Castile, obtained this as the first thing demanded of her husband, that in that region a temple should presently be erected to be consecrated under the title of St. Olaf. See Torfæus, History of Norway, part 4, book 4, chapter 44.

[10] I pass over other nations (and even the Greenlanders themselves in Blaeu, in his Atlas, volume 1, part 1, His annunciation in the Roman Martyrology. page 4), to whom the glory of this Martyr, as will appear in the course, became known several centuries back. For what need is there, to assert his cult, to enumerate the churches one by one; when the Roman Martyrology, which comprehends them all, defends him in its own? For in it we see announced on this day the festal memory "In Norway of St. Olaf, king and martyr"; nor that very lately, but at least for two hundred years and more; as is plain from the Beline edition, adorned at Paris in the year 1521, the author himself then still surviving. Whether he was known even before that year in the older tables of the same Church, we do not know. In the Venetian edition of Beline of the year 1498 he certainly does not appear. Moreover, the things which we have here related about the cult can by no means seem wonderful, when the things which will be produced below about his relics and miracles have been weighed: but we believe the title of Martyr was given to him, because he fell in that war which the rebellion of his subjects (of whom, however, very many were already Christians) had stirred up against him, chiefly on account of his most ardent zeal for promoting and asserting the Catholic religion in the kingdom.

§ II. The Acts, and their authority; a brief notice of the parents and ancestors of St. Olaf.

As plain as are the things which have been said hitherto about the Saint's cult, so of doubtful authority and faith are the Acts which are circulated of him: so that you know not The Acts less certain than the cult: what can be affirmed for certain from them; namely of which neither is the age known, nor the author certain, nor the narration consonant. But how ancient this discrepancy is, even in the chief heads of his deeds, Adam of Bremen teaches, who flourished in the same century as the Saint, and Theodoric the monk of Nidaros, who in the following century composed a History of the kings of Norway, printed at Amsterdam in the year 1684: for the former brings forward three, and most diverse, opinions of his own age about the manner of the accomplished martyrdom (than which what ought then to have been more accurately known commonly?), Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 43: as many others the latter produces, chapter 13, and no less conflicting, about the place and time of his conversion and received Baptism: but he adds: "Nor is it wonderful that this befell concerning Olaf (namely, that it should be doubted when, or in what region of the world, he gave his name to Christ) in that land, where there was never any writer of antiquities: since blessed Jerome writes the same about Constantine the Great," etc. But indeed if those two hinges of his most holy life are turned in obscurity, what will be sufficiently explored in his lesser matters? Yet it is helpful to weigh whatever has come to our hands.

[12] We have manuscript Acts of the Saint of two kinds: the one from the parchment Passionale manuscript, signal, of the monastery of Böddeken, two manuscript copies of these, of the Order of the regulars of St. Augustine, diocese of Paderborn, at folio 206 of the month of July; as with his own hand subscribed he who destined these, as very many other things, hither, the priest of the Society of Jesus so often praised, John Gamans. The other from the Utrecht manuscript of St. Salvator. These, in the things which pertain to the Saint's life and martyrdom, are sewn together with fables, and are adverse to the histories of those times and places: for which cause we have thought they should so far be omitted. Behold, meanwhile, if you please, a compendium of them: Olaf, converted to Christ through apostolic men in his kingdom, presently himself preaches the faith. Hence he incurs the hatred of his own brother. To either of the two meanwhile is offered the kingdom of Denmark, to fall to him alone who of the two should sail up more quickly. The brother therefore fits out a fleet: Olaf, animated by Christ appearing, chooses for himself a single little boat without retinue, which, an angel leading, transmitted prodigiously through cut and pierced rocks, is driven so quickly, by so straight a course, to the Danish harbor, that he forestalled his brother by a whole month. The same befell presently not far from Nidaros, when Olaf sought again Norway, which his brother had invaded. He, moreover, having scarcely obtained the kingdom of Denmark, immediately spread the Christian religion by words and miracles. Which the brother not bearing, at last effected that the Saint, as Christ seen with the cross had admonished him, fled into Russia; where he expiated by a signal example, which will be narrated below, the religion of the Lord's Day, violated, as he himself thought, by imprudently cutting a stick.

[13] of which one is fabulous, After three years the Lord again offers Himself visible to him, laden with the cross, crowned with thorns, and bloody with wounds gaping over His whole body; and, "You must return," He said, "into Denmark, dearest Olaf; that the things which I have suffered for thy cause, thou mayest suffer from thy impious brother for My cause." While he obeys, again refreshed by the heavenly vision and by the contemplation of the triumph prepared after victory, he fell into his brother's snares; who presently, having snatched him into the palace, bids him either renounce Christ, or sustain the tortures and death of Christ. But when Olaf could not be moved from his purpose, presently he underwent all the same things, to speak most briefly, which the Lord underwent in Pilate's praetorium and on Mount Calvary; except that he prayed not only for those crucifying him, but also for the merchants crossing the sea, who should invoke him in perils. He too hung three hours from the cross; at the ninth hour crying, "Into thy hands, etc.," he expired: the earth trembled; several buildings fell. At last on the third day (the brother) wished to burn his body; but the body remained untouched by the fire: but from the ashes came a terrible fiery dragon, which slew Olaf's brother with several others. Then follow the miracles, of which below. These Acts Greven followed two centuries ago, and then Molanus; as see in our additions to Usuard on this day. These same or similar things John Meursius seems to have read, Danish History, book 3, when he says of the slaying of St. Olaf: "And the Norwegians themselves will have it that he was slain by his own not by treason, but by his brother Harald; with whom he had a controversy about boundaries." And so he attributes these things to Norwegian authors. But how insipid they are, you will gather from what is to be said.

[14] the other more sincere: from both a compiled Legend is printed. Much more sincere is the Böddeken manuscript; which therefore we thought worthy of the press, and to be annexed to this Commentary. From it seem to be drawn the lessons which I just mentioned, the six proper of the old Sleswick Breviary, except the fifth, which must have been drawn from elsewhere, since it records that which will be narrated afterward to have befallen the Saint after the stick was cut on the Lord's Day. But from both these Acts is compiled the Life of St. Olaf, which is extant at folio 110 and following in the Legend of the Saints printed at Louvain in the year 1485: for nearly from the beginning it reviews those things, and indeed in nearly the same words which are had in the Böddeken manuscript from number 2 to about the middle of number 7: but thence to the end it pursues the narration through those things which are read in the Utrecht manuscript nearly from head to foot; except that it omits a very few things, adds some also, transposes several, especially in the miracles. It is nonetheless as fabulous as the Utrecht one, which it contains; nay rather more: since its additions, however slight, obtrude mere trifles; as when it is said at folio 102: "St. Olaf therefore coming, to accept the kingdom of Denmark divinely promised to him, all the bells of the whole kingdom began to ring of themselves. This same was done, when he returned from Russia from exile into Denmark."

[15] Other Acts of the same Vastovius published in his Vitis Aquilonia, compiled both from our Böddeken Life, Why his various Acts published in Latin are not here reprinted; and from Adam of Bremen and other writers; or, if you prefer, a brief compendium of the Acts, reviewing most things generally, very few deeds singly. And so this too we let go. Fuller is Saxo Grammaticus, Danish History, book 10; Eric Olai, dean of Uppsala, History of the Goths and Swedes, book 2; and a whole century after him John Magnus, archbishop of Uppsala, from whom the Life of the Saint was borrowed both by him who published the lucubrations of Olaus Magnus, History of the Northern peoples, book 2, chapter 21, and by him who amplified the work of Surius after Mosander; where at this day, July 29, it may be read: for we do not think that any of them should here be separately followed

we think; either because they were all foreigners, or because they agree neither everywhere among themselves, nor with the Norwegians, or because they omit very many things, not only singly, but even all together; and those indeed especially which most make for commending the sanctity and posthumous glory of the Martyr King: on which head Theodoric the monk too is not sufficiently pleasing, whom otherwise I should not doubt to prefer to all, as being both a Norwegian, and contemporary with Saxo, and the first of all among his own.

[16] The Icelanders had once the greatest authority in historical matters throughout the whole North, but rather from these, and other monuments and especially among the Norwegians; which Theodoric affirms both in his prologue and in his history. Of these indeed many and ancient monuments have perished; yet not a few are said to survive, conceived in the vernacular tongue, and among others the Life of our St. Olaf, composed by whom, or when, is not known; yet inscribed in an ancient codex, which from the island of Western Iceland, where it lay hidden, they call the Flatey codex. In turning over these he was wholly engaged, then especially, when, now nearly fifty years old, he began to meditate the History of Norway, Thormod Torfæus, historiographer of the king of Denmark and Norway, and himself born in Iceland: whose work at last, elaborated in thirty years and more, and divided into four parts or volumes, came to light at Copenhagen in the year 1711. In the preface of the whole History he describes the instruments which he used; and they are for the great part Icelandic, written at the time when the Catholic religion alone flourished there; yet sprinkled, as he confesses, with not rare fables; but such as can easily be separated from the true narrations. Which he also advises particularly about the Life of St. Olaf in the Series of the kings of Denmark, book 1, chapter 4. But these Catholic monuments, when he descends to describing the times of our holy King and Martyr, he used in such a way that he surpassed our expectation: for although he was heterodox and wholly abhorring from the cult of the Saints; yet scarcely anything which he found to pertain to the glory and veneration of this Martyr does he seem to have so dissembled, but that he at least touched it in passing.

[17] Since therefore the manuscript Acts are very meager, which, because better are not at hand, we have thought should be given, and we are so compelled, let a historical commentary be given, that satisfaction be made to the learned and pious reader, to prefix to them a collection of all or at least the chief matters which are found scattered in various authors about St. Olaf, to compensate for the poverty of that Manuscript; no orthodox reader, I think, will take it ill, if he shall have seen this writer too, or rather his instruments, often cited: for he hands down very many things which have hitherto lain hidden buried in Norwegian and Icelandic darkness. Nor indeed does it seem that we need labor here about his fidelity: for though this were not so great to all as he himself in the preface professes in very weighty words, yet certainly in those things which regard illustrating the sanctity, miracles, and ancient cult of this Martyr, it cannot be feigned suspect; and which therefore it much more concerned this author to condemn to perpetual darkness, than to bring forth to the refutation and eternal reproach of his own sect.

[18] a brief notice of his parents being premised But before we discourse of the Saint himself, it will be helpful to have here noted a few things about his parents and ancestors. He had for father Harald, for mother Asta, as, with others everywhere, Theodoric of Nidaros testifies, chapter 13. That the surname Grenske, or Grenskii, was given to Harald from Grenland, a province of Norway, in which he was brought up, Torfæus teaches from the Norwegian monuments, part 2, book 6, chapter 6, and elsewhere; but from the Swedish, Eric Olai, book 1, page 27, and he who followed him, John Magnus. Both Arngrim Jonas therefore is deceived, when he names the mother of our Olaf Astrid, Icelandic Affairs, book 2, page 150 (for not the parent of this Olaf, but of another surnamed son of Tryggvi or Tryggo, was Astrid, according to Torfæus in the Series of the kings of Denmark, book 3, chapter 10), and Baillet in his Legend on this day, when he says the Saint's father was Thirgo, whom others called Harald Grenska. But indeed one is Thirgo, or rather Tryggo, another Harald Grenska; although both begot a son Olaf: nor did the legendist find them so confused in Saxo Grammaticus or John Magnus, whom he cites in the margin. But these things are too plain to detain us.

[19] and of his ancestors, Through both parents the Saint is believed to have reached kings for his forefathers: for his paternal grandfather, according to the Snorri Compendium in Torfæus, part 3, book 1, chapter 19, he had Gudriod; his great-grandfather Björn; his great-great-grandfather Harald the Fair-haired, first monarch of all Norway at the declining ninth century. The same, but a little more corruptly, may be read in Theodoric of Nidaros, chapter 13; where he himself calls Gudriod Gotd'rotd'ar Syr; but Björn, Bernhard, surnamed the Merchant. The genealogy of the mother they unfold from Ragnar or Regner Lodbrok, king of Denmark, and, as they say, subduer of England, Torfæus in the Series of the kings of Denmark, book 3, chapter 10; and a little otherwise at the place before cited Jonas; of whom the former, in the same place page 366, establishes that Regner was born about the year of Christ 720, and died in the year 790.

[20] His father, king of Southern Norway, Harald Grenskii, after his father's slaying compelled to flee into Sweden, after some years restored by the benefit of Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, from the eighteenth year of his age, about of Christ 962, obtained his father's kingdom, that is, not all Norway (as Eric of Uppsala seems to hint, book 1, page 27), but some part of it; namely Vingulmark, Vestfold, and the Agder as far as Lindesnes, as Torfæus shows, part 2, book 6, chapter 16; or nearly the whole southern tract of Norway: for Vingulmark, as the same teaches from Undalinus, part 1, book 2, chapter 2, extended from the strait of Svinesund, situated in the prefecture of Bohuslän, from the East toward the North and West as far as the Oslo fjord; but thence Vestfold toward the West as far as the Agder, or Agdaside; which, further extended toward Lindesnes, the last corner of Norway from the South and West, is divided into three prefectures, which they call Listerleen, or Lister; Mandalsleen, or Mandal; Nedenesleen, or Nedenes; to which the more recent add a fourth, which they call Abigdelag, in others Raabygdelag; concerning which the same Undalinus may be consulted at the cited place, chapter 10.

[21] He had now reigned there many years, subject to the king of Denmark on certain conditions, he perished among the Swedes by fire. when, having laid waste certain eastern places of the North, he brought his fleet on his return to the shores of Sweden, as is narrated in Torfæus, part 2, book 8, chapter 17. The queen of Sweden, Sigrid, lately the wife of Eric the Victorious, then a widow, received the guest most honorably; while, however, in the banquet she indulges a little too much in witticisms, she stung her guest with an odious comparison; saying repeatedly that her fields and estates were of no less value to her, than his whole kingdom in Norway. Harald did not dissemble his anger, and, the feast being presently broken off, departed. Then the queen, thinking the dangerous wound must be healed, overwhelmed him departing with so many gifts, and so great honor, that she dismissed him appeased. But another danger, no little graver, received her when she had discharged this. The next summer Harald, meditating the repudiation of his wife Asta, and new nuptials, while he resumes a naval expedition toward the East, salutes Sigrid on the way, and demands and urges marriage with her. She, neither wishing to admit at all the armed suitor, nor daring to reject him, began first to dissuade him from the counsel, and to commend the fidelity and merits of Asta, yet not to exclude all hope: then, when she felt that she was losing her labor; fearing lest by a present repulse she should kindle vengeance for the former injury, she resolved to forestall it by craft. Having therefore kindly invited him to a banquet, she drenched him with abundant and prepared wine, until, taken at once by drink and sleep, torches being set to the dining-hall, she burned him. That this was done at Uppsala, Eric of Uppsala testifies, book 2, page 28. Now let us proceed to Olaf, son of Harald.

§ III. His homeland, the time of his birth, his education, his piratical expeditions.

From the death of his father the time of St. Olaf's birth cannot be much removed; since, according to the Icelanders in Torfæus just assigned, The place of St. Olaf Harald had left Asta already pregnant with him, when he departed from her. But when she understood both her husband's death, and the repudiation decreed to her a little before by him, from a certain Hrani, who had been in charge of preserving and bringing back the fleet; having straightway departed from the kingdom (which is then thought to have fallen to Count Hakon, monarch of Norway), she betook herself to her father Gudbrand in the Uplands. But Uplands and Uplanders they call a most ample tract of inland Norway, once inhabited by several petty kings, but now comprehended under the name of the prefecture of Akershus, and verging toward the North almost from the innermost recess of the Oslo, or Obslo fjord, concerning which Undalinus, book 2, from chapter 6 to 9. In this tract is situated also Norwegian Grenland, where toward the West and Telemark, once subject to Grenland, the lake Mios looks. There we said Harald was brought up; thither Asta fled, and brought forth Olaf, posthumous to Harald, in the estate of Vik, asserts Torfæus from the Flatey codex, part 2, book 8, chapter 17. But at what time?

[23] and the year of his birth; This I judge very obscure: for if we hear the Icelanders in Torfæus just indicated, Harald perished about the beginning of the summer of the year 995, in which some of them establish also that their Olaf was born, in the same, part 3, book 1, chapter 14. These Torfæus himself follows there and part 2, book 8, chapter 35; although he confesses that in this matter the Flatey codex does not agree with him, when in the Life of Olaf Tryggvason it hands down, with Theodoric of Nidaros chapter 13 and others, that he was three years old, when he was found by the same Olaf Tryggvason with his mother in the Uplands, in the third year of his monarchy, of Christ 998; and that Asta had already then married Sigurd Syr: but in the Life of St. Olaf it records that he was six years old, when Sigurd Syr wooed his mother, whom also, says Torfæus, it is agreed he married in the year 998: and so here the year of his birth is assigned as 992; there 995. I am deceived, if by instruments so little coherent either opinion can safely be established; especially since it seems well-nigh incredible that Olaf, if he was born so late, did those things which we shall relate a little below from the same authors.

[24] but this little certain. Loccenius, skilled in Northern affairs among the few, professes that he found the reckoning of these times so slippery and uncertain, that in his History of the Swedes he dared to indicate no chronology before the year 1150. And indeed from the calculations of the Icelanders Jacob Gislo departs greatly, in his Chronology collected from all the best authors, and printed at Stockholm in the year 1592, when at the year of Christ 998 he notes these things: St. Olaf, king

flourished in Norway, and waged war with Olaf Skotkonung: but at the year 999: St. Olaf married the daughter of Olaf Skotkonung. Add that Pontanus, Danish Affairs, book 5, inclines to that opinion, which suspects that that Anlaf, who is said to have helped Sweyn king of the Danes in the year 994 in the siege of London against the English, was St. Olaf; and therefore establishes him as already then adult. All these things make it that this matter ought not seem sufficiently decided by the opinions of the Icelanders: unless one wish that more should now be attributed to them than Theodoric wished in the twelfth century, chapter 1, where he both timidly defends the chronology of the ancient Icelanders, most diligently investigated, and unhappily follows it; when he says that Harald the Fair-haired, St. Olaf's great-great-grandfather, reigned in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand fifty-two, that is, in the twenty-third year after the martyrdom of his great-great-grandson, according to Theodoric's own computation.

[25] His education up to the 12th or 15th year of his age. Nor is the same Flatey codex consistent with itself, when it describes Olaf's education: for, as Torfæus testifies, part 3, book 1, chapter 14, at one time it affirms him nourished with his maternal grandfather Gudbrand in Greenland, at another time with his stepfather Sigurd Syr, petty king of Ringerike. Yet both assertions can be reconciled, if the Son be said to have followed his mother, and been kept with her at his grandfather's, until Asta passed to a second marriage, and led him with her to Sigurd in Ringerike, which is near to the Oslo fjord toward the North. I pass over the things which they narrate the Boy displayed here, specimens both of a warlike and of a once magnificent and liberal mind. When he was eight years old, he is reported to have surpassed all his equals in the powers both of body and of mind; nor was he yet twelve years old (as, says Torfæus in the same place, chapter 15, three parchment manuscripts commonly have; the fourth, however, equally ancient, reports fifteen) when he undertook his first nautical expedition, Hrani, who had nourished him, yet within his father's house, and was thence called the Nourisher, or elsewhere the Traveler, being entrusted with his care and custody until he should grow up: for he was a man skilled and accustomed in piracy.

[26] His first course was directed into Denmark, Ottar the Black testifying: thence piratical expeditions thence, the first autumn, into Sweden; where he mingled all things with slaughters, robberies, and burnings, by the best right, as it seemed to him, in revenge for his father's slaying; the same poet (Ottar the Black) in this sense modulating verses on that matter:

"You, accustomed to drive the barks with oars and spread the sails, everywhere, the zephyrs breathing, furnished with ample spoils, traversed the Baltic realms. First of all the brothers of the Swan were compelled to pay deserved penalties: huge fear mingled all things."

The brothers of the Swan are here called the Swedes, by an allusion of names, Sven, which signifies Swede, and Svan, which signifies swan. But I should wish it to be observed here, that verses of this kind were first composed in Icelandic, and are held in the highest esteem among all the Northern peoples, as being testimonies contemporary with the times of which they treat. For those poets, or scalds, as they are called, once the perpetual companions and chief ministers of kings and princes, were wont to celebrate in present song almost those things at which they themselves had been present. A catalogue of these Olaus Wormius exhibited, and from him lately Sibern in the Historical Library of Denmark-Norway, chapter 1, the kings under whom they flourished being added; where you will find Ottar Suarte, or the Black, noted under St. Olaf, as also others to be cited below.

[27] In this expedition, after conquering in the Baltic sea, no less by art and guile than by valor, the pirates Soti and Thord, according to Torfæus in the same place and chapter 16, "having entered Sweden with his fleet" (the words are Loccenius's, who is briefer than Torfæus, History of Sweden, book 1, page 17), "he waged war more with the fields, cattle, and villages, than with men, laying waste all things round about, even to the lake then called Logen, now Mälar. Thence, having advanced to Sigtuna (not far from Stockholm toward the North), he bridged the river; by which he might lead his army across. But the king of Sweden (Olaf Skotkonung), having gone out against him with a just army, an iron chain being drawn across the lake of Stocksund, and garrisons being placed, cut off his return and safe retreat. Surrounded by these straits, Olaf Haraldsson takes a counsel, which the present necessity suggested, on the spur of the moment; and at Agnifit, so called from Agni son of Dag, afterward called Stockholm from Stocksund, in a lower ground, where now is the Southern river, a channel being dug by night by the great industry and speed of his men, and the water increased by a dense shower, he extracted himself with his fleet, and escaped hence safe."

[28] That this was our Olaf's first war, the Norwegian and Swedish writers agree, thence into Gothland, not only here Loccenius, whom I have produced, but also John Magnus, History of the Goths, book 17, chapter 21, and Eric of Uppsala, book 2, page 29; although these keep deep silence about his age of 12 or 15 years, as one to whom such things do not very well agree; which Torfæus himself does not dissemble at the cited place, although he thought the faith of his authors should be preferred to his own opinion. But he errs, when he says these things are referred by Loccenius to those times in which Olaf had already been made king of Norway: for he inserts many things between these and his reign, yet in these few words: "Thus, having escaped from the hands and snares of the wholly unsuspecting enemies, when he had traversed Gothia, Finland, Frisia, England, and other foreign shores, he at last returned to his own people in Norway": and then at last he narrates that Olaf treated of obtaining the monarchy: and Eric and Magnus agree; except that both make mention somewhat more fully of the Gothic or rather Gothlandic incursion; and Eric indeed in this manner: "But he (Olaf, having lately escaped from Stocksund), having attacked the parts of the Swedes, approached Gothland (an island in the Baltic sea to the East of Ostrogothia), and extorted a great sum of money from the Gothlanders: otherwise he would have given the whole land to plunder. Then he wintered peacefully among them": namely in the year 1007, as Torfæus thinks: but I should believe these things done either later, or Olaf born earlier, being now assuredly robust, as Eric observes, and bold.

[29] Ösel, Finland, Denmark, Frisia, In the first spring (of the following year) he moved thence into Ösel (which is an island east of Gothland, opposed to the Livonian gulf, commonly Oesel), and, having widely laid it waste, overcomes the inhabitants resisting with a strong hand, and slays the fugitives in punishment of their perfidy: for at his first arrival they had bargained for peace with a certain sum; to receive which, when he was present on the appointed day, they flocked together furnished with arms, not money. Thus Torfæus in the same place, calling as witness both of this and of the Gothlandic invasion the contemporary poet Sighvat, in others Sigurd Skald. But he proceeds: "Thence he sought Finland, or Finningia; where, by safe robbery, the Finns hiding themselves in the forests and lurking-places, and not daring to join hands, the fields are laid waste, the booty is driven off. But Olaf, while he suffers himself to be carried further from the shore by the sweetness of this, hardly, and not without the blood of his men, escapes the snares of the Finns. Then there was a crossing into Denmark," says the same, "where he joined himself, now in readiness for a nautical expedition, to a certain Danish Count, Thorkell the Tall (as only one manuscript copy of Snorri's history, called Kringla, has); who, the navigation being directed into the South, having sailed past the maritime coast of Cimbria, when they had come into Sudurvik, fell in with many bands (perhaps ships) of pirates; and, a battle being joined, reduced many of them into their power ... After this victory Olaf sought Frisia, and, anchors being cast at the Kinnlim side, attacks the inhabitants in plundering wise; who, about to repel force by force, fought with him; whether with favorable or adverse Mars, is not added; the year, however, is noted in chapter 17, in which, according to the Icelandic annals of Norway, this happened, of Christ 1008."

[30] England, To the autumn of the same year is referred in the same place our Olaf's first arrival in England; as one which both not much preceded the death of Sweyn, king of Denmark and subduer of England, whom the Icelanders affix to the year of Christ 1009; and forestalled by a whole three years the death of Ethelred, king of England, which they, in the same place chapter 19, tie to the year of Christ 1012 or 1011: for the three years, which the death of Ethelred closed, that Olaf spent in England, not only the Icelanders, but also the Swedes assert, and especially Eric of Uppsala, book 1, page 30. And this indeed could be believed, if the years fatal both to Sweyn and to Ethelred were here rightly recorded; but however great authority Torfæus may wish to be in his Icelandic annals, he will yet lead no one to think them, especially in this matter, comparable to the more ancient writers of English affairs, much less to be preferred. But the testimonies of all these agree, by which they assert that both Sweyn died among them in the year of Christ 1014, and Ethelred in the year 1016; as may be seen in the Saxon Chronicle, Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and others at the years just designated. Olaf cannot therefore be thought to have come into England a little before the death of Sweyn, and to have remained there three years, up to the death of Ethelred: since before the year of Christ 1016, even according to Torfæus's chronology, he both subjected to himself the kingdom of all Norway and administered it in person; as will be seen below.

[31] Saxo Grammaticus, Danish History, book 10, narrates this to have been done after Sweyn had departed from the living, but these last things and Olaf had now obtained the empire of all Norway: for then, invited by Canute, Sweyn's son, to subdue again England, which had defected, he rendered him strenuous service; until (in the year 1016 now advanced), peace being composed with Edmund, son of the deceased Ethelred, seeking Norway again, he departed from Canute, and angry indeed with him, both because he had defrauded him of the promised part of England, and because he had snatched away his concubine Alvina. Saxo is followed by Krantz, in Denmark, book 4, chapter 25, and elsewhere, as also Meursius, Danish History, book 3, where concerning Canute the Great. This opinion cannot be reconciled with Adam of Bremen, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 40; where he says that between Knut (Canute) and Olaph (our Olaf), king of the Norsemen, there was continual war, and that it ceased not all the days of their life, and that immediately after Sweyn, Canute's father, had died, as he intimates in the same place, chapter 36; nor with the History of Norway, according to which Olaf could never have gone to England after the year of Christ 1014; nor did he serve the Danes there before, but Ethelred, at least according to the more select monuments, which Torfæus defends against the narration of the Flatey codex, always in the same part 3, book 1, chapter 19; in which also no mention is made either of the promised part of the kingdom, or of the concubine Alvina. It fights also with the history of the Swedes in both Magnus and Eric of Uppsala, who likewise assert that Olaf stood by Ethelred in England against the Danes: although so far they too contradict Adam of Bremen; namely as those who (whether they make our Olaf (or the same

make him the same with Olaf son of Crakabein, or different) to have adhered to the Danes up to the death of Sweyn, he manifestly indicates, since he then narrates him to be separated from the kingdom of the Danes; nor does he build up any later journey of his to the English.

[32] Others place Olaf in England much earlier; as John Wallingford, so variously is it described, who flourished at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and was published at Oxford in the year 1691 among the fifteen writers of British history: for he affirms, page 550, that this same Olaf was the one who helped Sweyn in the siege of London (in the year 994), and afterward flashed with martyrdom and miracles. This one Pontanus had not seen, I think, when he inclined to the same opinion, as I noted above, and thought the twelfth-century English authors should be so understood; however much, changing the name, they call him Anlaf, when they treat of the siege of London at the year already mentioned; but afterward Olaf and Olaf at the years of Christ 1027 and following, as you may see in the Saxon Chronicle, Florence of Worcester, and Simeon of Durham, to omit the more recent; who all (if you except the first) circumscribe the expedition of their Anlaf within the briefest terms: for they say that he came with Sweyn, and invaded London on the 8th of September in the year 994; thence, through various provinces, defiled all things with burning, devastation, slaughters, until, soothed by a huge price, he rested through the winter in Southampton, the English by agreement furnishing him provisions: at which time Ethelred, having with all the zeal he could drawn him away from Sweyn's party, so secured him to his own, that, received by Ethelred himself in the Sacrament of Confirmation, he sought Norway again the next summer, having promised, which he also performed, that he would never revisit England with a hostile mind. I said: If you except the first: for the Saxon Chronicle exhibits him warring in England even in the year 993, and, peace or a truce being made, received by Ethelred in Consecration (that is, Baptism, as is plain from Du Cange). But of the Baptism we shall treat below.

[33] so that we can elicit nothing certain. Yet that this Anlaf was different from our Olaf, and indeed was Olaf Tryggvason, our Alford contends at that year, and Torfæus, part 2, book 8, chapters 17 and 29; and indeed their opinion is not without weighty considerations. But why do I longer fatigue myself and the pious reader with these things; since it neither concerns the sanctity of Olaf that these be known; nor, in so great a discord of writers, can they be so defined from one, but that they be shaken by others? Behold, meanwhile, briefly what our Hero did both there and elsewhere, outside his homeland, from the compendium of Snorri Sturluson, the Icelander (who was famous in the thirteenth century), in as many words, except that he inserts his own parentheses, Torfæus relates in Latin, part 3, book 1, chapter 19: "The son of Harald the Fair-haired was Björn, father of Gudriod; but Gudriod was the father of Harald Grenske, that one who married Asta, daughter of Gudbrand Kula. Their son was Olaf the Fat; who as a boy departed from his homeland with his nourisher Hrani. His first conflict was at the Soti rocks; the second in Esthonia; the third in Suurvik, a province of Denmark; the fourth in Vinland (Finland is to be read); the fifth in Kinnlimaside against horsemen."

[34] A compendium of his deeds outside his homeland, "Thence he went into England; where at London bridge was the sixth conflict, against the Danes, who warred there, and became robbers (and it is confirmed by a verse of the poet Sighvat). The Danes defended the bridge: Olaf, having followed Ethelred's party, assailed it (a verse of Ottar the Black is cited whole in testimony). The seventh in the moors of Ringmere (the battle of Ringmere Simeon of Durham records, On the Deeds of the kings of England, at the year 1010). The eighth, when he stormed Canterbury, against the Danes and Vandals; for they too served Knut (a verse of Sighvat is brought forward). The ninth at the river Nyamoda, against the Danes (Sighvat's rhythm is again adduced). The tenth against the Danish pirates in the place Hole, where he destroyed a certain castle. The eleventh at Grislupollir. Thence, having set out toward the West, in the Fetlar bay he waged the twelfth contest. Moving thence toward the South, he roused the thirteenth battle at Seliupollir, and, the town of Gunnvaldsburg being stormed, he seized Count Geirfinn."

[35] taken from Snorri Sturluson. "Thence toward the South, to the river Karlsa, he moved his march; he infested both banks, and, long detained there by adverse winds, when he was meditating the Njörvasund (the Strait of Gades), he was admonished that God did not wish him to proceed further into the South; but rather, that he should seek his homeland Norway again, and there remain king forever. Then the King moved back into Poitou, and, having entered the Loire (Ligeris), he burned the town of Varandi after a fought contest. The next winter he settled in Siguo, in others Signa (it is a town or some part of Normandy), and sent before into England Hrani, his nourisher, with gifts and huge promises to allure the minds of the magnates; which he faithfully executed, and came as far as London. The next spring Olaf crossed into England, and waged the sixteenth battle at Jungfurda. The seventeenth at Valdia (the poem of the poet Sighvat, noted in all the Chronicles, clearly hands down that he fought with the enemy twenty times, standards being joined)." These things there; obscurely, as is plain; but if truly, who would not wonder at the silence of the historians, especially the English?

§ IV. The time and place of his Baptism; his return into his homeland, and the beginnings of his reign.

The things which have been said of Olaf in the preceding paragraph, anyone will more easily allow to be unknown, than his conversion—which was joined with them—from the ancestral superstitions to the Baptism of Christ. It was already once doubted, But this is most certain, and asserted everywhere by very many authors, but not in one place and time by all: for there has not ceased to be agitated the controversy which from the twelfth century was agitated even among the Norwegians themselves, drawn into three opinions, as is plain from Theodoric of Nidaros; who, chapter 13, when he had narrated that Olaf son of Tryggvi, monarch of Norway from the year 995 to 1000, came to the Uplands, and there found his kinsman our Olaf together with his mother Asta, a little boy of three years; straightway subjoins: "Then he also caused him (St. Olaf) to be baptized, together with his mother, in the same place, according to some: others contend that he was baptized in England: but I too have read in the History of the Normans, that he was baptized by Robert, metropolitan of Rouen in Normandy."

[37] The first opinion Torfæus prefers to the rest, as more probable, part 3, in what place and time the Saint was baptized: book 1, chapter 14; but adds no argument. The same the fabulous Life in the Utrecht manuscript builds up, in so far as it asserts him washed in the sacred font in Norway; yet it varies in this, that it indicates him to have been then an adult, not a boy; nor does it mention the intervention of Olaf Tryggvason. The second is that of John Wallingford, who affirms him baptized at the time of the siege of London (in the year 994), Ethelred being sponsor, page 548, and of John Magnus, who, however, is less clear, when he says, book 17, chapter 23, that he was washed with the Sacrament of Baptism by the cooperation of Mildred (Ethelred), king of the English: to whom is added the Saxon Chronicle cited above §3, number 32, according at least to those who wish our Olaf to be understood by Anlaf. The third Theodoric himself seems to have approved above the rest, when he strives to confirm this alone by reasoning, which I prefer to be read there, than to subjoin here, since it is wholly anachronistic; as joining Robert king of France with William duke of Normandy. The same before Theodoric defended William Calculus, monk of Jumièges, History of the Normans, book 5, chapter 12; the same Thomas Walsingham, published by Camden, in the Ypodigma Neustriae, page 429; the same the Bodecensis manuscript Life, below chapter 1, number 2; the Lessons of the Sleswick Breviary of the year 1512; and of the ancient Nidaros Breviary, as Torfæus testifies, presently to be assigned; nay even the modern Proper of the Swedes; the same Vastovius in his Life; Pommeraye in the History of the archbishops of Rouen, where concerning Robert I, page 245, and others.

[38] Certainly unless this last opinion be true, it will be hard to say whence the monk of Jumièges could have devised it, we, however, think it was done at Rouen, or with what face he dared to assert it in public writings, scarcely a whole century after the deed had elapsed; easily to be refuted from the records of Rouen, if he wrote falsely. Then, unless this opinion be true, it can scarcely be believed that it could come to pass that, the others being rejected, the churches of Denmark, of Sweden, and even the very metropolitan of Norway, adopted it long ago to be recited in the Office; since it would be more glorious especially for the Norwegian bishops, if the King so holy were believed to have owed the firstfruits of his better life, according to God, to themselves rather than to a foreigner. Nor do we therefore doubt to assert that this befell at Rouen; but at what time? Our Henschen, in the historical Commentary on St. Sigfrid at the 15th of February, §1, number 3, assigns the year 993, attributing to our Olaf what he had read in the English writers about Anlaf: but there stand in the way Calculus and Walsingham, of whom the former is a most weighty witness in this matter; for both assert that this happened by the work of Richard II, duke of Normandy (who first succeeded his father in the year 996), and after the death of Sweyn, king of Denmark, which fell in the year 1014, and the beginning of February. This is a strong weapon against those who confound that Anlaf, as we saw above, with St. Olaf.

[39] about the year of Christ 1014; Olaf seems therefore to have been expiated by the salutary waters in the same year in which, having returned to his own people, he began to subject all Norway to himself, that is, 1014. Nor do I see what could greatly hinder this opinion: there were then certainly living all who furnished the occasion for so great a business, William testifying; Richard II, duke of Normandy; Robert I, archbishop of Rouen; Odo, Count of Chartres. Add that, according to the Icelanders themselves, in Torfæus, part 3, book 1, chapter 18, Olaf tarried that year in Normandy until the spring time. The only thing which can be objected is the series of things narrated by Calculus; as one which seems to hint that this befell before Melun was stormed by Robert, king of France, and Richard II, duke of Normandy; since this is narrated in the same place after Olaf's Baptism, chapter 14. Which therefore, if the order was preserved, will seem to have to be placed before the year of Christ 999, in which this oppression of Melun is noted from the Chronicle of Fleury in Labbe's historical Chronology, and Daniel's History of France. But it can be replied, that the order of time is not always preserved by historians, when they narrate disparate deeds; and indeed often is not even known. Thus the same William puts Ethelred's death before Olaf's Baptism in the same place chapter 9, since it without doubt followed it. Moreover, he does not seem to have changed his name at Baptism, whatever Baronius may wish in the annotations on this day to the Roman Martyrology, from the History of John Magnus, book 17, inspected less accurately, as it appears,

chapter 21; where he narrates that Olaf the king was called by the name of Jacob in Baptism: but this Olaf is different from ours, king of Sweden, not of Norway. Consult Eric of Uppsala, book 1, at the end.

[40] But after St. Olaf, at Rouen, with some of his men, at the exhortation of archbishop Robert, whence Olaf also returned into his homeland, had been converted to the faith, and washed by him in Baptism, and anointed with the sacred Chrism, rejoicing in the grace received, returned to his kingdom, says the Calculus, book 5, chapter 12. Others, however, hand down that England was first visited by him, and thence Norway. To England Theodoric of Nidaros refers what he narrates to have befallen him before his departure into Norway, chapter 15, in these words: "It is reported that Olaf then approached a certain hermit, a man of great sanctity, who foretold him many things, both that the Lord would bestow on him an abundance of His grace, and also by what death he would migrate from this light to Christ." The Icelandic Annals in Torfæus, part 3, book 1, chapter 20, lead him about through Northumbria; where, the port of Wales being stormed, he took care that two ships of conspicuous size be made, and put on each sixty chosen and mail-clad soldiers, with whom, the rest of the fleet and army being dismissed, he sought his homeland again, that he might at last free it—then administered by Hakon and his uncle Sweyn, Jarls or Counts, by fiduciary right on behalf of the kings of Sweden and Denmark—from the foreign yoke, and vindicate it for himself, if he could, and for Christ (which his kinsman Olaf Tryggvason had long since begun to do). And concerning the two ships and the number of mail-clad soldiers, Theodoric also agrees at the cited place; where he thus pursues his return to his own people.

[41] A prosperous course therefore being made across the ocean, he landed first, by a certain divine presage, at a certain island (according to Torfæus, that he might free it from unworthy servitude, situated in the middle of Norway as at a navel) which in our mother tongue is called Sæla, but in Latin is interpreted Felicity, namely portending the future beatitude of the Man, and because he brought in the hope of eternal felicity to the whole homeland by the auspice of his arrival. Thence he sailed to the place which is called Sautungsund (in Torfæus Ulfasunda, to the South of Sæla) where he also tarried some days. There it was then brought to him that Hakon, son of Eric (and successor in the greater part of the Norwegian kingdom), was approaching with two ships, one small, which we call a scuta, the other long, which the ancients called a liburna... Which being known, our Olaf devised a snare of this kind. He caused his ships to be placed opposite on either side; and, because the place was most narrow, ropes to be stretched between the ships themselves, which, however, should be covered by the waves, lest they betray the trick; so that while they were there entangled unawares, they might be taken unharmed and without effusion of blood, if it could be done: which so happened. For Hakon, arriving, suspecting nothing else than that they were merchants, was straightway captured by the King. There then he abjured all that part of Norway which he himself had held: thence he set out into England, to Canute the Great, whose nephew he was by his sister.

[42] This obstacle being so happily removed, there remained another; namely Sweyn Jarl; that he might subject it to himself, as lawful king. Hakon's uncle, as I said; who held the remaining part of Norway, committed to him by the king of Sweden after Olaf Tryggvason was conquered: for he, as Theodoric testifies in the same place, when he had heard of the arrival of blessed Olaf, an army being collected, presently pursues him. But Olaf the king (for he had now obtained this name from his men, after the manner of the ancient Romans; because there too the army was wont to create for itself an emperor and impose the royal name), distrusting the aid of the people of Thrand (for he knew their fickleness and inconstancy), withdrew into the upper province, and there wintered with his stepfather Sinuard (others call him Sigurd) and his mother Asta; meanwhile neglecting nothing whereby he might lead both his stepfather and the other petty kings of the Uplands to acknowledge and proclaim him king of all Norway lawful by hereditary right; which he obtained from them about the same passing year of restored salvation 1014 in a solemn assembly according to the laws of the Uplands. Then indeed he so crushed Count Sweyn, meeting him with a hostile army the next spring at Vik (this was a Southern tract of Norway surrounding the Oslo fjord), in a naval battle, that he, a fugitive into Sweden, where he shortly after died, left the whole monarchy of Norway empty and easy to the Victor; as may be seen more at large in Torfæus, part 3, book 1, from chapter 22 to 27: for it is not our purpose here to review anything but the chief heads of things, and those indeed selected.

[43] And indeed he began to reign there the same year; As for the year in which he was first raised to the height of the kingdom, in that the chief authors of Northern affairs not obscurely agree; as Adam of Bremen, book 2, chapter 26, and Saxo Grammaticus, book 10, in Canute the Great, when they most nearly join the beginnings of the Olavian reign with the death of Sweyn king of Denmark, which is assigned by the English to the year 1014. Hence perhaps Greven, who in the first edition of his Usuard had noted the death of St. Olaf in the year of Christ 1028, in the second noted it in the year 1026; because he had read, either in Adam in some copy, or in Albert of Stade, that he reigned twelve years; which therefore he believed must be numbered from the year 1014: and this the more, because he thought him slain on the 4th of the Kalends of August, on the sixth feria, as will be said §9, number 101. Theodoric of Nidaros too, chapter 19, says that blessed Olaf fell in the year, of which there will afterward be a place for speaking, 1029; after he had held the kingdom, as he narrates in chapter 20, 15 years: therefore he fetches the beginning of his reign from the same year of Christ 1014. Nay even Eric of Uppsala himself, although in book 1, page 30, he defers it some time after the death of Ethelred king of the English; yet when a little below he establishes the year of Olaf's slaying as 1028, and this presently the fifteenth of his reign, will be reduced to altogether the same opinion (if you understand the fifteenth year incomplete). Nor are they to be thought to gainsay this, other more recent writers, who begin his reign from the year of Christ 1015; either because they thought the end of the preceding year should be neglected; or because only in that year, Sweyn Jarl being conquered and expelled, he obtained a completed empire.

[44] although only the following year For scarcely, victory won, had Olaf learned that Count Sweyn had departed from the kingdom, when, "the Western parts of Vik," says Torfæus in the same place, chapter 26, "being sailed past as far as the promontory of Lindesnes, received with a great concourse of people, he is everywhere proclaimed king in the year 1015. Thence, more certain that Erling Skialg (who was a soldier of Sweyn) had gathered a great number of soldiers, he cut short delays in the Northern parts of Agder, and, about to use the opportunity of a wind blowing to his wish, hastened into Thrandia by great journeys, thinking it of great import, if he should subject to himself the most populous provinces of the kingdom, while the Count was far off. Nor did his opinion deceive him: for as soon as he came thither, without any tergiversation he is created king by the suffrages of all; and settled at Nidaros through the autumn; where he took care that all things which were required for the winter's fare be furnished, and a royal palace, and a sacred edifice, dedicated to the memory of St. Clement, be built in the same place in which it was situated in the time of the author who wrote these things," etc. It seemed good to transcribe these things, because thence it shines forth how greatly, from the very entrance of the kingdom, the Christian religion was at heart to him.

[45] Meanwhile Count Sweyn or Jarl, while, aided both by the spoils of the Russians and the forces of the Swedes, that he might obtain the whole monarchy. he was meditating to recover the dominions lately lost, in the very preparation for war, being seized by disease, had ceased to live toward the autumn of the same year: the news of which so secured to Olaf some provinces otherwise wavering, that they not only of their own accord desired him alone as king of all Norway, but also each duly proclaimed him, and presently, the royal tributes being paid, professed him. This burned Olaf Skotkonung, king of Sweden, especially since from the provinces tributary to himself under Sweyn's administration throughout Norway he could extort nothing through the collectors, sent as usual this winter; nay, St. Olaf had punished some of them with hanging, because they had gone on the more obstinately to vex with wicked exactions the people now subject to himself, after he himself had expressly forbidden this to be done. A war therefore both most grievous and by no means doubtful was impending; but our Olaf, holding that in suspense for a while, decrees that the kingdom must first be formed by laws for himself, rather than defended by arms: as we shall presently relate from the History of Norway, which here too we have already followed, part 3, book 2, chapter 2.

§ V. The civil and canon law framed by him; the provinces freed; peace made with the king of Sweden; his zeal for the Christian religion; his singular and daily piety; the death of Sigurd.

The next spring (namely of the year 1016, according to the Icelanders in the same place, chapter 2) the King enjoins on the people of Thrand an expedition into the Southern and Eastern parts of the kingdom. In the year 1016 he frames civil and ecclesiastical laws, Presently he called together to himself the wisest men of the whole kingdom, without any respect of riches, and took care that the laws, which Hakon the foster-son of Athelstan (the first Christian king of Norway from the year of Christ 935 to 950, as Torfæus thinks, History of Norway, part 2, book 1, appendix 2) had framed in Thrandia, be set forth to him; and from them, according to their counsel, as seemed good, he either took away or added. But the canon law, which he called Kristinrett, or Ecclesiastical law, he composed according to the opinion of Grimkel and the priests, and strove with the utmost effort to extirpate heathenism, and the depraved morals noxious to the Christian profession; and brought the matter so far, that the citizens consented to the laws which he passed, and bound themselves to obedience to them by oath. Nor was that solicitude terminated by the limits of the kingdom: desiring to deserve greater things of the Christian cause, he anxiously inquired into the morals and institutes of the neighboring nations, especially those which concerned religion; namely of the Orkney men, the Shetlanders, the Faroese, and the Icelanders; and observed various vices and defects in each... and sent them those articles which, as adverse to Christian piety, he wished to be removed from their laws.

[47] When you hear Grimkel here named, understand that prelate and these indeed according to the opinion of the bishop and the priests; whom, with others, both bishops and many priests, brought from England by St. Olaf, Adam of Bremen hands down, and commends especially for his doctrine and virtues, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 40; on which place may be consulted the things which Torfæus observes, part 3, book 3, chapter 10. But how much the holy King, from the very beginning of the kingdom, both himself deferred to him and his priests, and wished to be deferred to them by his own people, the text just described indicates; which the praised Bremensis confirms, adding of the same: "By whose admonition and doctrine he (St. Olaf) prepared his heart to God, and committed to them the subject people to be ruled."

And so they scarcely ever departed from the King's side; but in public assemblies they were wont to occupy the second place from him; as is plain from the description of the palace of Nidaros, built the previous year, as we said, where, according to Torfæus's narration, part 3, book 2, chapter 1, in the middle of the dining-hall was the King's throne; above (or on the right) was placed bishop Grimkel with the priests; below (or on the left) the counselors, etc. Finally, this is the same Grimkel, who afterward raised the body of our Martyr from the earth. But let us return to the begun history.

[48] which were promulgated and received throughout the whole kingdom. These being accomplished, (St. Olaf) moved his march into the Southern parts, tarrying a little while in the several prefectures. Where, the citizens being called together into judicial courts, the laws which should fortify Christianity were publicly recited, depraved customs abrogated, and morals savoring of idolatry forbidden, which in the time of the Counts (Eric, Sweyn, Hakon) had crept in: for although they severely vindicated the authority of the laws, yet they had no care of the Christian sacred rites; the religion of each was left to his own arbitrament. Hence it came to pass that everywhere about the maritime parts all indeed were washed in the sacred laver, yet very many were ignorant of the Christian constitutions; but the inland, the mountains, and the valleys, only heathens inhabited: for since each felt according to his own arbitrament about divine things, that inhered most in the minds of each which they had learned in youth. That reins might be cast upon so perilous a license, a grave penalty was added to all and each of the transgressors of the new law, without any respect of condition and lot; by fear of which everywhere obedience to the King was at last sworn, even without contradiction. And so already then he had begun to merit that elogium, which Theodoric, chapter 16, where he excellently praises the aforesaid laws, ascribes to him in these words: "And, to conclude briefly, he was a prince over mortals only for this, that he might lead them to the glory of immortality, as much as in him lay."

[49] At the same time he recovers the provinces occupied by the Danes and Swedes, Yet by no means meanwhile, while he seemed to act the apostle, did he intermit the things which were the king's: for God breathed on him so much authority in the same expedition, so much love and zeal in his subjects; that, when he approached Vik, the prefects of the king of Denmark, who had hitherto settled there under Eric and Hakon, fleeing away, both obedience and the royal revenues and tributes were of their own accord offered to him by all. Nay, setting his course from Tønsberg toward Gothia, he brought back the province of Bohuslän, long since occupied by the Swedes, to its former allegiance by benevolence, not by arms; except that Eilif, the prefect of the king of Sweden there, opposing the will of the citizens, a certain Thorer the Tall, an emissary of the Norwegian King, slew in a tumult. Thence, some neighboring islands and maritime places being recovered, the summer being now far spent, carried back as far as the Raumelf, which is near to the prefecture of Bohuslän toward the North, he entered the river, and presently raised the town of Sarpsborg, dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God; about to spend there the next autumn and winter: History of Norway, in the same place, chapters 3 and 4. But Sarpsborg, as Undalinus notes, book 2, chapter 5, was reduced to ashes by the Swedes in the year of Christ 1617, and in its place king Frederick II of Denmark built another city, somewhat nearer to the sea, which from his name is called Fredrikstad.

[50] in the year 1017 he destines legates to the king of Sweden to treat of peace, These things could not so pass off, but that they most bitterly exulcerated the minds, already sufficiently irritated, of both the kings of Sweden and of Denmark. Yet the present peril from Canute the Great (then too much occupied with English affairs to think of others) was less. But all greatly feared Olaf the Swede, as one whom not only the causes of war, but also certain preludes incited; for this same winter a certain Huit, ordered by St. Olaf to set out from Thrandia to exact tributes through Jämtland, when he had now gathered all, was first despoiled by Swedish soldiers, on whom he had by chance fallen, then slain with eleven companions. Somewhat before, too, commerce between the two nations had been interdicted. But the hatred of Olaf the Swede against the Norwegian had so grown, that he never suffered him to be called either that king, or otherwise than Crassus. Which surname, though born of contempt, yet on account of his bodily habit thenceforth adhered to him. And these indeed, to add nothing else, were the manifest signs of a war already begun. But that terrified above the rest the people of Vik; who therefore attempted to entreat the King, that, legates being sent to the Swede, he should offer conditions of peace. He did this then indeed about the autumn of the year 1017: but since he had resolved not to yield of his right even a nail's breadth, that legation would have increased fear rather than made even the least hope, had it not been supported by another protection.

[51] For it wonderfully profited our King for this business, that he had bound to himself by friendship and league, the very last summer, Rognvald, Count of Western Gothia (others call him Ragvald); who is compelled both to grant it, and to betroth his daughter to the Saint. however this very league, when it had first become known to Olaf the Tributary, had most vehemently kindled his bile. To his guidance and counsels, therefore, the legation was committed; which, when, protracted long before the implacable king, it profited nothing; then indeed Rognvald, understanding that it must be acted not by counsels, but by the authority in which he was strong, at the beginning of the year 1018, himself sets out into Sweden; and there, the matter being communicated with Thorgny, at once his foster-father and kinsman, and the same supreme judge of the people of Uppsala, and a man of the highest esteem among his own, so used his help in the next assembly of the kingdom, that, the people approving the demands of Olaf the Norwegian, he compelled the king of Sweden, even unwilling and gnashing, to assent to them; namely as one who openly foresaw the peril not only of sedition, unless he did it, but even of his kingdom and life. Thus both peace was given to our Olaf on the same conditions on which it had been proposed by him; and Ingigerd, or Ingrid, the daughter of Olaf the Swede (for he had desired her also), was betrothed. Consult Torfæus narrating all these things more fully in the same place from chapter 4 to 11; or, if you prefer, Loccenius, History of Sweden, book 1, where concerning Olaf, surnamed the Tributary King, in Swedish Skotkonung. We retrace the way which, lest the order of the legation be interrupted, we have already passed by.

[52] Scarcely had St. Olaf directed the aforesaid legates into Sweden, Meanwhile St. Olaf surveys the Uplands, and the state of the Christian religion, when he himself, the same autumn of the year 1017, having set out from Sarpsborg, first crossed Vingulmark, this order being observed, that he should always lodge in the upper parts (that is, the Uplands, of which I advised above §3, number 22), and thither call together the inhabitants of the remaining parts, but especially of the more cultivated and most populous provinces. Everywhere inquiry was solicitously made into the state of religion, whose cult was everywhere severely enjoined, abuse abrogated. There were given, and scattered through the provinces in the most fit places, pastors of the flock, as many as were needed, who should bear the care of it. The penalty, for those refusing the sacred rites, was exile, or the mutilation of hands or feet: others had their eyes torn out, others were beheaded, others fastened to the gibbet. No one escaped unpunished, the penalties being exacted with no distinction of ranks or wealth, no respect of geometric proportion. Thus from his manuscripts Torfæus, part 3, book 2, chapter 7. But if the penalties were exacted with no distinction, if there was no respect of geometric proportion; why was not the same penalty inflicted on all who refused the Christian sacred rites; but on some exile, on others mutilation, etc.? Doubtless by that refusal the author here did not wish to signify whatever hatred of the Christian religion in them; but such; that through diverse crimes, to which diverse penalty answered, one had betrayed oneself; namely by persecuting the heralds of the faith; by vexing the neophytes; by sacrilegiously profaning the most sacred mysteries; or even by abusing them for the deceits with which (as Adam of Bremen testifies, book 2, chapter 40) all that barbarity overflowed; by dissipating the sacred assemblies; by destroying the chapels; by casting off the faith once received with baptism, as is said below §9, number 96, or by many others of this kind. But let us pursue the history.

[53] and this so severely, that the petty kings, not bearing it, plot his death; Having entered Raumarike (a prefecture situated in the same Uplands, of which Undalinus, book 2, chapter 6) with three hundred soldiers, the further he advanced into the interior, the less knowledge of the Christian faith he found; yet he persisted to persevere with the same severity in exacting penalties, if it were not obeyed. Thence the assiduous concourse of the punished, of those mulcted of their goods, or relegated, so terrified the king (nay, petty king, subject to Olaf, as all the rest were) of Raumarike, that he knew not whither to turn himself. But since Hrærek, king of Hedmark, was the wisest of them (the Upland petty kings), he resolved to seek his counsels. Having set out therefore to him, he sets forth in what state his affairs were. It pleased them to summon Gudriod, king of the Dales, and the king of Hadeland. All met in the village of Hedmark, Hringisakr (now Rindsaker; where the huge river, which flows through Gudbrandsdal, commonly Gulbrands Dalen, pours into the lake Mios, which others call Mois, not without confusing two lakes far distant from each other), where king Hring, brother of Hrærek, dwelt. These five together conferred among themselves apart. But that conference, to contract the whole into few words, ended in a conspiracy against Olaf; that, he surviving, no liberty, no safety could be hoped for by them. A day therefore was fixed for the deed, on which they knew the King would come thither; the chief citizens were called together from the several provinces; the satraps too from the several kingdoms were ordered to be present with three hundred soldiers each at the appointed time: while the petty kings meanwhile indulged in banquets there.

[54] but the conspiracy being detected is punished. But a certain Ketil Kalf had been present at their consultation; who, a ship being presently boarded, having measured the lake, and the next day coming to Olaf as he returned from the morning prayers, opened to him the whole order of the conspiracy. The King therefore, quicker than speech, sends off men to seek horses from every side, others to the lake, to prepare as many little boats as they could against his arrival. Then, approaching the temple, he ordered the Sacred rites to be celebrated; which being performed, setting out from dinner with great speed to the lake, Ketil's ship being boarded with as many companions as it could hold, he divided the rest to be transferred into the little boats. Deep evening being come, they rowed over the calm lake: at the beginning of light, with all the forces, which consisted of four hundred soldiers, they came to Hringisakr, the guards perceiving nothing of their arrival: the house, in which they were dwelling together, still unarmed and unprovided—the conspirators—was straightway beset by armed soldiery; they themselves were overpowered, and without delay brought to the King. He deprived Hrærek, more cunning and pertinacious than the rest, of both eyes, lest he could attempt anything further, and detained him guarded in his retinue with himself. Gudriod had his tongue cut out. Hring and the other two, their faith being given that they would never return into Norway, were ordered to be exiles. Then Olaf reserves to himself the provinces of all, as gained by the right of war. Then against the satraps, according as

each participant in the conspiracy could be detected, punishment was inflicted. "Each single thing," says Torfæus, "Ottar the Black (a contemporary poet) records in three verses, extant in the autographs at hand."

[55] It is pleasing here to admire the religious piety of this our King, a little before a barbarian and heathen, The Saint's religious piety; the death of his stepfather and of his son. a religion deservedly to be imitated by Catholic princes; since he so divided the several days into the cares of the kingdom, that he consecrated the firstfruits of them, and so the better part, to morning prayers and Sacrifices in the temple. But how solemn this was to him, both shines forth from not a few other places in Torfæus himself, and especially from this which we have just recited: for he can never be thought to have omitted it at other times, which, where there was so great a peril of kingdom and life in the mere delay, he performed with a mind so composed. And so it is by no means wonderful, if any arduous affairs, often beyond the hope of all, succeeded so prosperously for him. Moreover, the things which I have now set forth being accomplished, he returned to survey, as he had begun, Raumarike, being about presently to inspect the neighboring Hadeland. Meanwhile there dies, in this same winter of the year 1017, Olaf's stepfather, Sigurd Syr, leaving with Asta three sons, whom he had begotten of her, Halfdan, Guttorm, and Harald, who is then said to have been three years old: to whom therefore the holy King, and so pious a son, turned aside for some time to console her.

§ VI. St. Olaf's meekness and clemency; his marriage; his labors to establish the Christian cause in the heathen provinces.

In the year 1018 Olaf, from the first spring going around the provinces, toward the South and West as far as Hordaland, In the year 1018 St. Olaf gave wonderful examples of meekness the maritime ones, prepared a fleet, satraps chosen for his retinue, and whatever could contribute anything to the splendor and adornment of the nuptials to be celebrated the next autumn. At which time he gave not one specimen of clemency unusual to kings; as is in the History of Norway, part 3, book 2, chapter 11 and following. For while he never dismisses from his side Hrærek, deprived, as I said, of his eyes; he, however honorably—no less than when he reigned among his own—was treated by Olaf; yet never unmindful of his former fortune, and intent on every occasion of vengeance, resolved to take the King out of the way, in whatever manner he might at last be able to accomplish it. Having therefore obtained a minister fit, as he thought, for his counsels, he impelled the wretch so far that he took upon himself the deed long meditated. And now he, a dagger hidden under his garment, about to stab the King as he approached the evening prayers, was waiting within the vestibule, when suddenly, disturbed by his aspect and majesty, he betrayed something of dread in his countenance: which the King observing, said, "What thus? Dost thou lie in wait for me?" At this word you would believe the garment and the dagger were shaken from his hands at once; so, these being straightway cast into the midst, he both prayed pardon as a suppliant, and of his own accord confessed the conceived crime and its author. But what penalty followed each guilty man? The assassin, that he should depart from the kingdom unharmed: Hrærek, that he should not thenceforth stand so near the King; then that for his custody he should thenceforth be attended by two royal attendants of approved fidelity. Can these be called punishments of treason, and of a double conspiracy against him in Hrærek?

[57] So great gentleness ought indeed to have broken so harsh a mind; yet it made it more savage: for, the solemnity of Easter presently approaching, he resolved to flee the King, whom he had twice attempted in vain to kill, yet not without a slaying, toward a rebellious and captive petty king, The place favored: for he was then with the King at Tønsberg, a most frequented emporium: nor were there wanting those who helped, most cunningly suborned by a certain perfidious Finn, that there could be no suspicion. These would have carried off the fugitive petty king—both the guards, whom Olaf had lately set over him, being butchered by his command and guile, secretly withdrawn by night from the King's own lodging, and received by a ship prepared in the harbor—without doubt, had not someone at home, by chance stumbling through the darkness on the warm corpses, given the King the occasion of learning the recent crime: who straightway, attendants being sent out by land and sea, in a short time overtook the fleeing ship, and Hrærek himself too, and that alone: for the rest, when no other hope of escaping remained, the vessel being driven ashore, had hidden themselves in the woods, one, however, of the pursuers being laid low by an arrow. But what punishment was taken? This one thing I read: "Thenceforth Hrærek was watched night and day with a stricter custody": that is, as I indeed interpret it, the King pardoned him the crime committed for his own sake; and only took care thenceforth that he should not perpetrate such things. But how little severely he took even this precaution, you will gather from what follows, which it pleases me to subjoin in the very words of our historian.

[58] against his life On the feast of the Lord's Ascension (in the same year and place), when the bishop with the procession of the sacred order led the King approaching the sacred edifice to the royal seat; by which Hrærek, sitting at his side after his custom, his face veiled by the hem of his gown, and handling his shoulder with his hand, said, "A silken garment, kinsman, thou wearest today." "It is done," answered the King, "in honor of the greatest feast which we celebrate, on which Christ ascended into heaven." "I do not," answered Hrærek, "so grasp the things which you narrate about Christ, as to believe them: for there are many absurd things in them; although in ancient memory many things happened." At the opening of the Missal Sacred rites, when the King, having advanced from his place, his hands lifted above his head, falling on his knees at the altar, was pouring out prayers, his gown by chance was thrown back upon his shoulders. Presently Hrærek, briskly leaping up, with the dagger which he had hidden under his garment, attacks the King; and, his shoulders being lightly touched (because he had removed himself from the place further than he supposed), the gown being cut here and there, yet without a wound of the King: frustrated of success, he repeats the blow; but when he perceived that he had advanced further, "Dost thou flee me, Crassus?" he exclaims. And straightway by the King's command he is led out of the temple.

[59] more than once he plotted. Then indeed many earnestly demanded that the King should kill him, and consult for his own security; to whom nothing was more perilous than either the pardon or the contempt of such great crimes; since, detained, watching night and day, intent on every moment, he plots against his life; dismissed, without doubt about to stir up grave tumults and civil wars. The King, the counsel being approved, affirms that many are beheaded for lesser causes: yet that he, unwilling, would stain with his blood the victory over the five kings of the Uplands, won in one morning hour without the slaying of any (because they were his kinsmen). Thus there the Icelandic monuments; from which, in chapter 13, it is also narrated in what manner the King, after this deed, ordered him to be transferred into Greenland, or, if that could not be done (as in truth it could not), into Iceland, and there placed with faithful friends of his own, whom he assigned; but there it is said to have been very well with him; until, seized by disease, he perished. There will displease, I think, the critics, in the text now produced, certain circumstances, which do not please me either; but if the substance of the narration is true, it will be enough to admire the meekness of our Olaf. Now the things which are commemorated in chapter 14 and following, I shall briefly go through.

[60] After these things Olaf, with a huge fleet and most exquisite equipment and retinue, sails to the limits of his kingdom and of Gothia, The same year, awaiting his betrothed, he is deluded by the king of Sweden, to Konghelle, to receive there by agreement his betrothed Ingigerd. But he was amazed, when, having arrived thither and tarried even into deep summer, he heard nothing at all of the betrothed's arrival, nothing of the Swedish king's counsels or the causes of the delays. He has recourse at last to Rognvald, Count of Gothia, through legates; but he, no more certain of the whole matter, keeps him long in suspense; until, letters being received from Ingigerd herself, he communicated to Olaf what she announced; namely, that the king of Sweden had wholly rescinded those compacts which he kept saying had been violently extorted from him the previous year; and had destined his daughter as wife to another prince; not to him, as he said, who had so often deserved most ill of himself. But the Count added, and prayed, that he should not believe that so atrocious an injury of the unjust king could by any reasoning be ascribed to himself, nor that this should at all hinder his own compact and friendship, which he wished to be eternal. Moved by this announcement in proportion to the indignity of the matter, Olaf hesitated for some time, uncertain, whether he should straightway turn his festive equipment into a warlike one, and penetrate into Sweden; or defer vengeance until the next year: yet this he resolved, which was also more approved by the nobles. The forces therefore being dismissed for the present, he withdrew to Sarpsborg, to spend the winter there with a numerous retinue.

[61] Rognvald meanwhile learns that Ingigerd was betrothed by her father to Jarislav, king of Russia, [whose other daughter he marries in the year 1019, in which also peace was made with the Swedes.] the province of whose being married to the King of Norway had been committed to himself the previous year in the solemn assembly. Wherefore he too, thinking that something must be dared, to avenge somehow both our Olaf's, and that assembly's, and his own injury, took counsel from the occasion. There was then by chance with him Astrid, the other daughter of Olaf the Tributary, inferior to Ingigerd only in this, that she was born of a less noble mother. This one therefore, by no means unwilling, he offers to St. Olaf as betrothed, to be married secretly, if it pleased, her father not knowing. When the holy King had at last assented to the condition most skillfully proposed through a legate, the Count himself, hastening to Sarpsborg with Astrid, accomplishes the nuptials, both by his authority and at his peril, about the feast of the Purification of the Virgin in the year 1019. The father indeed raged, when first he learned the matter, even so far as to destine Rognvald for the gibbet: yet in a short time, both by the prayers of Ingigerd, and by a sedition of the people arising, and by the counsels of the nobles, his anger so cooled; that, an assembly of both kings being proclaimed at Konghelle, both the nuptials were confirmed the same year, and a sincere peace at last grew together between father-in-law and son-in-law. These things the Icelanders relate much more fully at the cited place; and Theodoric of Nidaros agrees, chapter 16; to whom Loccenius, History of Sweden, book 1, deservedly preferred to adhere, rather than to the more recent Eric of Uppsala and John Magnus, who narrate these things otherwise.

[62] Thenceforth Olaf, a journey through Vik being set, bends toward the North, to inspect the provinces situated in that tract; In the year 1020 he promotes the Christian religion about Thrandia: until he reached Thrandia in autumn; where, dwelling through the winter, and, after his custom, solicitously inquiring into the state of the Christian religion, he found that the northern part of Halogaland (it was a prefecture near enough to that of Thrand or Nidaros toward the North, as also Naumudal, of which presently. See Undalinus, book 2, chapter 2) was plainly destitute of that knowledge: but that many things also in Naumudal and interior Thrandia required the file. It seemed good therefore to the King to set out into the more remote parts, and first indeed into Halogaland and the adjacent regions, even to the furthest limits of his empire (namely Finmark). ... Spring approaching, in the year 1020, five ships, and naval companions with attendants three hundred in number chosen, and the course directed into Naumudal: and the citizens being summoned into assemblies, everywhere bound their faith to the King by oath, and after the custom of the age proclaimed him king. Presently the laws, lately passed, were promulgated; a penalty being added, either of the head, or of the members, or of the publishing of all goods; the new sacred rites

being refused according to the manner or degrees of obstinacy; and punishments were inflicted on many, and that without any respect of lot or condition; nor was there a departure before all and each had sworn into the religion... The greatest part of the summer was spent in Halogaland, through the several courts, in publishing the Christian sacred rites and initiating the citizens... The summer being spent, there was a return into Thrandia: there the next winter was spent. Torfæus, part 3, book 2, chapter 20.

[63] where the following year he punishes those who had presently defected to idols: To the same cares he consecrated especially the following year: for when it had been reported to him from the same provinces by scouts, that the chief citizens of them, although all had been washed in the sacred font, yet after the King's departure everywhere flocked together to celebrate the abjured sacrifices of idols, he summoned them to himself once and again, to plead their cause. There was present among others a certain Aulver, as more guilty than the rest, so also more eloquent and powerful: he, by lies composed with art, twice believed that he had so washed away the crime objected to himself and his men, that there would now be no peril from the King. But he, on the feast of Easter, in the same year 1021, being taught the whole matter for certain, as it was, through a certain Thorald, nay even the day next at hand, on which, according to the order established among them, these nefarious rites were to be performed by Aulver himself amid the feasts, ships being presently procured and armed, flies unforeseen to the place; orders Aulver, caught in the very crime, to be slain, the rest to be seized, and each to be punished according to his desert. Then an assembly being proclaimed and held in the several places; in it the Christian profession first restored; then sacred edifices, and priests, who should watch over the promoting of the true faith, appointed; then the things which had been Aulver's, assigned to the royal treasury; which, however, he afterward restored to his widow, whose guardianship he had undertaken, with a more honorable marriage and fortune. So nearly Torfæus in the same place, chapter 21; where he subjoins these things: "This was the seventh year of Olaf's reign according to the manuscript copies." The things which we said above, §4, number 43, indeed agree.

[64] thence into other provinces the cult of Christ, The same year, when the Counts of the Orkney islands in mutual dissensions fled to Olaf, they were bidden to profess themselves his clients, or vassals, as they had once been under other kings of Norway, in that manner which may be read in Torfæus throughout chapter 22. More to the purpose is what I add by compendium from the following chapter: "After the slaying of Aulver," he says, "and the transaction with the Orkney Counts, the King, both Mæria (commonly Nordmøre and Sunnmøre) being surveyed, the same autumn came into Raumsdal (commonly Romsdalen); and there, the ships being left, went by land journey into the Uplands. Lesja and Dovre were visited; the inhabitants forced to the Christian sacred rites; the refractory punished with death (I understand these things, namely, in the sense expounded above); some consulted for themselves by flight; the sons of the converted given as hostages; presidents of the sacred rites set over the churches. The same was observed through other places of the same tract of Gudbrandsdal; until the fame of the matter, carried to Gudbrand, the lord of those valleys, through heathen or magician fugitives, well-nigh interrupted the apostolic King's expedition: for that prince, as he was not less hostile to the Christian religion, than devoted to the ancestral superstition, sends against Olaf peasants gathered from every side up to seven hundred heads, his son as leader. But he, relying on divine aid, so received and routed the rustic army, that he did not even suffer the leader to escape; but detained him captive with himself four days; then, loaded with the highest benevolence, and imbued, as it appears, with the true faith, yet not initiated, dismissed him, that he might announce the King's near arrival to his parent."

[65] The father blazed up at these things not only against Olaf, but also against his son; not without perils, and great labor, whose mind and religion had now yielded to the Victor, as much as his army. And so, about himself to avenge the disgrace received by a new war, he was already, when that same night there seemed to him through his sleep to stand by a man of bright but formidable face, and to address him with these words: "Thou seest how unhappy was thy son's expedition against king Olaf: thou, however, shalt receive a loss and disaster far greater, if thou oppose thyself: thou shalt fall with thy whole army, to be torn together with them by wolves and ravens." Terrified by this vision, he reported it to Thord Istrumagi, who also was a prince of the Dales (or Valleys in the same tract toward the South): who recorded that the same had been offered to himself too. Wherefore, the plan of battle being dismissed, he of his own accord invites the King; signifying that it would be most welcome to him, if whatever of the new doctrine he brought were proposed in a peaceful assembly. The condition was accepted; and three days given to the conference, Gudbrand and Thord Istrumagi being present with a huge multitude of their men. On the first day the holy King discoursed much, and Sigurd, the bishop whom he had with him, much, concerning the true God and His worship; but with no fruit then indeed: for the heathen denied that they acknowledged that God, whom no one could either show or see: that they had another, whose divine power was both known, and whose majesty was visible to the eyes of all any day. But if that God of the Christians had any power, let him at least effect that the weather, which was then rainy, should breathe more serene for the assembly on the morrow: then that they would bring forth their own Thor (so they named the idol) into the midst of the market. And so there was a departure.

[66] Olaf, having returned to his lodging with Gudbrand's son as hostage, the idols being cast down, the rest going to bed, spent the whole night sleepless in ardent prayers, and, the sacred rites being performed at first light, returns to the market with Sigurd. The prelate being heard again, when he spoke copiously of divine things, heaven, which the heathen had demanded, favoring in a wondrous manner. But he did not so persuade all, but that they demanded a third day like the second be given them. After the night therefore, again spent by Olaf in wakeful prayer, there is a return to the assembly; to which the heathen, since they now feared nothing of rain, had brought that image of theirs, conspicuous both for its huge bulk and for gold and silver; crying out that this was the true and omnipotent god. Olaf, forsooth, exploded it, and by a single blow, by which it burst into pieces, so confuted it, that Gudbrand broke out into these words: "A great loss indeed has been received by the destruction of our god: since, however, he could not succor himself; it is fitting that we go over to the worship of him whom thou worshippest." Presently Gudbrand with his son was baptized by the bishop; and ministers of the word of God were left in the Dales; and a friendship being contracted between the King and Gudbrand, afterward flourished: and by him a temple was founded in the Dales.

[67] Into Hedmark the King, having set out thence, brought the whole to the knowledge of Christ; disposed pastors through the parishes; took care that temples be built and initiated: for many were lacking: he excellently founds and establishes it. for at the first survey, after the kings were captured and expelled, it was not permitted to set out into the inner parts of the province, for fear of the irritated spirits and royal factions and those lying in wait. But now, among the subdued, and those restrained by fear of the royal prefects, and accustomed to rule, all things were safer. All Hedmark being tamed to the Christian manner, there was a going through Thotn and Hadeland; nor was there a departure before the inhabitants were imbued with the Christian rites. Ringerike was then visited: there too the things which were desired for confirming the Christian faith were abundantly provided. But the citizens of Raumarike, informed of the King's arrival, professing themselves not unmindful of his last passage, gathered forces, and, meeting him at the river Nid, far superior in number, first attacked him; but presently put to flight, gained the Christian religion by their own disaster. The whole province then being surveyed, received the Christian sacred rites. Into Soleyer, thence toward the East, he set out, and converted the whole province to the new sacred rites. Thus the Saint closed the year of Christ 1021, by a continual progress through the inland provinces succeeding to him in order and situation from North to South.

* he would have said better, "to this"

§ VII. The death of Olaf the Swede; the Saint's piety and clemency; the conversion of the people of Voss and others; a son born to St. Olaf; the submission of the islands; deeds in the Uplands.

Whether the death of Olaf king of Sweden happened in the year 1022. In the year of Christ 1022 I find nothing very memorable noted; except the death of Olaf, king of Sweden, surnamed Skotkonung, who, as we have already seen, was the father-in-law of our Olaf; and whom the Icelanders will have departed from life this year, not only in this place, or History of Norway, part 3, book 2, chapter 23; but also in the Annotations to Vastovius's Vitis Aquilonia, page 27; whom therefore Torfæus also follows in the Series of the kings of Denmark, book 3, chapter 10. But here different men establish different things; so that nothing certain appears: for John Magnus assigns to this matter the year 1018, History of the Goths, book 17, chapter 23, and after him Gislo in his Chronicles and Svaning; the year 1024 Messenius maintains, cited in the Annotations to Vastovius; the year 1027 Eric of Uppsala seems to indicate, when, book 2, page 31, he says that he died in the eighth year after he gave (to St. Olaf) his daughter; although he is not consistent with himself, subjoining in the same place: "The king of Norway (St. Olaf) long survived after the death of Skotkonung. But St. Olaf died in the year of the Lord 1028." And that the Norwegian survived Olaf the Swede, Saxo Grammaticus also teaches, Danish History, book 10, in Canute the Great. Adam of Bremen, on the contrary, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 54, makes the Swede survivor of the Norwegian, at least by five years; since he asserts that this one died at the same time in which Canute the Great made an end of living: and him Vastovius follows in the Vitis Aquilonia; nay even Theodoric of Nidaros, as is plain both from chapter 16, and most of all from chapter 18. What then can you here establish for certain?

[69] St. Olaf in the year 1023 on the island of Karm After St. Olaf had spent a great part of the year 1022 in Vik, and then in going around the Eastern provinces after his custom, in the first spring of the year 1023, returning from Sarpsborg to Tønsberg, he presently sails to the island of Kormt (commonly Karm) toward the West, situated in the prefecture now of Stavanger; where, according to the History of Norway, part 3, book 2, chapter 26, a matter happened, here not wholly to be omitted. On the fifth day after Easter, while at Augvaldsnes (commonly Aulsnes) the King, amid supping, asks a certain steward of his, Thorer, about the injury with which he had lately affected a certain noble Asbiorn, and Thorer, by mixing false with true, clears himself, Asbiorn (who, having secretly entered, was hearing all in his presence), rushing upon his accuser, standing next to the King, mowed off his head with a sword. Olaf bore the matter, as was fair, most indignantly; yet tempered his words after his custom. But he was preparing a punishment no less prompt for the headlong crime (for he had ordered the guilty man to be seized in the very place), Skialg, Asbiorn's cousin, deprecating in vain: who, when he saw no hope of entreating the King, approached Thorarin, to whose custody Olaf had committed the bound Asbiorn; that he should at least, in his absence, take care that the guilty man be not punished before the next Lord's Day;

which he undertook to do, and performed.

[70] For when Olaf ordered the guilty man to be dragged that same night to the cross, deferring the punishment of a homicide out of piety, Thorarin replying that nocturnal killings were reckoned nefarious, he suffered the matter to be deferred to the next day's light. But on the morrow, when the King had been present at the public prayers, he was at leisure for learning the necessary things until the time fit for celebrating the solemn Sacred rites; and approaching the temple, he asks of Thorarin whether the sun had risen so high that their friend Asbiorn could be fastened to the gibbet. Then he, reverently: "The bishop," said he, "related on the last Friday, which preceded, that the Almighty King bore the most grievous injuries; that he was more blessed who could imitate His patience, than those who were the authors of that deadly sentence by which He was adjudged to death; tomorrow is a working day, and no long delay." By this art he extorted for the most holy Prince a second day, which was Friday: for the King, looking at him, said, "Thou shalt obtain that he be not slain today: only guard thou him, certainly at the peril of thy own life, if in any way he escape." These words said, he approached the temple... On the seventh feria, the morning prayers being celebrated, the King in a frequent assembly of the provincials heard causes for a longer time than he was otherwise wont; thence to the solemn Sacred rites, and, these being finished, proceeded to dinner. Thorarin meanwhile had persuaded the sacristan not to defer the signal of the impending solemnity (of the Lord's Day in Albis) to the accustomed hour; but to strike the bronze bell, as soon as the royal table should be moved. The dinner therefore being finished,.. when he had ordered the captive to be led by the servants to the place of punishment, the bell sounded; and at the same moment Thorarin, approaching the King, prayed that he be spared for the time of the feast. The King, the custody being committed to him, proceeded to the sacred rites.

[71] On the Lord's Day, the bishop permitted Asbiorn, expiated by the sacred confession, to be present at the noonday Sacred rites, at last he pardons him. But Thorarin, without doubt conscious of the future, entreats the King that the custody of the accused be presently committed to others. Scarcely then had a beginning been given to the Sacred rite, at which both the King with his men, and Asbiorn bound at the doors of the temple, were present; when Erling arrived, Skialg's father, and the same uncle of Asbiorn, and the most powerful of the satraps in Western Norway; bringing with him a thousand and five hundred soldiers, whom, his son exhorting, he had collected. To these it was first commanded that they should snatch Asbiorn from the guards; then that they should stir nothing further, unless ordered. While this is done, the people, moved at the noise and tumult, pour out of the temple, except the King, who sat unmoved, intent on the Sacred rites; until, these being finished, he too came forth; Erling meeting him to salute him through the midst of the line of his men, and demanding that this at least be granted to his nephew, that he be punished neither with death, nor mutilation, nor exile. When the King, undismayed, received the armed prayers harshly, as was worthy of him; Erling, growing hot, dared to threaten present force, unless he were heard. These things did not terrify Olaf, but bishop Sigurd, by whom at last he suffered himself to be entreated, that satisfaction be made by a milder penalty both to the injured majesty, and to the patronage of the uncle.

[72] The Saint's apostolic expedition to the people of Voss, The same spring, as the History of Norway has in the same place, chapter 27, when king Olaf had gone around Hordaland, he set out into Vorsia (they are neighboring provinces toward the North); and having learned that the Christian cult languished there, he held a market at Vangs (commonly Vangs, to the East of both Hordaland or Horland); whither the inhabitants assembled in throngs, but all armed. Being bidden to profess the Christian sacred rites, they determined to defend the heathen with arms. The line being drawn up on both sides, when the matter looked to a conflict, each of the men of Voss declining the office of leader, thence struck with fear, they all surrendered themselves to the King; and, embracing the doctrines which were commanded, gave their name to Christ: nor was there a departure thence before each was recalled to the faith... Into the Oster fjord (commonly Oster fioerd, in Northern Hordaland) the King, having set out thence, his ships being received, sought Sogn (a little more to the North), and surveyed it through the summer. In autumn he enters the fjord (of Sogn). Into Valdres (which extends from the fjord toward the East to the valleys of Gudbrand) he then moved his march by great journeys as far as the lake; where, unforeseen by all, he intercepted the several vessels. A market being proclaimed, he chose a place near the lake; that he might have the ships of all in his power, if necessity should require.

[73] and the people of Valdres to be converted to Christ: The citizens there in throngs, all armed, threatened with noise and tumult him who pressed the Christian sacred rites upon them, and bade him be silent. Observing them intractable, and of greater number than that they could be forced, he turned himself to hearing causes, and settling disputes; with the design that, distributing them into factions, he might draw them off from their purpose of assailing Christianity. Presently a great harvest of disputes dissolved their concord, each of the litigants studiously seeking connections and supporters for the defense of his cause, and that the whole day, until in the evening the assembly was dissolved. But not even then did the peasants suffer the gathered crowd to be dispersed: for as soon as they had been informed of the King's arrival, a weapon, the token of war, being sent through the whole province, all the free and the slaves being called together at once, they moved against the King, the villages for the most part being empty of men within the province. Which, since it did not escape the King, he embarked, and, crossing the lake transversely, spoils and burns the fields. Which those who, gathered into one, had resolved to attack the King, seeing, presently, at variance among themselves, very many sought their homes again; if perchance they might be able to rescue their wives and children from the dangers. The line therefore being dispersed... they could no longer resist. And so the King, the lake being crossed, lays waste, plunders, and burns the province on both sides. Compelled by which necessity, they surrendered; and, imploring clemency, promised obedience. Each demanding such things was spared; and the Christian sacred rites everywhere introduced, and all the inhabitants of that province baptized, they confirmed their faith by hostages.

[74] A long delay then, through the autumn, detained the King in building temples, consecrating them, and ordaining priests. The ships being drawn over the isthmuses between the lakes, he set out; yet not through the upper regions, whence, returning to Nidaros, his son Magnus is born, the fidelity of the settlers being suspected: which was deferred until the harsh cold should freeze the waters. Then at last there was a going into Thotn (a prefecture in the interior not far from Valdres)... Thence the King, through the northern valleys as far as the mountain, straightway sought Thrandia, and there wintered... There was (in this same winter, whether of the ending year 1023, or the beginning 1024) in the court of the King a certain maiden, by name Alfhild, of remarkable beauty, of honorable stock indeed and birth; but numbered among the royal handmaids: with whom the King, a few being privy, became familiar. She on a certain night, a few women, a priest, and the poet Sighvat being present, when she had struggled long with the pain of childbirth, brought forth, not without the most present peril of life, a boy nearer to a dead than to a living one, and so that it could not be discerned whether he drew the vital air. But as soon as he breathed very faintly, the priest suggested to Sighvat that the King must necessarily be awakened, without whose consent the infant, to be washed with the sacred water, could not be marked with a certain name without the fault of rashness, nor the Sacrament of initiation be deferred without peril to his soul.

[75] He, recognizing the crisis of necessity, yet not so inevitable and that too from adultery, that he thought the King's severe interdict about not being awakened must on that account be violated (since it was agreed that he wished to be awakened of his own accord), was the author to the priest that he should pour the lustral water over the infant; and himself take upon himself the peril of imposing the name. Which was done; and to the boy the name of Magnus was given. In the morning of the following day, after the King had risen, he learned what had been done. Sighvat therefore being summoned, he asks whence he had so great audacity, that he had caused his son to be baptized without his knowledge. "Because," he answered, "I preferred to gain two for God than one for the devil... The infant was looking toward death; if extinguished before baptism, without doubt the devil's, but now God's. But neither, though thou be angry, could I be punished beyond death; which if, having now rightly discharged my office, I escape not, at thy exacting it, I shall yet have God propitious." "Why," said the King, "didst thou call the boy Magnus, by a name unknown to our family?" "The name of Charlemagne," he answered, "a man whom I have known the best in the whole world, I fitted to him"... And the King approved the deed with cheerfulness of mind and countenance. That boy then grew up; at last also became the most powerful king of the Norwegians. From him thenceforth the name of Magnus seems to have flowed to later kings, and then also to others.

[76] Would that the things be not true, which we have just described concerning Olaf's son, as grave authors affirm. Greenland tributary to the King. begotten of a concubine! Would that we could, with Henning, in the fourth volume of the Genealogical tables, page 222, ascribe to him no children, at least after his conversion, except those begotten of a lawful bed! But the Icelanders are supported by the most weighty authority of Adam of Bremen, who in the Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 57, calls Magnus the son of Olaf the martyr by a concubine: the annalist Saxo favors, almost contemporary with Adam, as I noted above, §1, number 3, when at the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1059 he asserts of Magnus: "This one blessed Olaf, king and martyr, procreated of a concubine": him at a short interval followed, in words equally clear, chapter 16, Theodoric of Nidaros, adding that Magnus was only five years old, when the Father commended him to the guardianship of Jaroslav a little before his martyrdom. To this indeed what equal authority can be opposed, I do not see. And so here I should prefer to admire both the weakness of a man, however holy, against lust, unless he always most cautiously attend to himself; and the mercy of God, where sincere penitence follows so great a crime: both which, having experienced them assuredly no less, another king and most holy Prophet so often repeats in the Psalms. Torfæus notes moreover, from Arngrim, chapter 26, that in this year 1023 Greenland was made tributary to our Saint, but afterward defected from that compact.

[77] In the year 1024 he offers himself as lord to the Icelanders; but is refused: In the following spring of the year 1024 Asbiorn, when he had added to his former crime a signal perfidy and contempt of the royal clemency, because he could not be punished otherwise, was secretly ordered to be slain. Which matter alienated not a few satraps, with Erling, from the King. But since, as is in the History of Norway in the same place, chapter 29, now the greater provinces of the whole kingdom had received the Christian doctrine, Olaf turned his care to the islands beyond the sea—Greenland, the Faroes, Iceland. And to Iceland indeed he sent as a gift material for building a temple, and a huge bell: which is to stand for his perpetual honor and memory in the public assembly of the whole island. But the bell remained there in the age of our writer; now, however, it has been carried off, says Torfæus. These gifts were sent, after the Icelanders had brought the canon law, which he himself had framed, into their laws, he admonishing them; then in the hope, as is there narrated, of subjecting them to himself; which he is said to have attempted through a legate this summer, in which he also brought the Faroese to obedience; nor indeed would I deny it: yet I wonder that it is taken so unfavorably by Torfæus, part 3, book 3, chapter 9, and by Arngrim in his Crymogæa, book 3, near the beginning, as if it were done from the mere desire of ruling, and not rather either from the love of the common good, or of religion; that the same [law] lately proposed there by Olaf, as they will have it, Tryggvason,

just as he had already done in Norway, he should both promote at once, and establish forever. As for what Arngrim adds, that noble youths from Iceland, who were being educated in the Norwegian court, were for that cause cast into chains by the King and ill-treated, who will believe this heretical and blasphemous writer, bringing forward no witness for himself?

[78] he winters among the people of the Uplands. Olaf meanwhile, from the spring of the same year begun, had loosed his fleet from Nidaros toward the Southern parts; and the whole summer being spent in surveying the provinces adjacent to the sea, he came as far as the Eastern limits in autumn. Thence, revisiting Vik, he passed the winter in the Uplands; where, everywhere received with banquets, he abundantly provided the things which were desired for confirming the state of the new religion, correcting those which seemed to require the file. There too then, with no unequal lot, he gave in marriage both Gunnhild, his sister by his stepfather Sigurd, and his aunt Isrid. On which occasion is commemorated here also another aunt of the King, by name Thoruna, who was the mother of St. Hallvard. See the things said of St. Hallvard at the 14th of May, on which he is venerated, page 401.

§ VIII. The Saint's war with Canute the Great; a double Miracle; his flight into Russia on account of the subjects corrupted by Canute.

In the year 1025, Canute demanding Norway back, Scarcely, after inspecting some provinces of the Uplands, had the King, the next spring of the year 1025, gone to Tønsberg, according to the History of Norway, part 3, book 2, chapter 30, when legates came from England from Canute the Great, with letters, in which he signified that the kingdom of Norway was his by hereditary right; that he was unwilling, however, to pursue it by war, unless he were compelled: nay rather, if Olaf desired to hold the possession of Norway with the royal title, he would obtain this by his benefit; provided he came to him, and paid the tributes which the Counts had before paid, he himself also thenceforth. These things he then judged should at last be set in motion, after he had ascertained both that his affairs in England were now sufficiently firmed, and that Olaf's rule was sufficiently loosened among the Norwegians: for the holy King could not either declare so severe a war on superstition, or urge the laws framed by himself, and especially the Catholic religion, with so great zeal, or, by traversing the provinces without intermission, present, threaten the license of the wicked satraps everywhere; without stirring up against himself the hatreds and quarrels of many. But these Canute knew how to foster mightily: for if anyone of the Norwegians for any cause had recourse to him, he was both kindly treated, if he wished to remain, and, if he did not wish, departed laden with lavish gifts. By which industry he procured for himself as many foreign friends, so many domestic enemies for Olaf. Nor indeed, when the matter seemed sufficiently mature for a sure hope of recovering the kingdom, did Hakon the Count sluggishly impel Canute, long since weary of the private life which he had led with him, from the time he had been compelled to yield to Olaf.

[80] The King therefore, not ignorant whither this legation tended, when he had replied that Norway was by no right Canute's, Olaf prepares himself for war with the king of Sweden: but the lawful patrimony of himself alone; and that he would therefore vindicate it by arms, as long as he lived, from the unjust tyranny of anyone; the forces being called together to him through his prefects, he kept himself in Vik; whence an expedition against the enemy, in whatever way he should assail the kingdom, could be most ready. Thence, legates being directed to the Swedes, he so drew Anund (or Olaf the Tributary, the father of this Anund or Amund, as others will have it, according to what was said above, number 68), their king, into the alliance of the war, that he could not afterward be torn from it by Canute, who, about to provide for Denmark, left England through the autumn and winter. And so both that year, and the one which next followed it, passed almost in the mere fear and preparation of war: which preparation indeed in the year 1026 grew much hotter among the Swedes and Norwegians, after the kings of both nations had conferred secret counsels together face to face at Konghelle; so that it was not intermitted even then, when Canute, carried back into England with all his forces at the end of spring, his son being left for the protection of the Danish kingdom, now bore nothing hostile before him: for he did not seem to Olaf that man who could long suspend a suit once moved. Wherefore he judged that it must rather be forestalled than awaited.

[81] And so, going around the maritime places of the kingdom as far as Nidaros, he collected as many ships, soldiers, and as much money as he could; in the year 1027 he harasses Zealand; and at last, spring returning in the year 1027, with a huge fleet and a numerous army of land and naval forces, he moved thence into the South. When he came into Hordaland, says the History of Norway in the same place, chapter 37, he learned that Erling Skialgsson (of whom above, number 71 and following), with a great retinue, four or five ships, of which he himself had led the chief, his sons each one, each of twenty oar-holes, had gone into England to king Knut. But the defection of the others was not yet so open. Thence the King, carried further to the Southern provinces, when he received nothing certain about Canute's expedition, nor could so many forces be long detained there without grave loss, resolved to transfer his men into Denmark, to be maintained at others' expense. Which same the Swedes did. And these indeed laid waste with impunity Scania contiguous to Sweden; those, neighboring Zealand, with summer devastations; the Danes, who were altogether unequal to warding off the strength of two kings, being anxious about defending Jutland alone, and meanwhile, by the hope of a surrender, as though shortly and of their own accord to be decided, cunningly deceiving both enemies, that neither should attempt anything serious.

[82] but driven out by Canute, he seeks Norway again: They perceived the trick, when the fame of Canute flying from England, in the month of September, and the fleet following close behind this, struck both; as one which, in the number and size of the ships and the rest of the equipment, surpassed the Swedish and Norwegian together by half. Then indeed, the idle devastation being dismissed, they thought of guarding their common fortune. Nor was there long space for deliberation: for Canute was borne against the enemy so eager and headlong, that it was little short but that, by Olaf's stratagem, he either perished, his fleet dashed together; or, it being dissipated, fell alive into the hands of the assailing enemies. Which last the industry of Count Ulf, opportunely succoring the king his brother-in-law, averted; by which it came to pass that, the fleet of the Danes being restored, there was no other protection for the adverse one than in speedy flight. Yet Olaf did not despond in mind (who, while the king of Sweden by common counsel led both naval armies, had been encamped nearby at the river Helge with the rest of the forces); except after he perceived the Swedes, even against the will of their king, slipping away everywhere: for then he too, although alone with his men he kept his standing-camp some time, at last, the ships being left at Kalmar, sought Norway again by a land journey through Western Gothia: but Canute, when he learned this, Zealand. These things, moreover, which we cull from the History of Norway, how variously they are treated by others, Loccenius shows, History of Sweden, book 1, where concerning Amund the Aged. But wonderful here above all is the Saxon Chronicle, which narrates that this battle at the Helge, or, as it is there translated, at the holy river, happened in the year of Christ 1025; and adds: "But there very many men were slain on the side of King Canute, both Danes and English; and the Swedes were masters of the field of death."

[83] a double miracle meanwhile I cannot but here insert what Torfæus narrates from his Icelanders, part 3, in the appendix to book 2, chapter 3, both because they are believed to have happened about this time, and because in the midst of the tumult of arms they excellently betray the constant sanctity of Olaf. For while he guarded the standing-camp, as we said, at the Helge, those who kept watch—a certain Egil, and Tofi, son of a certain Count of Gothia—when they could not bear their laments, the guard being broken by night, let all the bound go free. This unworthy deed so moved the King, that he seemed about to avenge it straightway by the slaying of both. A little after, Egil fell into a desperate disease, and, led by great penitence, resolved to appease the King toward himself in whatever way; and, praying pardon through intermediaries, could for a long time not be heard. At last, Finn Arni interceding, he impelled the King so far, that he not only visited him sick, but even laid his hands on the side which was most tormented, and commended him to God by prayers. The disease, being immediately put to flight, restored health.

[84] adorned divinely. To Tofi also pardon was granted, if he could induce his father the Count to a conference with the King. He was a Goth, and not so much a subject of Olaf, but of the king of Sweden: besides so greatly addicted to heathen superstitions, that he not only execrated the Christian religion; but also fled those who professed it worse than a dog and a snake. To allure this man to Olaf, Tofi knew how arduous it was: yet he undertook that he would do whatever he could. Having set out home, therefore, scarcely had he sufficiently declared the matter, when he had to hear and suffer from his raging father things harsher than those which he had foreseen in mind, until at last he won that which he demanded, and returned with his father to Sarpsborg to the King. The Count being brought, Tofi, having again deprecated the King's anger, is absolved. On the next day, when the King had commended to the Count in vain, with many words, the majesty and utility of the Christian sacred rites, he admonishes the obstinate one in his inveterate cult; that he was in his power; that he was unwilling, however, to force him unwilling to that cult, which the more spontaneous, the more it would be acceptable to God: that he therefore dismissed him free. Nor does he detain him longer. The Count, having set out on the way leading through the forest; and not far off is seized by a sudden disease. He therefore sends for the King; and, to him coming, reports his changed opinion: that he wished to become a Christian. Presently a priest being employed, he converts the old man; who, washed by the salutary laver, asserts that his mind presages that this would be his last disease: that he wished not to be carried out in that place where so great a salvation had shone upon him: whom also he desired to be consecrated with himself, a temple being built over the spot after his decease, and the church to be liberally endowed, and that for the salvation of his soul. Thus he died; and what he had desired was abundantly performed by his heirs. But to me here something more of miracle appears, than in the pains before driven off by touch. But we must return whence we digressed.

[85] There will be, I think, one who can scarcely read the things narrated above, Canute, after corrupting the satraps of Norway with gifts, without accusing the sloth of the king of England and Denmark; namely, who detained an innumerable victorious army so long in the idle observation of so tiny a fleet of enemies. But indeed he was unwilling to subdue those minds, both fierce and venal, with iron, but with gold. Which he then did especially through his scouts, when he seemed to do nothing: for at this very time he corrupted so many leaders of the Norwegians by largess; that Olaf, if he had proclaimed any consultation to his men, would from the contention of opinions and the malign counsels of many, not obscurely conjecture that he had to do with perfidious men. But he understood this much more openly, when, touching Norway, he heard that Erling, laden with riches, had now for some time returned from the Danish army into his homeland, and that too with not a few of Canute's scouts, who had brought the huge treasures, which to win over

had brought with them to their king the satraps, and had so liberally poured out their treasures, that it was established that many of the Norwegians openly, but more secretly, had defected from Olaf. And so scarcely anywhere now was fidelity safe for the King among his own, especially toward the West and the North. Whence he was compelled to stay through the winter in Vik and the Uplands; although even there he found hired assassins against himself, as may be seen in the History of Norway, part 3, book 2, chapter 41.

[86] But Canute, when he knew that he was now not only loved but even vehemently desired by all the chief nobles of Norway, obtains Norway; where he creates Hakon viceroy in the year 1028: in the year 1028, as soon as through the breezes of spring the sea was seasonable for sailing, fits out a fleet of ships (if we believe the Icelanders at the place lately cited) of more than fourteen hundred, or (as with Theodoric of Nidaros, chapter 16, Eric Olai thinks, book 2, in Amund Carbonarius) of twelve hundred, or at least (if it be fair to prefer to the rest Florence of Worcester and the other English) of only fifty. This indeed, if it be a question of warships and great vessels, is more probable. Thus, therefore, the ocean which separates Denmark from Norway being crossed, driven to the Western parts of the kingdom, and thence toward the North through all the maritime provinces led as far as Nidaros in the manner of one triumphing, he is everywhere saluted king in solemn assemblies, and with wondrous congratulation of all, not only of that part of which before he had arrogated to himself the right, but of all Norway. Which same when it had afterward been done at Sarpsborg, Hakon or Haquin the Count (whom, as the previous year a leader of the war, so now he had taken as a companion of the triumph) being left as viceroy among the Norwegians, he sought Denmark again toward the end of autumn: for Olaf did not disquiet him, whom he judged sufficiently deprived of authority and driven out, since he had not only withdrawn from him almost all the nobles of the kingdom, but had even changed them into most hostile enemies.

[87] But Olaf, having perceived the perfidy of his own, Canute's departure being known, the holy King, who meanwhile had lurked with a few in the lake of Drammen among the people of Vik, approached Tønsberg. There were there ships brought back from the port of Kalmar through the summer, no more than thirteen; with which he wished of himself to explore either his own fortune, or the fidelity of his subjects, before he should depart from the kingdom. But soldiers and provisions being commanded in vain, he was compelled to employ as companions of the expedition those who offered themselves of their own accord. The navigation was set toward Lindesnes at the end of the year 1028; thence further, scarcely bent toward the North, when it is both retarded by adverse winds, and becomes known to Erling; who, a huge fleet being presently contracted, prepares an incursion, but fatal to himself by too much haste: for while, the south wind now breathing, he sees Olaf slipping away from him, impatient of delay he so drove the flagship, which he himself led, that, drawn off by a very long interval from the rest of his ships, it fought with the King before, at the Bukn promontory, and was conquered by him, before those could succor. Yet it had been fought most fiercely; nor, except after the defenders were slain to the last man, was the flagship taken, with its leader, even then fighting. Olaf wished Erling to be spared; but he was not heard by Aslak: for he, not bearing so great perfidy in a prince akin to himself, slew him on the spot with a battle-axe driven into his head. This matter indeed offended the King gravely; but the forces of Erling all coming up immediately, much superior to the Olavians, so struck him, that, unmindful of vengeance, they thought only of conducting the funeral of their leader and slain comrades.

[88] he flees into Sweden, and thence into Russia Olaf, freed from this fear, the further he is carried into the North, the greater dangers he understands to threaten him on every side: both that behind, indeed, the sons of Erling were fitting out an army to avenge their father's slaying; but on the opposite side, that Hakon himself, with many satraps and a great band, was now at hand, to crush him, if he could; and that from elsewhere too no protection shone upon him, not even in his own retinue: for from it all the chief men gradually went over from his side to Hakon. He judged therefore that he must yield the sea; and consult by flight for his own life and that of his men through the rough mountains of the kingdom. The journey as far as Lesja and the neighboring Gudbrandsdal was most difficult, nor accomplished without miracles, as the Icelanders relate in Torfæus, part 3, book 3, chapter 1: for four hundred soldiers there and a hundred farmers besides, who were paving the way, laboring under want, Olaf is said, prayers being poured out to God, to have obtained so much food that each abounded; then huge rocks, which not even a hundred workmen could move, at the impulse of a few, after he himself had touched them, being torn away, gave place; a spring, finally, gushing beneath a cave, was a most present remedy to the sick cattle, from which the holy King had there washed his hands, and thence the place is to this day called St. Olaf's cave. From Gudbrandsdal, moreover, through Hedmark, Vermland, and Närke, he at last, in the spring season, with his wife Astrid, their common daughter Ulfhild, his son Magnus, and bishop Sigurd, as may be gathered there from chapter 4, and some others not many, escaped to the king of Sweden, and stayed some time; until, the same summer, the queen and daughter being left in Sweden, he himself, ships being procured, taking his son Magnus, went into Russia to king Jarisleif (in others Jarislaus) and queen Ingigerd, his old betrothed, now his wife's sister; and, received with the highest benevolence, obtains a territory sufficient for the sustenance of his life and court.

[89] Thus the Saint exchanged his kingdom for exile in the year, according to the Icelandic chronology, in the year 1029, 1029; although he may truly be called a fugitive and expelled from the preceding year, in which both Canute subjected all Norway to himself, and he himself, hidden in the lurking-places of Drammen, was more like an exile even then in his own dominion than a king. In this sense this chronology is strongly confirmed by the English Chronicles, most approved—those of Worcester, of Durham, and of others—when at the year of Christ 1028 they thus have: "Canute, king of the English and Danes, carried to Norway with fifty great ships, expelled king Olaf from it, and subjugated it to himself." The same also, at the year 1027, corroborate with these words what the Icelanders record concerning the Norwegians corrupted by Canute: "When it had been intimated to Canute, king of the English and Danes, that the Norwegians too much despised their king Olaf on account of his simplicity, and meekness, equity, and religiousness, he sent much gold and silver to certain of them, asking with many petitions, that, he being spurned and cast off, they should make surrender to him, and permit him to reign over them. Who, when they had received with great avidity the things which he had sent, ordered word to be sent back to him, that they would be ready to receive him, whenever he wished to come." But of the narrated expedition of three kings, undertaken the same year 1027, there is no word there; as neither in our Acts, nor in Adam of Bremen, or the monk Theodoric (who himself also ascribes the Olavian exile to the year of Christ 1028), or the Icelandic poets contemporary with Olaf (for Sighvat, adduced by Torfæus, part 3, book 2, chapter 37, can be understood of the mere preparation of Canute, destined for Norway in the year 1028 without a battle); in asserting it, however, after Saxo Grammaticus, the Danes and Swedes mostly agree, though differing greatly in the circumstances.

[90] Moreover, since so many ancient authors agree concerning the time of the aforesaid exile, as several affirm. I would not dare to prefer to them Saxo Grammaticus, who establishes that Olaf, conquered by Canute's fleet and expelled from his kingdom, was in exile in Russia; then, having returned thence, and by the help of Amund, king of the Swedes, Canute being in turn ejected, by whom he had been driven out, was restored, and reigned most holily, as before; and all these things indeed before the year 1027, or the Danish expedition of which we spoke. I know indeed that a not unlike vicissitude of this kingdom is narrated by Adam, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 43, but from flying report only, as he says; then in a manner so diverse, that the variety of the narration here diminishes not a little the historical faith. And indeed if these things are true, either it is necessary that all the rest erred; or (which neither Adam nor Saxo devised) that Olaf was twice an exile. I should prefer therefore to believe that the time of that exile was less known to them than to others, and especially to the English, who so accurately distribute into single years the several things which they narrate most briefly, that they seem to have investigated the times of things rather than the things themselves. Then there is none of them, I think, who asserts that Canute was king of Norway before the year of Christ 1028, much less cast down by Olaf; whereas, however, they diligently noted his much slighter affairs.

§ IX. His return into Norway; the battle and martyrdom; the time of his reign.

At the end of the year 1029 Hakon's death is announced to Olaf, Not long had Olaf dwelt with Jarislaus, when, about the end of the autumn of the same year, Hakon, transferring his betrothed home from England, perished at sea, with no messenger, as the History of Norway adds, part 3, book 3, chapter 2, except the longing for those nowhere appearing. Whence I judge it came to pass that the English noted his death only in the following year: while to the Norwegians it became known somewhat earlier; and first of all to a certain Björn Stallari, who, honorably dismissed by the fleeing Olaf, had afterward bound to Hakon a fidelity extorted by gold and threats. He, when he heard the viceroy dead, believing himself now released from his oath, hastens straightway into Russia to Olaf, and announces to him, toward the end of the year, both Hakon's death, and the opportunity divinely offered of recovering Norway (Eric of Uppsala hands down that several did this; John Magnus says that legates were sent by certain nobles of Norway). This messenger affected the King in one way, the nobles, his companions in exile, in another: for these were held by the longing for their homeland, and the things which they had lost; but he, disdaining these, depended on the sole beck of God; as one who never before had better tasted and seen than in the Russian leisure; for the Lord is sweet; and without doubt he would more frequently have used that saying: "For what have I in heaven, and besides thee what have I desired upon earth? ... God of my heart, and God my portion for ever ... It is good for me to adhere to God."

[92] already celebrated among the Russians for the holiness of his life, For while he tarried in Russia, according to the History cited in the same place, chapter 3, he was wholly in the contemplation of divine things: and the tokens of a mind abstracted from earthly things were everywhere observed: so that now both by the opinion of the whole court he was held holy, and divine prodigies confirmed this opinion. For when, as is read at the assigned place, the son of a widow of the highest dignity labored, an ulcer or scrofula having arisen in his throat, even to desperation, the queen Ingigerd being consulted by the mother, who was familiar to her, sent her to king Olaf, whom she affirmed to be the best physician, and bade her ask him in her words (if it proceeded no otherwise) that he would not be grieved to apply his hands to her son. He, being approached, excusing the unskillfulness of the medical art, referred her to his interpreter.

But hearing the queen's words, he applied his hands; and, handling it longer, did not let go until the boy moved his mouth: then, a particle of bread being put in, which he laid crosswise, in the form of a cross, upon his palm, when the boy had swallowed it, all pain vanished, and within the space of a few days health returned.

[93] confirmed by miracles; The same esteem was wonderfully increased by an illustrious deed, which the Icelanders relate to have happened there also, in the same chapter, thus: "But how greatly he observed the divine laws, appears even from this, that, sitting one day (which happened to be a Lord's Day) in the royal seat, immersed in deeper thoughts, he was cutting chips with a little knife from a stick which he held in his hand, and was admonished by an attendant cup-bearer, who observed him forgetful of the celebrated day, that the second feria of the week fell on the morrow; casting his eyes upon him, he recalled to mind the festal day violated. He therefore asks for a lighted candle, and, the several fragments being collected and placed on his palm, kindled them, and suffered himself to be burned, while they burned, and, as soon as he learned that he had sinned, severely exacted of himself the punishment and penalty of one who had transgressed, however through ignorance, the divine command." These things may be read much more elegantly adorned in Saxo, where, concerning Canute the Great, in the Danish History, book 10; whence they passed to Krantz, Vastovius, and others. But in the Nidaros Breviary, as Torfæus testifies, part 3, book 3, chapter 12, and likewise in the Sleswick, of which I advised in §1, number 7; as also in the Utrecht manuscript Life of the Saint, of which we treated in §2, number 12, the same matter is reckoned among the miracles; and not undeservedly, if it be true which is there asserted, that Olaf's right hand, the segments being consumed by fire, remained unharmed.

[94] From these things (to return to my purpose) it is easy to gather who, moved by a divine instinct, that the mind of such a Prince aspired much less of itself to the assiduous crowds of the royal height, than to the tranquil solitude of a private life joined with God: and therefore it ought not to seem wonderful, if he thought of consecrating the rest of his age either to sacred pilgrimages, as is there narrated, or to the monastic institute. But neither, being now experienced, could he be ignorant how much more useful to many for salvation, and more pleasing to God, the apostolic manner of reigning, which he had held hitherto, could be. And to that he saw a twofold way opened to himself; one by Jarislaus and Ingigerd, who offered him as much part of their kingdom, still everywhere involved in heathen errors, as he might wish to desire; the other by Björn and the satraps his companions in exile, devoting of their own accord their life and all things, if only he would decide, since he easily could, to occupy the vacant Norway, and to put the last hand to establishing religion in it. Anxious over these things, he solicitously commended his affairs to God, says the History there, demanding for himself that lot which He Himself should provide. When, behold, a distinguished man (he himself believed it was Olaf Tryggvason, once king of Norway) seemed through his sleep to stand by him, and to exhort him with sharp words to return: Theodoric, however, chapter 18, only says that Olaf was admonished in his sleep to return; our manuscript Acts and the Sleswick Breviary, that he was inspired by a divine instinct. But whether it was an instinct, or the speech of whatever divinely appearing person, it so impelled the King to obey, that he could be retained by no blandishments of Jarislaus or Ingigerd, who feared ill for him; yet it was granted to them, that they should keep Magnus, his son, in their guardianship.

[95] From Holmgard, where was then the royal seat of the Muscovites, having set out with bishop Sigurd and two hundred companions, the winter raging, he returns with an army to recover Norway; in the spring season he reached Aros, a most welcome guest both to the king of Sweden, and especially to his own wife and daughter. Yet the delay there was longer to him than it was welcome: for the journey from Russia into Sweden could not be so hastened, but that his fame, already spread as far as Norway, stirred the whole kingdom with tumult. Which, when it was reported to the Swedes, deterred all from Olaf's expedition and warfare. Nor were there wanting those who said it should either be intermitted, or deferred to better times. But he, since he was governed by higher counsels, did not cease to urge, until, the faculty being obtained from the friendly king of enrolling, with four hundred attendants, as many soldiers as should wish to follow, he set his journey toward the North, toward Jämtland. In that tract he was wonderfully refreshed, when he beheld Harald, his uterine brother, coming to his aid with six hundred soldiers from Norway. Presently there came also, with twelve hundred, Dag, son of Hring, king of Hedmark (of whom above, §5, number 53 and following); to whom others also were joined along the way, until a passage was made through the borders of Sweden, and the mountains opposed to the people of Thrand on the East. There at last, when it had pleased the King, because war was imminent, to review his army, he found in it nine hundred still immersed in heathen filth. These he bids either to depart, or to acknowledge Christ: for he did not need (Theodoric also testifying, whose these words are) heathens and men estranged from God, especially against Christians; that victory would be worthless to him which was procured by the hands of the wicked. Thus the greater part slipped away; four hundred embraced the Christian religion, and the whole army was reduced to three thousand heads. To whom indeed others were from time to time added, but not on another condition.

[96] showing wonderful examples of gentleness and other virtues. The rebels meanwhile, by the way he had learned he would come, he hears approaching, but furnished with forces such as Norway had never seen in one place. Wherefore, about to consult for the fewness of his own, he commands arms of the neighboring farmers. But some of them were already with the enemy; the rest, a few excepted, refused to obey. The leaders did not bear the perfidy; but cried out that it should be punished, if it seemed good to the King, by the plundering and burning of the villages: when he confessed that they indeed were guilty, and that he had at some time used punishments of this kind; "But when," said he, "I punished the cause of God betrayed, the faith given to Him abandoned, and the passing over to idols and paganism: but now this cause concerns me, execrable indeed to honest and generous minds, yet much lighter; namely, defection from a king." The crowd being thus restrained, he advances undismayed; confident that he would easily obtain by prayers, vigils, and fasting, what perhaps he could not by number. And indeed that these things were pleasing to God, if we believe the Flatey codex, appeared by not one prodigy, but one to be produced by us below. This must not be passed over in this place, that, being now somewhat nearer the enemy, he is said to have handed over many half-pounds of silver to a farmer with these words: "This silver thou shalt reserve, and, the war being finished, thou shalt lay it out in three parts, to propitiate God, for the salvation of the souls of our enemies who shall fall in the battle: one part shall go to the temples, one to the priests, one part also to the poor." The same Theodoric of Nidaros narrates a little otherwise and extols with many words, chapter 19.

[97] Before the battle refreshed by a heavenly vision, At last they came to Stiklastad. It was a town or farm, as Undalinus will have it in Torfæus, History of Norway, part 1, book 2, chapter 19, situated two miles to the east from Nidaros; but according to the maps of Witt it is distant thence about eighteen leagues by the hour. There, when the enemy was now almost in sight, the columns halted: when to a certain Thorgils, who dwelt there, approaching the King, and offering his service in the war, the Saint answered that he would render a more useful service, if he would take upon himself the aid and relief of his wounded after the conflict, and the burial of the dead. He asked also that he would bestow care on his body, if perchance he should fall, unless he were hindered by the enemy. Which he too promised. Then, the line being drawn up, and his men animated to act strenuously, while the onset of the enemy is awaited, the King indulges in sleep for a while. But they presently raising their standards, he, awakened by Finn, the leader of his forces, complained that his dream was interrupted: and when Finn replied that the necessity of receiving the hostile assault seemed to be preferred to every dream, for the line directed against them was now easily perceived; the King answered that it had not yet come so near but that it had been better to have slept. "But what," said Finn, "didst thou dream, that thou makest so much of it, that thou wouldst rather have kept awake thyself?" "A ladder," said the King, "I saw reaching from earth even to heaven, and myself ascending by the steps, and holding the topmost." That this was a heavenly dream, both the matter itself indicates, and the authors who relate it, very many, as Albert of Stade in his Chronicle at the year 1028, both our manuscript Lives, the Sleswick Breviary, Vastovius, etc. Some of whom, however, will have it to have happened somewhat earlier, as will be seen from our Acts.

[98] Moreover the King, having advanced before the line, when he saw Kalf, Finn's brother, he offers pardon to the rebels in vain: and the supreme leader of the enemy, now not so far off on the opposite side but that they could hear one another, said: "What here, Kalf? Did we not at the last parting (for after the King's departure he had defected to Canute, promising golden mountains) amicably salute one another? Nor is it lawful for thee to hurl weapons against us, when thy four brothers serve us as soldiers." "Many things," answered Kalf, "are now done besides what is lawful: for at thy last departure thou didst so desert us, that we were compelled by necessity to make terms with those who remained. And so the place which each holds, the same he will defend. Yet I would make terms with thee, if I were of my own arbitrament." Then the King: "Thou perhaps, Kalf, art inclined to peace; yet the citizens do not bear themselves peaceably." Thus of himself again he not obscurely offered peace to the rebels, which a little before they had rejected, as we learn from Theodoric, chapter 19, writing thus: "The King, therefore, hearing that a multitude had gathered against him, sent to them Finn, Kalf's brother, ... who should offer peace to the people; should announce the King's mind prepared: for, forgetting past injuries, he pardoned each what he had hitherto wrongly done: that he detested the shedding of human blood, and most of all in civil wars: that he in no way wished to join hands, if they would acquiesce in his wholesome admonitions. But the savage mind of the barbarians with unanimous consent contradicts peace; and the wretches much rather choose to assail hostilely the Saint of God, than to receive his salutary admonitions." This fury in them had been kindled by the seditious speech of a certain Danish bishop (whom the Icelanders call Sigurd, but different from the former; others call Trugillus), most devoted to Canute; which you may read, History of Norway, part 3, book 3, chapter 7.

[99] By these, therefore, without delay the signal for the conflict was given; when against them the Olavians, he is slain all conspicuous with crosses painted on helmet and shield, and the watchword prescribed, "Forward, forward, soldiers of Christ, of the Cross, of the King," inciting one another, ferociously charge, and rouse the battle, which Theodoric thus briefly exhibits in the same chapter: "The standards being brought together, therefore, a strenuous man, by name Björn, bore the standard before the King. He, straightway in the first encounter, was slain by Thorir Hund, who led the first line against the King. Straightway followed the fall of the King, having received, as is reported, a huge wound. Who laid hands on him; whether he had one or several wounds, because different things are said by different men, we will not rashly affirm anything, nor with an officious lie

to soothe the ears of others. But Dagr, one of the King's princes, and also his kinsman, seeing that the standard had fallen together with the King, manfully raised it, exhorting his comrades and adjuring them that they should not wish the King's death unavenged; lest the adversaries should carry off a doubled joy, both from the King's death and from a bloodless victory. Then all rush to arms; they penetrate twice or thrice the enemy's line; they lay low very many; the fight is protracted until evening; night parted the combatants: at last both sides withdraw, not so much conquered as wearied and afflicted with wounds. Longer is the description of the Icelanders, History of Norway, part 3, book 3, chapter 8; and it differs both in some other things, and in the very slaying of the King, which it thus sets forth: "At the same moment the King, carried forward against the kinsmen of Kalf, afflicted Olaf with a lethal wound. But Thorir (Hund, or the Dog, whose hand the King had just wounded with his blunted sword, and whose shoulder Björn had bruised), collecting himself, transfixed Björn through the middle. Meanwhile Thorstein the shipwright struck the King above the left knee; and immediately is slain by Finn. This wound received, the King, reclining against a rock, his sword cast away, invoked heavenly aid. But Thorir pierced his belly beneath the breastplate. Presently Kalf struck the left side of his neck. These three wounds, seen in his body, took him from the living: they doubt, however, whether Kalf inflicted a wound on him."

[100] in battle, as we think; But since so often in the narration of this expedition and battle the poems of various and contemporary poets are assigned in testimony; so that, if they be clear and genuine, it is to be wondered whence, in that very age in which it ought to have been undertaken, it was so obscure as Adam of Bremen betrays, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 43, when he thus writes: "Whence the most Christian King, celebrated for fortitude against enemies and justice toward his own, believed himself restored to the kingdom by God for this, that thenceforth he ought to spare no one who either wished to remain a magician, or refused to become a Christian. And when he had for the most part fulfilled his vow, the few who remained of the Magi, in revenge for those whom the King condemned, did not hesitate to slay even him. But others say that he was slain in war: but some, that he was exposed to mockery to the Magi in the midst of the people's circus. But others also know that he was secretly slain for the favor of King Knut; which we do not doubt to be true also, in that he invaded his kingdom." That he was slain for the favor of Canute, Saxo Grammaticus confesses (whatever our Alford may attempt to defend Canute in the Ecclesiastical Annals of England, at the year 1028, number 3); yet not secretly, but in a domestic war. The Saxon Chronicle, at the year 1030: "In this year," it says, "came Olaf the king afterward into Norway: but this people, gathered against him, fought with him; and he was there slain." That the Martyr fell in battle, our manuscript Acts, the Sleswick Breviary, Eric of Uppsala, John Magnus, and others with the Icelanders hold; from whose opinion it does not seem that we should depart, as being supported by the monuments of so many diverse nations.

[101] Concerning the year also and day of the martyrdom there is some dissension: and that in the year of Christ 1030, on the 29th of July, for the year of Christ 1028 is assigned by Albert of Stade in his Chronicle, thus without doubt interpreting Adam of Bremen; Eric of Uppsala, book 2, in Olaf Skotkonung; the Bodecensis manuscript Life, the Sleswick Breviary; and the more recent everywhere with Baronius. But Theodoric of Nidaros, chapter 19: "Blessed Olaf fell," he says, "on the fourth of the Kalends of August, which was then the fourth feria, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand and twenty-ninth; as we were able to investigate more surely." He errs indeed, either himself or some copyist; since the Dominical letter that year was E; and so on the fourth of the Kalends of August was the third feria, not the fourth. And that the Saint died on the fourth of the Kalends of August, all who noted this his birthday above assert; but that that day fell on the fourth feria (not on the sixth, as Greven thought from the Utrecht Life, printed and augmented with fables at Louvain, as we noted before), besides Theodoric, the Bodecensis manuscript also affirms, chapter 10, number 10; Snorri Sturluson, a writer of the thirteenth century, in the Life of Olaf, cited in the annotations to the Vitis Aquilonia, column 22; and the author of the Chronicle of the Danes, who is believed to have flourished in the same century, in the Leipzig edition of the year 1695, page 4. But this can cohere neither with the year 1028, in which the 29th day of July fell on the second feria. I should prefer therefore, with the Icelanders, to refer this death to the year of Christ 1030, in which the fourth feria agrees with the 4th of the Kalends of August; especially since this year is clearly expressed by the Saxon Chronicle, Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, Ralph de Diceto, and others everywhere among the English, whom Matthew of Westminster, following to the same year, says: "In the same year (1030) holy Olaf, king, doctor, preacher, and apostle of the Norwegians in Norway, son of Harald king of the Norwegians, is slain in Norway, struck too truculently by the Norwegians with a certain axe: ... for that pagan and most bloody nation was indignant that the same holy king Olaf, by preaching, teaching, evangelizing, and enacting, was abolishing the first and superstitious laws." To these add Svaning, Huitfeldt, Torfæus, Sibern, and other moderns, laboriously versed in Northern matters.

[102] Hence now establish how long Olaf reigned among his own: when he had reigned nearly sixteen years. namely nearly sixteen years, if they be computed from the intercepted Hakon up to the martyrdom. Adam of Bremen, who in the Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 43, numbers only twelve years of reign (if, however, he is not interpolated in that place, since he who published Adam at Hamburg in the year 1706 testifies that these things are lacking elsewhere), as also Albert of Stade; perhaps subtract from the reign as many years as they thought should be attributed to the exile. And of the Stade writer indeed this is less wonderful, since he anticipates Olaf's slaying by two years. Thus Theodoric of Nidaros, chapter 20: "But blessed Olaf reigned," he says, "fifteen years; of which he held the kingdom alone thirteen: for in the first year he had a battle with Sweyn, son of Hakon the Bad, but in the last ... he suffered a rebellion, and the kingdom was unquiet." Where you see that the years of the reign properly so called are reckoned thirteen, two being cut off in which it was hindered, and one which he subtracted from the King's life, establishing him dead in the year 1029: he would therefore, with the Stade writer, have numbered only twelve years of reign, if he had thought him slain with him in the year 1028. Moreover, a most weighty argument for our chronology is in the Icelandic poem of the poet Sighvat, most intimate with St. Olaf while he lived; which Torfæus, History of Norway, part 3, book 3, chapter 9, thus translates: "Olaf ruled the kingdom above, a generous head, fifteen whole winters (before he fell), in that territory": for so many whole winters are reckoned from the end of the year 1014 to the last of the passing year 1029, which he passed not in that territory, but as an exile among the Russians. If, however, it please to number this also, you will say that he reigned sixteen whole winters.

§ X. The burial of the Saint's body, its elevation, its adorning, its vigorous incorruption observed every year, and several miracles among these.

Having summarily gone through the things hitherto done by Olaf, we come to those which befell him dead. "The battle being finished, not even Thorir (who, wounded by the King, as we have already said, had pierced his belly), however hostile to the living King, yet raged beyond death," says our historian, part 3, book 3, chapter 8. The Saint's blood, on the very day of the battle, heals his slayer, "Nay, touched with humanity and reverence for so great an eminence, he decently composed the body of the dead man, and covered it with a garment: and the blood being wiped away, he beheld the face, like a sleeper's, ruddy, and clearer than a living man's; when the blood, flowing from the King's wound into his own wound, which he had received on his hand, brought so present a medicine that there was no need of bandaging." This indeed he himself testified, when the King's sanctity was published; and, first of all the nobler enemies, he began to defend it. Yet he did not then dare to carry off his body (I believe, because it was forbidden to bury the corpses of enemies, as is narrated in chapter 9); but deferred it to the morrow; and so that man forestalled him in this glory, to whom we said above the Saint himself had committed it before the battle; Thorgils, I say, of whom these things are read there:

[104] and another, a blind man; "Thorgils, son of Halma, not unmindful of the care promised to the King, with his son Grim, late in the evening amid the darkness, the body being brought into a certain small solitary hut, separated from the village (Undalinus, part 1, book 2, chapter 19, calls it a barn, which was said to subsist in his time), and stripped of its garment, a light being kindled, washed it with water; and, wrapped in linens, hid it in the pavement under a heap of wood, lest it should be in the way of those entering: and, the office of piety being accomplished, he at last returned. But it happened that among the crowd of beggars, which followed both armies, and, the war being finished, sought lodgings through the night, a certain blind poor man, introduced thither by the guide who was wont to lead him, while he explored with his hands a place convenient for rest, his hand being moistened and applied in raising his cap, sprinkled his eyes with the liquid adhering to his fingers, and, an itching arising at once, rubbed them; then, going out, gathering to his eyes his own hands, then whatever was nearest, as far as was permitted through the darkness, then approaching the farm (understand here by farm, and above by village, Stiklastad); and, having entered the house, made openly known to all the recovered use of his sight. Many who were present knew that the blind man had begged alms from street to street. And so, marveling at the unusual chance, they inquired where that hut was. Hence no small fear came upon Thorgils and Grim, lest, while they explored the cause of so great a miracle, the King's enemies also should get possession of his body, and afflict it with injuries and mockery. Certain therefore that this honor had been paid by God to the King's sanctity, betaking themselves thither at once secretly from all, they carry it off, and hide it in a field." This is narrated to have been done on the same fourth feria on which the Saint had fallen.

[105] the body radiates with heavenly light, and is secretly buried near Nidaros; "On the next day, the fifth feria, when Thorir had returned to seek the Saint's body; and others were searching for their wounded in the same field; Thorgils and Grim were very anxious about the King's corpse, lest, being at last found, it should be exposed to the mockery of the enemies: for they knew that they had determined either to plunge it in the waters, or to consume it with fire. An unwonted light, observed by themselves also, increased their fear; which irradiated the place where it fell, before it was carried thence, and then that which they had already chosen, lest, perhaps giving the enemies a handle for scrutinizing it more intently, it should betray that also. A coffin therefore being made as carefully as they could, they placed it therein. They made also another, which they filled with stones and stubble, equaling the weight of the corpse, and closed with great care. Both being placed in a skiff, as soon as the strangers had withdrawn from Stiklastad ... they carried down to Nidaros; openly that in which the stones had been heaped; the other they hid."

Presently by messengers they inform the bishop (that Dane, of whom above) that, the King's corpse being found, they were bringing it. He sends men to receive it at the bridge: the coffin was received, which was laden with stones, and, carried in a skiff into the bay, by his command is sunk. I am deceived, unless this will seem to smell of a fable. But at night Thorgils, rowing amid the darkness up the river, until he had passed the city, brings his boat to the place which is called the Sordid gate, and carries the body into a little house separated from the others. Meanwhile Thorgils, having entered the city, goes to those whom he knew to have been most friendly to the King; and asks that they receive the royal body. But when each, hindered by fear, refused it, he himself carries it back up the river, and there buries it in the sand, carefully providing that no traces of the recent work should be apparent; and, so great a ministry of piety being accomplished, he returns home.

[106] While the body of the holy King lay hidden there, God would not that his merits should lie hidden: for either the fame of the former miracles, or a hidden instinct of the Divinity, immediately excited such confidence in the common people but presently there was such an abundance of miracles; that if anyone, destitute of human aid, desired divine aid, he betook himself at the same time to the patronage of St. Olaf, and that with an outcome so happy, so frequent and wonderful, according to Torfæus's history in the same place, chapter 11, that, while some profess themselves snatched from diseases, others from perils, others from adverse chances after vows made in his name, not without prodigies, they in a short time persuaded all of his sanctity by invincible testimonies. Even the judgments of his lately most hostile enemies concerning their King were changed. Each guilty man repented of the past sedition and so nefarious a slaughter. Against Trugillus the prelate, its chief author, everyone gnashed his teeth; so that he, foreseeing that nothing would be safe enough for him among the Norwegians, presently fled into England to Canute. In his place, at the instance of the people of Thrand, Grimkel the bishop was straightway summoned from the Uplands, dear to the Saint, while he lived, among the few; and he was asked to institute an examination of the miracles. The truth of them being ascertained, he calls Thorgils and Grim from Stiklastad to himself at Nidaros; from whom, instructed both in some other things and in the place where the Martyr's body was hidden, together with Einar Thambaskelfer, who likewise had the cult of the Saint at heart, and had very great power in the court, he went to the king and the king's mother, to ask of them the faculty of adorning so great a treasure with a more honorable burial. The king then was Sweyn, son of Canute the Great by his concubine Alfifa or Alvina, or at least held for such; who, appointed by his father in the place of the deceased Hakon, exercised over his subjects, by his mother's counsels, so hard a rule that he seemed sent by God the avenger solely to exact the penalties which they had deserved by butchering the most holy King. Certainly in this cause of the Saint himself he showed himself so accommodating that he committed the whole to the judgment of the prelate.

[107] A great concourse of the people then in the city, and a frequent retinue thronging the bishop and Einar, proceeded to the place of the sepulchre: so that in the year 1031 it had to be exposed to public veneration, and, the earth being opened, the coffin, as if about to thrust itself forth, was found a little below the surface. Then, by the consent of the multitude, by the bishop's command it is laid in the church of St. Clement (raised by himself, according to §4, number 44). This translation is said to have been made in the year 1031 in the summer; and therefore (perhaps because new prodigies again hastened the public cult of the Saint) there followed at a short interval the elevation of the body; concerning which the Icelanders thus in the same place: The same coffin was then taken up, twelve months and five days after the slaying of the King (that is, in the year 1031, on the second, if the day of the slaying be counted in the five days; or, if it be excluded, the third of August). Then too it was found to have moved itself nearer the surface, and polished, as if recently fabricated. The prelate being present while it was opened, a sweet odor and exhalation wonderfully affected the bystanders. The face, uncovered by him, in nothing changed from the living, represented a sleeper with rosy cheeks. But this seemed a miracle to all (if, however, it be sincerely enough written, or translated) that the hair and nails had grown, as if he had lived to that very day: to see which, the king himself, and his mother, and each of the nobles approached. But Alfifa, arguing that the bodies of men buried in sand rot slowly, declared that it would be otherwise if it had been laid in dusty earth. The bishop, the hair and mustache, which the King had grown long after the custom of the age, being cut with scissors, turned to the king and Alfifa, and said: "Now I have reduced it to the same measure which they had attained when he died; but the cut parts, which I hold, have afterward grown."

[108] and that too wholly incorrupt. Alfifa, aware how dangerous the opinion of the King's sanctity was to her, ordered the cut particles of the hair to be tried by fire; she would hold him a Saint, if they should refuse its force: for it was nothing new or of the nature of a miracle, if the hairs of one buried in the earth, however long a time, be not corrupted; since it had been observed more often, even in those who had been detained in the sepulchre longer than that Man. A thurible therefore being filled with fire and consecrated incense, the segments being cast in, the prelate, the incense being consumed, exhibited them incorrupt in the sight of all, to the king and all the nobles. To Alfifa, demanding to try the same with fire not consecrated, Einar enjoined silence, and rebuked her with many and bitter words. Faith then being given to the miracle, and Olaf being pronounced a Saint by the king himself, by public judgment (this is inept, if it signify anything other than that by the public judgment of the prelate and people the king too openly testified that he assented); and the body being brought into the church of St. Clement (perhaps from the cemetery), exalted above the altar; the coffin covered with fine linen, with a wrapper of all-silk: presently manifold miracles were wrought in testimony of his sanctity.

[109] The memory of this elevation solemn and anniversary. Of this elevation also, as we said at the beginning, Theodoric of Nidaros makes mention, in the History of the Norwegian kings already often cited, chapter 20, where he thus has: "But how presently almighty God declared the merits of his martyr Olaf, restoring sight to the blind, and bestowing many benefits on sick mortals; and how bishop Grimkel, who was the son of the brother of bishop Sigward (in others Sigurd), whom Olaf, son of Tryggvi, had brought with him from England, after a year and five days raised the blessed body from the earth, and laid it in a place decently adorned, in the metropolis of Nidaros, whither straightway, the battle being finished, it had been carried; because all these things have been handed down to memory by several, we have thought it superfluous to linger over notes." And indeed, lest the memory of so great a matter might once be lost to the Norwegians, it was thereafter celebrated at Nidaros with an anniversary feast, and that too with a solemn vigil, as see in Torfæus, part 3, book 10, chapter 24, and elsewhere; where it is called the latter feast of St. Olaf; for the first is kept on this day, the 29th of July; but that on the day on which the elevation was made, the second or third of August. The second, I say, or the third: for to the second day of August this solemnity is affixed in the cited place, as also part 4, book 6, chapter 9; but in part 4, book 5, chapter 4 it is said to fall on the third day of August: and on either day the elevation can be understood to have been accomplished.

[110] To the text which we gave in the penultimate number, Torfæus subjoins these things: More miracles wrought at the same elevation; "They record that in the place where the corpse was first buried, a fountain of perennial water arose, wholesome for expelling diseases, afterward observed with great care by the frequency of those healed. There a little shrine (they call it a chapel) was first built, and an altar, where the monument of the King was set; in which place, in the time of our writer, a temple sacred to Christ stood (raised by Olaf the Peaceful, as see in the following §, number 116) ... He hands down besides, that it was spread abroad by report that the fane of Olaf stood in his time, where that solitary house, into which the body being brought remained a single night: (this Magnus began, Harald finished, as we shall say in the following §, number 114). Also a gate called Olaf's, where his relics were carried out of the ship; in his time indeed in the middle of the city. That the bishop took care of the cutting of the hair and nails (for both, as though living, had grown)." To these bear testimony the poems of two poets, who inspected these very things in person, claiming for themselves by their antiquity an authority greater than all exception: the first, his intimate Sighvat, who affirms that the hair grew; the second, Thorarinn Loftunga, of the more invincible faith, in that he inserted these things into the ode which is called Glelogn, dedicated to the honor of Sweyn, son of Alfifa; where, besides the increase of the hair and nails, he himself, who had been present with Sweyn, relates that the bells rang of their own accord, that the candles were kindled of their own accord upon the altar, that an immense flock (as the author interprets) of the lame and blind, or otherwise sick, departed thence whole, their health being already then recovered.

[111] While fame carries these things about through the whole kingdom, both growing and confirmed from time to time by new prodigies, and other things, especially when the Saint's son was made king of Norway, it is wonderful how greatly it affected the minds of all, especially of those who acknowledged that they had lately deserved most ill of the King, now most holy even in their own opinion. And so they believe that no tears will avail them to wash away sufficiently so atrocious a crime, unless they compensate the injury inflicted, in the part in which at least they now can. Wherefore, grieving that the sovereignty had been snatched from Olaf through themselves, they decree of themselves without delay to restore it to Magnus, his son, surviving among the Russians, although he was only in the eleventh year of his age: as a thing which not only equity would demand to be done, but which the times would easily allow to be done: for now no one bore, no one but execrated, the tyranny of Sweyn and Alvina. Thus about the year 1035 (concerning which, however, consult Torfæus disputing, History of Norway, part 3, book 3, chapter 16) Magnus, brought back by them from Russia through Sweden with a numerous army and his stepmother Astrid, was received with such great zeal of the satraps and the common people, that Sweyn, seeing himself forsaken, of his own accord fled into Denmark, being that year there taken from the living.

[112] And to Magnus indeed, as Torfæus has in the same place, his son being brought back to the kingdom, He adorned his Father's relics with a precious casket; about the year 1035, and raised to royal dignity, the first care, and the beginning of his principal works, was in adorning his father's relics. He determined therefore that a sarcophagus should be made to the measure of the body, in the likeness of a coffin, adorned with gold, silver, and gems, combed above in the form of props, connected in the hinder part with plates, closed in front with a pendent lock, sustained by little columns. Into it the body of the King being brought, it straightway wrought many miracles, even by the testimony of the poet Sighvat, at that time a satellite of king Magnus, who sang in a poem that many who had come thither blind departed thence with their sight recovered. This is that most celebrated shrine of St. Olaf, by which for a long time men swore, even by command of the laws, and that in the gravest matters: for even if any king were to be elected, none of the royal stock existing, the nobles were bound to swear at this very shrine that they would elect the best. Presently, throughout all Norway, the feast of the memory of St. Olaf, etc., as above, §1, number 2. Moreover, he gives some examples of this oath in the course of the History, as part

part 3, book 4, chapter 5, and elsewhere. But that the chief care of the reliquary passed from the bishop to this king, the same history teaches in the same place, chapter 13, when, discoursing of Nidaros, it subjoins: "There Magnus, from his first return to the kingdom, alone guarded the relics of St. Olaf, and kept the key; and once every year, the sarcophagus being opened, he himself cut the hair and pared the nails, always with a frequent occurrence of prodigies." These things are referred to the year 1046.

[113] [which he himself and his successor opened every year to cut the Saint's hair and nails.] This care then Magnus, with the kingdom of Norway, transferred to Harald, the uterine brother of St. Olaf; who, having escaped after the disaster of Stiklastad into Russia, and thence having set out into the East, is said to have done incredible things, until, laden with riches, he returned to his homeland to his nephew the king, and succeeded him dying about the year 1047. The same, then, discharged that office of piety from that time every year up to the English expedition and the year fatal to him, of Christ 1066, in which the History of Norway, part 3, book 5, chapter 17, records these things: "But the whole fleet of Harald, and his forces, appeared at Solund. He himself, all being prepared, before he sailed from Nidaros, approached the shrine of St. Olaf, and opened it; and, the hair and nails being cut, closed it again, and threw the key into the river Nid; nor is it reported to have been afterward opened up to the times of Magnus, king son of Hakon, and archbishop John," as the Hrockinskinna testifies (thus he names the Icelandic codex, of which see his prolegomena prefixed to the History), which adds this (not without error, however, as will appear in the following §, number 118). For the things which we shall afterward narrate from Undalinus are later than the author of this codex. "But to what end Harald threw away the keys," says Torfæus there of his own, "is clear to no one. It might be believed to have suffered corruption; had it not, after so many years thereafter, been found incorrupt. For whether another, anointed from time to time with ointments, was substituted, is not without reason doubted." In which words he carps at Undalinus, as we shall see below; yet too indulgently, as being his comrade. Certainly, when Harald did these things, thirty-six years had elapsed from the slaying of St. Olaf, by the Kringla (it is an Icelandic codex) thirty-five.

§ XI. The various translations of the same body, its asserted incorruption, its modern state, and other things pertaining to the relics.

That this sacred deposit was afterward translated from the church of St. Clement to others and others, A double translation of the body before the year 1066, we are taught from the History of Torfæus; as when in part 3, book 5, chapter 19, it is said: "King Magnus (of Norway and Denmark at once, the Saint's son, of whom we have treated hitherto, surnamed the Good and Powerful) had caused a temple to be built to St. Olaf (at Nidaros), where his body was preserved one night: yet he did not finish it. What was lacking, Harald (the Saint's brother, surnamed the Strong, by others the Hard, the Imperious, the Fair-haired) supplied... The same Harald also raised from the foundation a temple of the Blessed Virgin, near the place where the body of his Brother rested, buried the first winter in the sand, an edifice of great bulk, cemented with such firmness of lime that it could scarcely be broken, when archbishop Eystein (after a hundred years) destroyed it. Until that basilica (of the Blessed Virgin) was finished, the relics of St. Olaf were preserved in the temple dedicated to him."

Here therefore a double translation of the body is asserted to have been made in the time of Harald; the former from the basilica of St. Clement, where it had been before, to the church of St. Olaf, begun by Magnus, finished by Harald; the latter from this church of St. Olaf to the basilica of the Blessed Virgin, built by the same Harald (as Theodoric of Nidaros also notes, chapter 29) or at least in his reign: for scarcely will he believe such great religion or munificence of Harald himself, who shall have read those things which Adam of Bremen, scarcely fourteen years after his death, wrote of him in the Ecclesiastical History, book 3, chapter 18 and following, in these words:

[115] "King Harald in his cruelty exceeded all the furies of tyrants: Harald, the Saint's brother, reigning; who had a very evil reputation. for many churches were destroyed by him; many Christians were slain by him through tortures. He was a man powerful and famous for victories; who before had waged many battles in Greece and the regions of Scythia against the barbarians. And so, ruling over many nations, on account of his avarice and cruelty he was hateful to all. He served also magical arts, the wretch not attending that his most holy Brother eradicated such monsters from the kingdom, striving even unto blood for embracing the norm of Christianity; whose excellent merits these miracles testify, which are daily wrought at the sepulchre of the King in the city of Trondheim. These things that man, forsaken by God, saw; and, in nowise compunct, the offerings also and treasures, which had been conferred with the highest devotion of the faithful at the tomb of his Brother, Harald himself, scraping them together with hooked hand, dispersed among his soldiers, etc." Torfæus indeed attempted to refute these things at the place cited above; but with arguments, as they call them, mostly negative; and in such a way that scarcely anywhere else does he betray himself a more genuine disciple of Martin Luther. Let us go on with our own matter.

[116] Another translation of the same Treasure is exhibited in the History of Norway, part 3, book 6, chapter 12; where by Olaf the Quiet or Peaceful, [Under Harald's successor and son another translation, and an annual supplication adorned with miracles;] the son of the aforesaid Harald and his successor in the kingdom, is said, besides other works of piety, that a stone basilica was built at Nidaros, and placed above the sepulchre in which St. Olaf had been laid; so that an altar was built over the very tomb. This cathedral edifice Absalon Pederssøn calls it, and records that the first stone was laid by the king himself. Thither straightway his shrine was translated, and set upon the altar: a great series of miracles followed. In the following year, when the same feast recurred, namely on the evening of his vigil, with a great throng of people, a blind man recovered his sight. But on the morrow, on which his festal day of memory was celebrated, when the shrine and the holy relics were carried out of the temple after custom, and set in the cemetery, one who had long been mute recovered the faculty and use of speaking. Thence praises were celebrated to God and St. Olaf in a flowing stream. A woman also, having set out on a long journey from Sweden, blind for fourteen years (in the Flatey codex eighteen), being led into the temple, was led out sufficiently sighted, her sight recovered during the sacred rites of the Mass, a public supplication being made to God. In this king's time also it happened, when that sacred shrine was being carried through the streets, that it suddenly became immovable to the bearers with unwonted heaviness: the street being broken open, it showed the remains of a slain infant, on which the Shrine had settled: which being removed, the same portable disposition returned to the shrine as before.

[117] some of which, however, are narrated to have been done much later. The same king, and the same basilica, Theodoric of Nidaros designates, chapter 29, when he says: "This man built a basilica in honor of the Holy Trinity in the metropolis of Nidaros, where now (somewhat after the middle of the twelfth century) rests the body of blessed Olaf the martyr; as also before his father Harald had built a church of blessed Mary ever Virgin in the same city, as is seen to this day." But the miracles which are there narrated to have been done in the following year, except the last, of which I do not remember to have read elsewhere, our manuscript Acts, chapter 2, number 12, and the Nidaros Breviary in Torfæus himself, part 3, book 3, chapter 12, page 213, hand down to have happened much later: namely in the year in which the basilica of the blessed martyr Olaf was clothed with the new honor of a principate (that is, an archbishopric) and pallium; which is, according to Undalinus, part 1, book 2, chapter 19, page 83, the year of Christ 1152.

[118] King Magnus finds the Saint's body incorrupt in the year 1098. It is altogether singular, what is read in Camden, in the description of Britain, page 841, where he produces an ancient Chronicle of the kings of Man, an island situated between Ireland and Britain where it touches the Scots; for in it, at the year of Christ 1098, it is thus given: "In the same year Magnus, king of Norway, son of Olaf, son of Harald Harfagre (that is, the Fair-haired), wishing to explore the incorruption of St. Olaf, king and martyr, ordered that his mausoleum be opened. But the bishop and clergy resisting, the king himself boldly advanced, and by royal force caused the shrine to be opened. And when he had both seen with his eyes and handled with his hands the incorrupt body, suddenly a great fear rushed upon him, and he departed with great haste. On the following night Olaf, king and martyr, appeared to him in a vision, saying: Choose thou, I say, one of two things; either to lose thy life with thy kingdom within thirty days; or to depart from Norway, and never see it more. The king, awakened from sleep, called to him the princes and elders, and set forth to them the vision. But they, terrified, gave him this counsel, that with all haste he should go out of Norway. He without delay caused a fleet of a hundred and sixty ships to be assembled, and crossed to the Orkney islands, which he straightway subjugated to himself, and, making a passage through all the islands, and subjecting them to himself, came as far as Man... But seeing a most beautiful island, it pleased in his eyes, and he chose it for his habitation. Which to this day is named from his name, etc." You see that the reliquary was here opened under Magnus Barefoot, son not of Hakon, but of Olaf the Peaceful; and not therefore first in the time of archbishop John, as the Hrockinskinna above narrated: for he was at last, in the year 1152, from bishop of Stavanger, created the first archbishop of Nidaros, as Undalinus testifies above.

[119] The most elegant metropolitan basilica of Nidaros, I know not to what the beginnings of that metropolitan basilica in the same city of Nidaros ought to be referred, which, both by the title of St. Olaf and by the singular elegance of the work, is celebrated to our times beyond measure and belief, although only some relics of it survive. For Undalinus fetches its origins from higher up, in Torfæus, part 1, book 2, chapter 19, page 80, when he will have it to be that same one whose foundations Harald the Strong, king of Norway and brother of St. Olaf, first caused to be laid on that sandy hill where his brother Olaf's body had first been buried, and which afterward his son king Olaf, surnamed the Quiet or Tranquil, together with archbishop Eystein, in some measure finished, and dedicated to Christ; and set the coffin of St. Olaf upon the altar. But the man errs more than once: for, 1. Harald is not known to have founded any other church either on that hill or near it, besides that which we said was consecrated to the Mother of God. 2. Of this he not only laid the foundations, but wholly completed it. 3. This is another than that which his son Olaf built; as Theodoric testifies, who, above number 117, saw both existing at once. 4. It is a base anachronism, especially in Undalinus—that is, a Norwegian and reckoned among the learned men of his country and sect—when he joins the reign of Olaf the Peaceful with the archbishopric of Eystein, which

which nevertheless differ among themselves by almost eighty years. Rightly therefore, to these assertions, Torfæus there subjoins: "These things are false."

[120] But indeed, will that be able to seem true which he presently adds: The basilica founded to St. Olaf, "For Eystein, who built the basilica of which today some part stands, that temple which King Harald raised being destroyed, lived long after Olaf"? I should not indeed believe it: for that metropolitan basilica was not founded in that place which the Haraldine church of the Mother of God occupied; but in that same place in which another had been built by Olaf, son of Harald; which we gather from Torfæus and Undalinus themselves: for the latter in the cited place, the former in part 3, book 3, chapter 11, teach from ancient monuments that the higher altar of that magnificent metropolitan edifice was set above the place where the monument of the King was; that there also an altar had stood in that old edifice (whose place this new one occupied). But this does not fit the old Haraldine church, but the Olavian, according again to Torfæus himself above at number 116: therefore the metropolitan of which we speak occupied the place of this, not of that: and so if any was destroyed, to give place to a new building, it was the Olavian. Although it be not very likely that a royal work, which had not yet stood one century, was destroyed to its foundations. Perhaps Eystein demolished only those things which seemed less fit for the new form which he wished to introduce. Thus the work begun by Olaf the Peaceful may be said to be that which Eystein consummated. However it be, since that fabric is attributed to Eystein either uniquely or chiefly, we have deferred to speak of it up to this place: for that Eystein sat—whom Theodoric in the dedication of his History calls his lord and father, Augustine, archbishop of Nidaros—sat, I say, according to Undalinus above, from the year of Christ 1161 to 1184.

[121] It still stood in the year 1550, in which Münster inscribed his Cosmography to the Emperor Charles V, it burned down for the most part, after it had been occupied by the Lutherans, since in book 4, in Norway, writing of Nidaros, he thus declares: "There stands today a cathedral church, a proof of ancient felicity; to which in magnitude, and in the labor (in the working, I think) of the artifice of stone, there is no equal work in the Christian world. The base around the altar was ruined by fire, but repaired in the year 1530: for the repairing of which base the expenses are reckoned at seven thousand gold pieces. And from so small a part let an estimate be made of the excellence of the whole temple." But at this time (says Undalinus above, who wrote toward the end of the sixteenth century) the greatest part of it, only the sacred cell or choir excepted, lies prostrate and ruined, and indeed, as the same testifies below, by a stroke of lightning, by which, twice before more lightly touched, it at last a third time burned down, after Münster's times, as it appears, and long after it had already been occupied and profaned by the Lutherans. That the part which remains passed to the prelate of the same sect and twenty-four canons, Davity hands down in his description of Europe, volume 3, page 687. Whoever desires a little more of its form and material, let him go to Undalinus at the assigned place; where he also subjoins the following:

[122] and plundered by a detestable sacrilege; And as this cathedral basilica was eminent in elegance of structure and in all magnificence of work, so also it surpassed the rest in its remaining ornaments: for it had a most rich sacristy, most crammed with books, chalices, patens, priestly vestments, reliquaries, and other things of that kind and utensils of the church... And this basilica is also, for the resource of this kingdom, most rich with huge revenues and great possessions... But this is to be lamented ... that at the beginning of the reformed religion (thus he names his own sect, the Lutheran minister himself), not content in the least to draw off from the temples and monasteries whatever of gold, silver, and other treasures was found there, they cast down and destroyed the adorned and elegant structures... and utterly stripped the sacred edifices of all ornament, exercising a detestable robbery, unworthy of a Christian man... In this manner Otto Stig had the most beautiful library of the Thrandensian basilica burned there in the cemetery... At the same time the silver coffin, in which the body of St. Olaf was laid, was carried off, the two wooden chests (in which the silver coffin was enclosed) being stripped of all gold and silver and of the most precious gems (of which one surpassed the rest, which the archbishop Eric Valkendorp had bought for two hundred and forty tuns of butter dozens of twenty tuns); as also the huge silver cross, wont to be carried by three men in procession before the tomb of St. Olaf (for the carrying about of which in the supplication he had said above that sixty bearers were required), ... together with the rest of the treasures of this basilica, of gold as well as silver, taken from the apse and hall; ... of which no small part a certain huge ship, about to convey it into Denmark, being swallowed by the waves before Agdenes, never afterward appeared: whereas a little before a good portion of the same money, to be transported into Denmark by a great ship, had fallen as booty to the Dutch pirates; which happened in the year of Christ 1541.

[123] This fury, akin to heresy; these robberies; this, they themselves confessing it with shame, yet the body of the Saint being somehow honorably preserved; was the profit of the most wicked pillaging. I could wish, however, that the same author, since he did not dare to dissemble such things, had also added what those sacrilegious comrades of his, carrying off the sacred coffin, decided concerning the enclosed body of the Saint. They seem certainly to have preserved it unharmed somehow, enclosed perhaps in those two wooden chests, which they had despoiled of their ornaments, until, as the same narrates below, the tempest of wars raging between the Danes (whose Norway was) and the Swedes, these, when they had obtained Thrandia by arms (in the year, according to Calvisius, of Christ 1564), had this same body committed to the earth in a certain burial-ground; which, King Frederick of Denmark sending an army hither, and the enemies driven out, and Thrandia (a few months after it had been taken) recovered, was dug up, certain of our people (Danes or Norwegians) indicating the place, and with the highest honor and magnificence deposited in the cathedral basilica in a cenotaph; whose obsequies all the men of the ecclesiastical order here, the nobles, with the tribunes of the soldiers, all the troops and all the rest of the crowd, accompanied, honoring them with as much reverence as could be done for the resource of this town (long since cast down from its ancient amplitude and state). Namely this was given to royal dignity, not to sanctity.

[124] But indeed the incorruption of the body of the Roman-Catholic King, commonly known and everywhere boasted of by the orthodox, proved inconvenient to the innovators; and that too incorrupt; a token assuredly of his true religion and sanctity, luminous beyond others. Many, whom Undalinus says he addressed, had inspected it, now indeed dry, but yet entire; and among others, who perhaps were Catholics, a certain Jonas, law-keeper of Agder, who died in the year 1575, in the 63rd year of his age, who had once been orthodox and a deacon of the Thrandensian church, but afterward had defected to the Lutherans, among whom he obtained the praise of a most upright life. He reported to Undalinus that he had seen that arid and dry body,.. and that it was of great and tall stature, entire in every part, with a red beard, and a nose a little falling in and contracted by dryness, in which his lethal wounds were seen, hard and dry like wood... And he judged that nothing hindered that it might be held for his true body. Nevertheless, since he marveled that after more than five hundred and fifty years... it was not at all corrupted and consumed by worms, he concluded that either it had been embalmed by the Papists with balsam (of which, however, it exhibited no mark, nor any trace of moisture), or was miraculously preserved. You see that not even he, who had been able to abjure the true religion, was yet able wholly to eradicate from his mind the evidence of this prodigy, even though he most greatly wished? For how could he believe that it had been embalmed with balsam, if it exhibited no mark of balsam, nor any trace of moisture, to one curiously inspecting the body?

[125] The same, however, if we believe the heretic Undalinus, at last persuaded himself that the monks, vending falsehoods, had secretly substituted, in the place of the first putrid body of the King, another embalmed and dried; such as it was, when at last in the year 1568 it was buried in the earth. and that thus thenceforth, by always substituting a fresh one for the one putrefying, they had displayed the appearance of the vulgar miracle preserved. But not even Undalinus himself could persuade himself of this: for he adds: "Yet if this had been done, it might seem a wonderful thing that the report was never spread abroad." Alas, wretched men! How they torment themselves, when they neither wish nor are able to give faith to the truth, and, conscience clamoring, to deny it! But what more malignant, what more foolish can be feigned than what that Jonas persuaded himself? The monks substituted another body. But the sepulchre of St. Olaf was never in the power of the monks; first the bishops alone, then the kings, then again the bishops kept the key of the coffin. They substituted another body. When, I pray? Before the times of Magnus the Good and Harald the Strong; or after them? If the first; why did neither the Saint's son nor his brother detect the fraud? If the second: then you confess that the same body was without any fraud incorrupt and vigorous for 35 years. Why not, then, even longer? They substituted another. O then those stupid Danish and Norwegian Lutherans, who accompanied that body—which they knew not whether it were a robber's or a beggar's, or a King's—with such great reverence (above, number 123)! But why should we linger in confuting these trifles one by one, which not even the heterodox themselves judged could be sufficiently proved either to themselves or to their comrades? What then? Did they at last confess the miracle? They would not. Did they then deny it? They could not. What then? They stopped it up. For, as Undalinus testifies in the same place, In the year 1568 George Lycke, a golden knight, sent hither (to Nidaros) by royal command, ordered the tomb of St. Olaf to be filled with earth. I could not, when I read this, but remember that which St. John has in chapter 12: "But the chief priests thought to kill Lazarus also; because by reason of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus." Thus far concerning the body.

[126] His other relics. There are, however, elsewhere also other relics of the same Saint preserved in greater honor: for, as Benzelius testifies in his annotations to Vastovius's Vitis Aquilonia, page 23, "The helmet and spurs of Olaf, once votive offerings of the church of Nidaros, Eric XIV, king of Sweden, the city being occupied in the year 1564, brought to Stockholm; and there they are preserved to this day in a chapel of the principal church dedicated to St. Nicholas." At Paris also, at St. Victor's, there is a chapel of St. Olaf, where the shirt of this Martyr is held in veneration; as is noted at the 29th day of July in the Calendar, which they call spiritual, of Paris, of the year 1697 and following. That something of his remains came also to Rouen, Francis Pommeraye says in the History of the archbishops of Rouen, where, concerning Robert I, chapter 2, number 8, page 245; although he indicates neither a witness of the assertion, nor the time or manner of the translation, nor what the relics themselves are, or whence taken. There were besides certain others once among the people of Nidaros in the cathedral church; such as the Saint's battle-axe and banner,

concerning which Theodoric treats, chapter 24; likewise a spear, concerning which Torfæus, part 4, book 4, chapter 26, which whither they have now passed, we know not.

[127] Why we subjoin to this commentary a manuscript epitome of the Acts. And these are the things which we have judged to contribute most to illustrating the history of St. Olaf; which, if they shall seem to some too long, or of less credit in certain matters, because they have flowed indeed from Catholic monuments, but from ones almost hitherto unknown to the Catholic world, and that too through a heterodox interpreter, will, I think, prove welcome to them, if we present the manuscript epitome of the Acts, of whatever quality, promised from the Catholic archive of the monastery of Böddeken; and the more welcome, in that from this source especially seem to be derived the compendia which are recited in the ancient Breviaries and the Northern Life. To this, however, because it does not contain very many miracles—whereas by the testimony of Adam of Bremen, book 3, chapter 19, and of others everywhere they were very many and almost daily—we shall subjoin an appendix of some which are found recorded elsewhere.

BRIEF ACTS

By an anonymous author, from the parchment Passionale manuscript of the monastery of Böddeken.

Olaf, King and Martyr, in Norway (St.)

BHL Number: 6322, 6323, 6324

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT.

CHAPTER I.

The Saint's conversion; his labors, apostolic no less than royal; his martyrdom.

The Gospel is preached to the Norwegians: While the most illustrious king Olaf was reigning in Norway, which is a very great land, situated toward the North, having Dacia on the south, there entered that same land the feet of those who evangelize peace, who evangelize good things. Hitherto those nations, enslaved to the sacrilegious rites of idols and deluded by superstitious errors, had indeed heard ^a the faith and worship of the true God, but many had scorned to receive it: for as they inhabited the places nearest the North, so that North wind had the more familiarly possessed them, and had bound them with the more tenacious ice of unbelief—that North wind from which is spread abroad every evil over the whole face of the earth, and from whose face Jeremiah saw a boiling pot, and who in Isaiah boastfully declares: "Above the stars of heaven will I exalt my throne; I will sit in the mount of the covenant, in the sides of the North." But the Lord, great and exceedingly to be praised, who from the sides of the North built His city, by the gentle breath of the south wind dissipated the hardness of the North, and at last softened with the warmth of the faith the obstinate and fierce minds of savage nations. They heard a report from the Lord, and He sent to those nations as legates the heralds of His word, who should preach to those parts the truth which is in Christ Jesus, overthrow the worship of idols, promise to believers unfailing life and eternal joys, and deter the unbelieving and rebellious by the fear of the future judgment and of perennial punishment.

[2] Over this province, then, as we said, ruled king Olaf; and St. Olaf is baptized at Rouen, who, although a heathen ^b, was nevertheless by nature kindly, and by a certain ingenuousness of mind most ready to follow whatever was honorable. He, having ascertained in England the sincerity of the evangelical truth, admitted the faith with his whole heart, and flew to the grace of Baptism in the city of Rouen with a devout alacrity of soul. Purified therefore by the salutary laver, he was suddenly changed into another man; and, according to what the Apostle says, buried with Christ after Baptism into death, forgetting the things that are behind, stretching himself to those that are before, he walked in newness of life, a most perfect observer of the religion he had received. Every vain delight grew vile to him, and the glory of the earthly kingdom became worthless before the heavenly sweetness: set in the royal height, he was poor in spirit; and entangled in earthly affairs, he nonetheless meditated on heavenly things: whatever the divine law forbids, he vehemently abhorred; whatever it commands, he embraced with the most ardent affection.

[3] Nor content with his own salvation, he strove with vigilant insistence to convert to the faith the peoples over whom, by divine providence dispensing, he had been set; the same man both king and apostle of his subjects, and, by a new order of things a king, discharging the office of an apostle, himself the leader of the word, everywhere preached the grace of Christ to all; some also, by the grace of preaching which was poured out on his lips, he led back from the nefarious cults of demons to the acknowledgment and reverence of their Creator; some his wondrous devotion and most continent life inflamed to the very marrow to the contempt of the world and the love of the heavenly homeland. For whose obstinacy, whose hardness would the sweet and spiritual-wisdom-filled speech of that most signal King not break? Whose torpor or sloth would that singular manner of life not rouse?

[4] Nevertheless, set in the midst of a depraved and perverse nation, even of those opposing his piety, although he converted many, yet he had very many adversaries, strong and powerful; in whom will claimed for itself a greater place than piety or reason; the headlong impulse of the mind, than the love of truth. These with all their efforts opposed the preaching and holy works of the most noble Martyr of Christ, and endeavored to overturn the straight ways of the Lord. But the just man, confident as a lion, was without terror; and, according to the example of blessed Job, was not affrighted at the exceeding multitude, nor did the contempt of his kinsmen terrify him, nor could he be turned by the threats or snares of his opponents from the constancy of his preaching.

[5] Good Jesus! How great labors, how great persecutions did he sustain, before he could turn the unbelieving people, contradicting him, from their perversity? For it was given to him converting very many heathen, not only that he should believe in Christ, but also that he should suffer for Him; nor only to suffer, nor only was he prepared to lay down the diadem of a temporal kingdom for Christ; but he also more earnestly desired to attain, through the crown of martyrdom, to the glory of everlasting joys. O what a burning of devout charity; how great a fervor of faith had kindled the breast of the most excellent Martyr of Christ! Who, set in the midst of untamed nations (whom, according to Solomon, confident in their folly, it was less safe to meet than a she-bear raging over her stolen cubs), yet ceased not to press upon them, publicly and privately, as much as he could, the saving word of faith, which they abhorred. He profited greatly in a short time, and acquired for the Lord an innumerable multitude: the peoples flocked eagerly to Baptism, and the number of believers increased daily: the statues were broken; the groves were cut down; the shrines were overthrown; priests were ordained, and churches were built; the peoples offered gifts with devotion and alacrity; the worshippers of idols blushed; those who trusted in the graven image were confounded, and in many parts of that region, the multitude of the unbelieving being suppressed, all iniquity, daring not to mutter, stopped its mouth.

[6] and framing laws truly Christian. The King exulted more than can be believed, now in the present perceiving the most welcome fruits of his labors: but the indefatigable preacher of the Gospel ceased not now to convince the obstinate, now to instruct the untaught, now to confirm the tender in the faith: he exercised nothing of royal pride, nothing of tyranny toward his subjects; nay, he gave to all examples of great humility and meekness. Providing also for the future for the provinces over which he ruled, lest the nobler and more powerful should oppress the humbler by their power, he wrote and promulgated divine and human laws, full of much wisdom and composed with wondrous discretion; in which he assigned to each condition its own right. In them also he distinguished, by fixed limits, how much might be lawful to prelates over their subjects, and how much reverence the subjects should exhibit toward the prelates. There, a most modest and most equitable arbiter, wisely considering that for the most part kings proudly abuse the power granted them toward their subjects, he restrained and bridled the royal license by the rigor of the laws. In those laws it is clear how devout toward God, how kindly toward his neighbor the glorious King was.

[7] At last he is compelled by his adversaries to flee into Russia; It cannot be explained in words how great benefits the oft-named King conferred upon those peoples; how much he profited while he presided, both in the promulgation of laws, and in the support of the poor, and in the assiduity of preaching, and in the example of his most holy manner of life ^c. But on the contrary he endured from them many and evil tribulations; until, not being able to resist their multitude, he withdrew into Russia, thinking it opportune to yield to the time, until the Lord should deign to grant a fit time for his will and purpose. Let it come into no one's mind that the most brave and most constant Athlete of Christ, as is of human infirmity, yielded terrified by the fear of the passion—he who many times had of his own accord exposed himself to the passion, as the outcome of the matter and his illustrious martyrdom declared; for the profit of others he reserved himself for a more opportune time, when he might exhibit more abundant fruits to the Lord, and restore the talent committed to him, multiplied, with usury.

[8] The most illustrious Martyr of Christ, therefore, having entered Russia, and gloriously received by Jarzellan read Jarislaus, the magnificent king of that province, whence returning he paves the way to martyrdom, was held in the amplest honor as long as he wished to tarry there. There, tarrying for no small time, he left to the inhabitants a model of an honorable life, and a celebrated monument of his religion, charity, kindness, and patience. At last, refined by the fire of persecution and exile, being found acceptable and fit to sustain greater contests, inspired by divine instinct, he returned through the borders of Sweden to his own home. There, a more abundant grace being conferred on him by the Lord, received by many with great longing, he appeared gracious and desirable to the good, awesome and terrible to the adversaries of sound doctrine. Clad therefore in the breastplate of faith, and girded with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, through ill report and good report, through glory and ignominy, through the arms of justice on the right hand and on the left, an excellent orator, he constantly disseminated the word of faith everywhere on his way; prepared to suffer for Christ whatsoever persecutions, he of his own accord exposed himself to perils, not refusing to undergo martyrdom, if it should please God.

[9] And since the laborer is worthy of his hire, at last it pleased the Lord to lead forth His Combatant from the prison of the flesh, whose palm he straightway obtained from his seditious subjects, that he might receive the fullest and superabundant reward of his labors, and that the king might see the King in His beauty. There was a certain part of that land, in which his most holy body now rests, whose inhabitants ^d, hardened and pertinacious in their malice, were the inexorable enemies of the truth, and therefore of the King: into this province came the Martyr of Christ, purposing perhaps to preach the grace of God to the unbelieving peoples: which being known, the enemies of the truth called together a council of iniquity; they gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ: for his salutary preaching was very contrary to them and their works. Whence some of them, corrupted by the gifts of a certain adversary of his, Canute; but some by the instinct of malice alone, and also refusing to receive the new religion, contrary namely to their ancestral laws, an army being drawn up, in the place which is now called Stiklastad, receive him with war, unaware and somewhat distant from his own people: but the most illustrious Martyr, who, wholly suspended toward heavenly things, desired with his inmost heart to arrive thither through the crown of martyrdom, feared not before the face of the multitude: war threatens him, which the lover of peace undertook, about to fight for justice and equity. An army therefore being gathered, as much as he could in a short time, he meets the enemies.

[10] But the Lord, who straightway granted, being invited beforehand by Christ, to render to His Martyr the reward for which he had endured so many contests,

and had now decreed to reveal His glory, which he had thirsted for longer and more avidly, that He might crown him more gloriously, permitted the glorious Martyr to fall by the javelins of the wicked. Now he fell on the fourth before the Kalends of August, on the fourth feria, in the one thousand and twenty-eighth year ^e from the Incarnation of the Lord, cruelly slain by the enemies of the faith for the defense of the faith, happily migrating from the camp to the eternal palaces of the King, from war to the peace which surpasses all understanding, to the praise and glory of Christ. Amen. On the night, therefore, preceding the day on which the renowned Martyr suffered, the Lord Jesus appeared to him, soothing him with consoling words: "Come," He said, "to me, my Beloved, that you may pluck the sweetest fruits of your labors, enjoying our fellowship in everlasting gladness." Greatly comforted by this vision, he joyfully offered himself to the passion, now divinely hoping for the ladder which he had lately seen in his sleep raised to the heavens ^f, by which he was happily to ascend to the sweetness which he had tasted.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The miracles that followed his death.

Sight given to a blind man, speech restored to those without tongues: When therefore the time of that passion had elapsed, when the royal ministers had washed his body, there was thrown out before the door the water, mixed with the blood which had flowed from the wounds of the Most Blessed. And so, passing before the door, a certain blind man by chance slipped into the place which was still wet with the water infected with blood; and when he had brought his fingers, wetted with the same water, to his eyes, straightway, the mist being wiped away, he received his former light. Who, more surely exploring the miracle, recognizes that he had received his sight through the merit of the blessed martyr Olaf. Whence with him all who heard the miracle extolled with worthy praises the divine mercy and the merit of the Martyr ^a.

A certain boy, falsely charged with a crime (as often the just man bears the crime of the impious), had his tongue cut off. He, roused by the fame of the miracles which he had frequently heard were wrought through the merits of holy Olaf, came to the memorial of the Martyr; he entreats the Saint with many tears, beseeches him with deep groans, that he would by his intervention restore the office of speaking, which he had unjustly lost. And it came to pass that he who had come to the sepulchre of the Saint mourning and tongueless, returned to his own home with joy, speaking freely ^b.

Another, captured by the Slavs, his tongue cut off, escaped by chance. He, coming to the memorial of the Martyr, and asking with the inmost contrition of heart that the former soundness be restored to his tongue, received the use of speaking which he had lost, and bound himself in the same church to the perpetual service of the Martyr.

[12] the contracted, the blind, a mute man, the weak are made whole: A certain woman, so deformedly contracted that her feet clung to her buttocks, was brought to the sepulchre of the Martyr; where, when she had persevered rather long in tears and continual entreaty, being restored to entire soundness, her sinews stretched out, her legs made straight, her feet strengthened, and each of her members restored to its own office and form, she returned cheerful and rejoicing to her own home.

In the year, therefore, in which the basilica of the blessed martyr Olaf was clothed with the new honor of a principate and pallium ^c, amid the frequent concourses of the peoples there are present certain three weak men from afar, laboring under various sickness of body; who, coming together to the church of the blessed Martyr, hoped, by his protection, especially to obtain on that day the grace of soundness, on which the same Martyr, paying the dues of the flesh for Christ, received a joy that was to remain eternally: for there was among them a certain blind man, who on the very vigil of the Martyr deserved to be consoled with the gladness of a vision. But on the following day, when the offices of the procession were solemnly performed, and the bier was laid down in the cemetery after the accustomed manner, a certain mute man received the grace of speech, and, his tongue being released, joyfully loosed its offices ^d in the praise of the Savior.

A certain woman also, having set out from afar from the borders of the Suevi ^e, resolved to journey to the threshold of the holy Martyr for the sake of prayers; who, although on the journey she suffered the inconveniences both of blindness and of toil, yet, robust in faith and comforted by hope, completed the journey she had begun: who, when on his birthday she entered the glorious basilica, and the most sacred offices of the Masses were being celebrated, deserved to receive the gladness of the longed-for sight, which she had lost for thirteen years ^f.

[13] A certain Varangian ^g in Russia had bought a slave, a youth of good disposition, likewise a mute man. but mute; who, since he could declare nothing of himself, of what nation he was was unknown: yet the craft in which he was skilled betrayed that he had lived among the Varangians: for he knew how to make the arms which they alone use. He, when by sale he had tried various masters, came afterward to a certain merchant, who, out of regard for piety, loosed for him the servile yoke. He, having obtained the desired liberty, came to the city which is called Holingard ^h, and, received for the sake of hospitality into the house of a certain religious matron, remained for some days. Now the woman, being diligent in honor of the blessed martyr Olaf, applied herself to prayers in his church at every hour. At the hour, therefore, of the nocturnal time, the blessed martyr Olaf seemed to be seen by her, charging her to lead the aforesaid boy with her to the church: which, straightway hastening at the morning hours, she performs. And when they came into the church, the boy, not long delaying, was released into sleep; and he who, appearing before to the woman, had charged that the boy be brought to the church to be cured, is afterward proved, by face and habit, by the divine grace favoring, to have conferred the cure upon the boy by appearing.

[14] There was in Ireland a certain leader, Guthorin ⁱ by name, A signal victory a Norseman by nation, namely nephew of the blessed Olaf, a man illustrious by birth, and powerful in arms. He was allied with Margad, king of Dublin ^k, and bound to him by a certain familiar society. But it happened that both, having set out together on an expedition with a numerous fleet, returned thence enriched with much wealth. On a certain day, when they had met to divide the spoils among themselves, the King, seeing the innumerable booty, was blinded by the love of greed: he proposes to the leader that he choose one of two things which he will: "Either," he says, "you shall leave all the spoils with the ships, or you shall sustain war brought upon you by me." Placed in these straits, the leader Guthorin knew not what to choose: to leave the booty with the ships seemed base and too unbecoming for himself, to undertake war was exceedingly perilous: for there was a great disparity between the armies: for the king is said to have had fifteen ships; but the leader only five.

[15] The anxious leader Guthorin, therefore, asked a two days' truce; if perchance he might be able to turn the tyrant from his devised wickedness: it is obtained, the Saint being invoked. for that very day was the vigil of the blessed Olaf, king and martyr. But after he was able by no prayers to soften the mind of the barbarian, he chose to die honorably, rather than with so great a disgrace and infamy of his race to leave his spoils to the tyrant with the ships: but, because human aid was wanting, he implores divine, and beseeches blessed Olaf that he would succor him, and promised that he would make a silver cross in the church of the Martyr, if he should deliver him from the hand of the perfidious king. What more? The army being drawn up, he met the enemy's battle-lines, and, fighting most bravely, by the aid of Christ and the intervention of the glorious Martyr, laid low the whole multitude of the barbarians. And having obtained an unhoped-for victory, returning with gladness and many spoils, he made a silver cross of wondrous size, far exceeding the bulk of a human body ^l, and placed it in the church of the blessed Martyr at his body, as a monument of the divine triumph and of the unhoped-for victory which he had obtained through his merits.

[16] One who violates his feast is punished by a double miracle. There was in Dacia a certain provost ^m, a hateful and depraved man, and, as is read of the unjust judge, revering neither God nor men; he had a maidservant born in the province of the blessed martyr Olaf ⁿ; and she was most devout toward the veneration of the Saint. But that provost, as he was a perverse and worthless man, and one who with great zeal depraved the praises of the good, did not believe those things which were said of the Martyr; but whatever common report spread abroad by rumor concerning his miracles and glory, he esteemed fictitious and ridiculous. But it happened that the annual solemnity of the passion of the same King and Martyr returned, which the men of that region celebrate with great veneration. That most wicked man, therefore, finding a fit time for showing his malice, demonstrated in deed the depravity which he had formerly harbored in his heart: for not only did he refuse to exhibit reverence to the Saint on his birthday; but also, to his contempt, he charged the aforesaid woman, whom he had found more devout than the rest toward the veneration of the Martyr, to carry loaves on the very day of the festivity, to be baked ^o. She, because she knew the perversity of the man, and knew that she would be afflicted with the most grievous torments unless she obeyed the command of that wicked man, though unwilling, obeys the sacrilegious mandates; she carries the loaves to the oven: vehemently grieved, entreating the Saint with frequent groans, she testifies also, and confirms by oath, that she will never thenceforth pay honor to the Martyr, unless he should declare by sure signs his power in so great a necessity. O miracle recent, and before that time unheard of! In one and the same moment both the most worthless man is struck with blindness [p], and the loaves placed in the oven are turned into stones. To this day one of those stones is preserved, as a testimony and memorial of the miracle, in the basilica of the blessed Martyr. Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

APPENDIX

OF THE MIRACLES OF ST. OLAF, KING AND MARTYR.

From various monuments.

Olaf, King and Martyr, in Norway (St.)

FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.

A priest cruelly mutilated, Besides the miracles reviewed both just now from the Bodecensis manuscript Life, and elsewhere in the preliminary Commentary, some others are commemorated; which, lest anything may seem neglected even in this part, we subjoin. In the Nidaros Breviary, described in Torfæus as cited, among those things which it has in common with the Bodecensis manuscript, these besides are intermingled: "There were two brothers; and these, illustrious by birth, abounding, obtained riches in the world. They had a sister, fair according to the surface of the flesh; but, as the outcome of the matter proved, less circumspect against the disparagements of the wicked. She, having a devout familiarity with a certain English priest, who dwelt in the house of the brothers of the same woman, had out of honorable zeal conferred many benefits upon him. But it happened that a sinister suspicion arose concerning that woman. But, because evil speech is wont easily to infect the mind of hearers, on account of their frequent conversations guilt is imputed to the innocent priest. But her brothers, as if certain of the matter, were beyond measure indignant at the great familiarity with which she had been joined to the priest; and, kindled with excessive fury, suppressed their grief by dissembling it. But on a certain day they call forth the priest, suspecting no evil; and, having taken a certain retainer of theirs, privy to the iniquity which they had conceived, they lead him away with them as if for the sake of some business to be done: and when they had come far and remote from their house into more secret places, seizing the priest, who feared nothing of the kind, they break his shins, cut off his tongue from his head, tear out his eyes; finally, when he, anxious with pain, moving the remnant of his tongue, seems to stammer, attacking him, drawing out with pincers the part of the tongue which they had left, they cut it off again, and, leaving him there half-alive, he is received by a certain poor woman and carried into her house."

[2] he is suddenly healed by St. Olaf appearing. Now that man, having experienced so great a cruelty of men, did not despair of the divine clemency: silent in mouth, he speaks more effectively with a devout heart, the weaker, the stronger and more powerful, turned with his whole heart to the glorious martyr Olaf, of whose merits he had heard such great things, that he might not fail him in so great a necessity. The more wretched, the more pitiable, the more anxious, the more earnestly he entreats him. Thus persisting in prayer and groaning and contrition of heart, he ceases not to implore the aid of the Martyr; a wretched man worthy of pity. At last, on the following day, he is released into the quiet of sleep; and, behold, the holy Martyr appeared to him, saying that he was Olaf, whom he had so devoutly and earnestly invoked: then, handling with a gentle hand his eyes and shins, and every wounded place, at last, when he put his hand to his tongue, he drew out the roots with so great an effort that the priest, compelled by excessive pain, uttered a very great cry. Straightway, after the salutary touch of the Martyr, so great an abundance of divine mercy came to him, so grievously injured, that he seemed to have suffered nothing at all: the tongue was restored, the shins healed, the eyes given back, and the places, if any had been wounded or injured, received the most entire soundness. Yet as a proof that the eyes had been torn out, a white scar remained in the eyelids. This same miracle is read in the Utrecht manuscript Life, but in other words, and is said to have happened in Dacia; and then St. Olaf not only touched the priest's wounds, but also anointed them with an ointment which he brought in a box, adding to each anointing a fitting prayer: "My Lord Jesus, who gave walking to the lame, heal thee. In His name I say to thee, arise and walk, etc."

[3] In a certain city of Russia, which is called Holmgarder, A fire extinguished in Russia by the Saint's image: a blind woman healed. it happened that such a fire suddenly came upon it that the devastation of the whole city seemed to threaten: whose inhabitants, indeed dissolved with fear, flock in troops to a certain Latin priest, by name Stephen, who ministered there in the church of blessed Olaf, that in so great a necessity they might experience the aid of the blessed Martyr, and prove by sure signs what they had learned of him by report. But the priest, not slothful, favors their will; he seizes his image in his arms; he set it against the flames. But neither does the fire pass further, and the remaining part of the city is delivered from the burning. The same is narrated also by the Utrecht manuscript, adding: "On account of this miracle this city after this began to hold the holy martyr Olaf in the greatest devotion, whose feast is on the day of the holy martyrs Felix and Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix." Of these we have treated above on this same 29th day of July. And the Nidaros Breviary proceeds: "It happened in the place which is called Stiklastad, in that year in which the basilica of the blessed martyr Olaf was clothed with the new honor of a principate and pallium, that a certain woman recovered her sight, whose pupil had been injured in childhood by the prick of a little knife by another child; and from the pain of it both eyes were burdened to blindness. But by the intervention of the Martyr, the blindness being wiped away, she rejoices to have received her former light."

[4] At the royal city of Constantinople the memory of St. Olaf, king and martyr, is celebrated, The Constantinopolitan emperor, with St. Olaf as leader, conquers the infidels, and in the same city a church was built in his honor. It happened at a certain time that the emperor of the aforesaid city, an army being gathered, proceeded to do battle against a certain king of the pagans: the line of battle being drawn up on both sides and disposed with military zeal, he entered upon the war. The barbarians most fiercely attack the Christians, and in the first encounter come off victors. The greatest part of the Greeks falls, and the strength of the Christian army languishes. There remained a line not great, which awaited nothing else than death. The emperor, desolate, and almost dissolved in heart, turned himself to divine aid, and implored, with tears likewise poured forth, the help of the blessed martyr Olaf, whom they had learned by report to be frequently present to those who fight for justice: they vow that they will build in the royal city a church under the name of the Martyr, and in honor of holy Mary the Virgin, if by his intervention they should return victors. O illustrious and signal miracle! The Martyr appears to certain ones of the army, and as a signal standard-bearer precedes the Christian line. Horror invades the hostile army, and, struck with divine fear, all the monstrous barbarians turn to flight, whom a little before a great and strong army was unable to resist: the line not great, fortified by the aid of the Martyr, pursues them: an innumerable slaughter of the pagans is made, and, laden with many spoils, the Christians return as victors.

[5] The emperor therefore, having returned to Constantinople, not unmindful of the vow by which he had bound himself before God and the blessed Martyr, built a church in honor of holy Mary the Virgin: for the work of whose fabric the offering of the victorious people was so devout and prompt that, a huge church being finished, and all things being accomplished [and he erects a temple to him and to the Mother of God, and sends gifts to Nidaros.] which were necessary for its adornment, much still remained of the money offered. And how devout the mind of all was in the service of the blessed Martyr, both in these and in many other tokens of benefits, this church in which he himself rests testifies by the splendor of the many precious things sent thence. Would that the emperor were designated by his express name, either here or in the Utrecht manuscript, in which the same matter is set forth, but shadowed in other colors! For there St. Olaf is set before the line of battle from heaven, as a crowned king, sitting upon a white horse, well armed, having in his hands a banner with a white cloth, and on one side having a red cross

with a crown folded as if of thorns, with all the arms of Christ, and on the other side the arms of the holy martyr Olaf; [who] and said to the emperor: "Follow me in the name of Jesus Christ and of St. Olaf; and you will obtain victory; for I am present, being called, etc." But to this manuscript, everywhere openly interpolated, there is scarcely a place where you may sufficiently trust in the circumstances of matters. What if we believe this miracle happened under the reign of Michael the Paphlagonian, while Harald, the brother of St. Olaf, was serving as a soldier? Certainly this seems to be said; unless you wish either that almost all the same things happened twice at Constantinople, or that false things are narrated of Harald by the Icelanders in Torfæus, part 3, book 4, chapter 10. Now the Paphlagonian is thought to have reigned from the year of Christ 1034 to 1041.

[6] A fire repressed; eyes healed. It happened at a certain time that the city in which the holy Martyr rests was violently set on fire. Whence, to protect the church itself, they set the body of the Martyr as a wall against the flames. Now a certain rather rash man approached, and began to beat the shrine of the Martyr, uttering threats, that the whole would be left together to the fire, unless he should show his accustomed benefit, and guard the church with the houses still unharmed by his prayers. But the church remained untouched; yet that man, seized the following night with a grave pain of the eyes, at last received health by prayers in the church of the holy Martyr. This we read only in the Nidaros Breviary; as also another which I subjoin thence.

[7] An innocent man hanged, the aid of St. Olaf being implored, A certain peasant, a simple and innocent man, was assailed by certain powerful men of that province in which he dwelt, not for the sake of justice, but of hatred, with a false charge of robbery, and, the trial being set aside, is dragged off denying it, and by the prejudice of his enemies is condemned to hanging. And when, anxious and wretched, he saw among a perverse people no place of justice when he pleaded, he despaired utterly of human aid. Whence he turned himself with his whole heart to the mercy of God; and more earnestly besought the blessed martyr Olaf, that he would come to his aid, innocent as he was, before God, by his prayers on behalf of justice, who many times mercifully delivers by his prayers the guilty from their due punishment. What more? Their iniquity came forth from fatness: without delay it passed into effect: they who were worthy of hanging hang the guiltless. But St. Olaf, the searcher of the law, takes pity on the pitiable; he was present to him as he cried, demanding justice for his innocence. Straightway therefore, as he was lifted from the ground, as if in a vision the holy martyr Olaf seemed to him to have placed a plank under his feet; leaning upon which, he remained unharmed for nearly nine hours; until his wife and sons should return from a certain noble, having obtained leave to take down the body and commit it to burial.

[8] he is kept safe. And when they labored to lift him down, his son climbed into the tree to which he hung fastened, which remained fixed high upon a certain promontory, and when the aforesaid youth, by creeping, reached its summit, with a brandished stroke he cut through the bond by which he was sustained. And while this was being done, the wretched body was hurled into such a precipice that it might rather be believed to be crushed limb from limb than that safety could be hoped for even in a living man. But neither the roughness of the fall nor the height of the crag could bring harm to him to whom the merit of the Martyr furnished aid on behalf of justice. He straightway, as if released from sleep, sat up, recalling the vision as though a dream. And when, the chill departing, vigor grew in his members, and, his spirit resumed, he gradually recovered; he hastened to the threshold of the holy Martyr, and set forth in order, to the praise of God, the matter done in his own person and approved by the testimony of many, to the archbishop of that place and the brethren (the canons of Nidaros). Thus far the praised Breviary, in that fragment which alone we were permitted to see in Torfæus; but here too he says that all the same things are enumerated as if of set purpose in the Flatey codex: and that not a few things are then added, which the Saint set forth both living and dead. Behold some specimens of each kind, which indeed seem to merit some credit.

[9] When the Saint led his army to Stiklastad, as was said above in the Commentary, §9, number 96, A horse suddenly healed: water changed into beer, mead, wine, on that very day (that codex records) the horse on which the King sat was made useless, its leg being dislocated; and when each one eagerly offered his own, he admitted none; declaring that he would either proceed on foot, or use the same mount: then, the foot being bandaged and it being turned loose into pleasant pastures while they refreshed themselves with food, when the meal was finished, he received it whole. And on the same day, when water was brought to him thirsty, but first consecrated by the bishop with the formula of blessing, he refused it, saying nay, and demanded beer for himself; and when it was brought again he likewise turned away from it, since it tasted of mead; at last a third time he protested that, since he had refused beer and mead on that day (being appointed for fasting), he would by no means indulge in wine. But then the bishop, the miracle being recognized, bade him enjoy the gift given divinely, and so he refreshed himself with a wholesome draught. So Torfæus, part 3, book 3, chapter 5, who nevertheless holds these things for fables, although they are much more credible than what he relates from the same codex in the same place, book 3, chapter 12, concerning Sigurd, devoted by a certain lamia of the race of the Trolls (understand giants and magicians, according to part 1, book 3, chapter 2) to dire curses, and restored by St. Olaf through a cross cut into his hand. Moreover, among the miracles of his lifetime may also be reckoned his various predictions, which the event showed to have been dictated by a prophetic spirit. Of these Torfæus gives examples, part 3, pages 173, 175, 181, 189.

[10] The same author also, in the place last cited, relates these things among the prodigies of the deceased from the same codex: speech restored to a man without a tongue; In the times of Eystein and Inge, kings of the Norwegians, who succeeded to the kingdom, their father Harald Gille being slain in the year 1036 (nay, 1136, as is more accurately noted below, book 9, chapters 5 and 6), together with a third brother Sigurd Broncho (not, however, all together), a certain man, by name Haldor, falling among the Wandals, was deprived of his tongue, which was drawn out through the part next to the gullet, pierced through, and cut off at its lowest roots; a vow being made to Olaf, he recovered, tongueless, the use of speech thenceforth as before: to him afterward, as long as he lived, he rendered service in the sacred temple. Snorri Sturluson mentions this miracle. To me indeed it seems the same as that which a little before Torfæus had given from the Nidaros Breviary; as also we from the Bodecensis manuscript, chapter 2, number 11; although there the Slavs, here the Wandals (for these are often found confused among the Northern authors, as is plain from the History of Norway, part 3, book 4, chapter 7) are said to have plucked out the tongue. But what he adds from the same place are new.

[11] certain other benefits. Moreover a woman dwelling at Nidaros, who, laboring with epilepsy every month, concealed the disease from her new and young husband, after she had invoked him (St. Olaf) together with the Blessed Virgin, and had offered a candle at his vigil, and had rightly performed the fasts enjoined by the priest, is handed down to have been delivered from that plague. A rock also in Telemark, when the citizens had consulted about building him a stone temple, and there were no stones of fitting softness, as soon as the mason had explored the quarry, the praised codex records was of its own accord split; whence the temple was built with slight labor. A boy also, in the province next to Nidaros, snatched away for two days by wandering, after vows had been made for him, appeared in that place where he had long been sought in vain. A man too, who had bound himself over to an evil demon, when he had been present at the ceremonies at the temple dedicated to him, he converted to true penitence. And these, says Torfæus, are the things which the Flatey codex records at length, brought here into a compendium.

[12] wounds suddenly healed by the Saint's belt. There are other marvels of his, scattered in more than one place in the History of Norway; whence I select especially those which displease less; such as those related first of all in part 3, book 4, chapter 7, from the Morkinskinna, which codex is an ancient Icelandic one, but here and there interpolated, as is said in the Preface of the aforesaid History. Of this Torfæus thus writes: For the same book hands down that, while Magnus (the Saint's son and king of Norway and Denmark) was leading an army to meet the Wandals (infesting Denmark about the year of Christ 1046), Ordulf (duke of Saxony, who had married Ulfhild, St. Olaf's daughter, Magnus's sister), returning home from a certain war, and wounded, was drinking in the palace with his courtiers, his wife Ulfhild sitting at his side; when suddenly a certain man, wearing a Danish cap, having entered, and standing a little while on the pavement, going out again, was seen by all: Ulfhild, being asked by the duke whether she knew the man, answered that from the mustache her Father seemed to be seen: perhaps Magnus, her brother, was in need of aid. But the duke, having promised that he would succor him with all the forces which he had brought back from the war, presently gave order to the tribunes of the soldiers that each should lead out his own cohorts. But she, interposing, asked that she might be allowed to have her wounds bound; that he would be too weak, unless God, and her Father, should heal him. Then, the belt of her Father (St. Olaf) being applied, straightway the pain vanished. The duke then, hastily setting out to meet Magnus, etc.

[13] He appears to his son, and pledges victory: There is then narrated the victory of Magnus over the Wandals, far superior in number, promised by St. Olaf, appearing both to him and to a certain peasant, and confirmed by heavenly signs; but because the matter is there drawn out at greater length, I prefer to describe it more briefly from chapter 24 of the History of Theodoric of Nidaros. "The Wandals," he says, "… then … were carried in incredible multitude into Dacia, covering the face of the earth like locusts. Seeing which, King Magnus was dismayed in mind: for he had neither time to gather a (larger) army, nor did he think it safe to fight with few against so great a multitude; and it seemed intolerable that the region should be laid waste in his presence. In this anguish of mind, therefore, set upon the king, it is related that the following night blessed Olaf, his father, appeared to him, and admonished him to place his hope in God; that it was easy for Him to give victory no less with few than with many: that he ought on the morrow to proceed to battle; that by God's mercy victory would not be wanting. Comforted therefore by this vision, King Magnus on the morrow manfully proceeded to battle, following the banner which had been his Father's; holding in his hand the battle-axe of the same, which was there broken, and is now preserved in the church of Nidaros. He therefore rushed Major upon the enemy; laid low very many, and, God helping, put the rest shamefully to flight. This battle was fought in the place which is called Luirscogs Heithr, in Jutland." See Torfæus at the cited place, and Saxo Grammaticus toward the end of the tenth book, and others.

[14] When Harald, the brother of the holy King and Martyr, had long served in the Constantinopolitan empire, he frees his brother from prison: at last, accused of a grave crime, he is cast into prison with two servants; and then, as Torfæus narrates from his monuments, part 3, book 4, chapter 11, it is related that, as he was being led through the streets thither, his brother St. Olaf appeared to him, and of his liberation

had given hope. But that same night a certain wealthy widow, accompanied by two servants, having gone up by ladders to the top (of a very high prison, but open above), let down a rope to the bottom, and drew out each one from the penal cells; and this at the prompting of St. Olaf, whom it is said she had first healed when he was sick, but then, through a dream, had demanded in place of a fee that she should come to the aid of her endangered brother, and had indicated the place of the prison. Then somewhat below it is added: "In that square (namely at Constantinople) where St. Olaf appeared to Harald, when he was being led to prison, a chapel was built in his honor, which flourished in the times of these authors, and the name remained to that day to the prison from Harald thenceforth." These things seem wondrous indeed, yet less fabulous than what either Saxo Grammaticus or others cited in the same place narrate concerning Harald's Constantinopolitan prison and his marvelous escape.

[15] He is also said to have recalled his great son, who by a most prosperous course of victories was now making the greatest hope of himself, he foretells a happy death to his son: from temporal cares to the contemplation of heavenly things and the preparation for death, in the same place, chapter 15: "For he saw through a dream his father St. Olaf standing by him, bidding him choose: whether he would rather go with him at once, or escape as the most powerful of kings, and prolong his age to old age; yet on this condition, that he commit a crime, of which either the pardon must be despaired of, or seemed hard to be obtained. And he seemed to himself to have offered the choice to his Father; but he bade him go with him." Nor did he long survive, it is there narrated: although concerning his death the opinion of others is not the same, as one may read there and especially in the following chapter, where you will also find his memory commended with wondrous eulogies, nay even with miracles. The Norwegians will have him to have died on the 25th of October, in the year 1047, in the twenty-third year of his age, about the twelfth of his Norwegian reign, the fifth of both his Danish and Norwegian. Consult Theodoric of Nidaros, chapter 27.

[16] He heals a cripple at London. To the miracle which we related above concerning Guttorm, another is connected in the Kringla, as Torfæus testifies in the same place, book 5, chapter 4; "nor do I know," he says, "whether it is to be referred to these times." For he relates that a certain cripple in Gaul, creeping on his knees and fists, because his fingers were twisted into his palm, sleeping in the open air on a certain road, dreamed that a certain noble man approached him, who asked whither he was tending. When he declared the town whither he had purposed to go, he admonished him to visit the temple sacred to Olaf at London. Awakened, and about to obey the admonitions, he sought London; and being carried to the bridge, he inquired where the temple of Olaf was. Receiving the answer that there were many temples there, and that it was not clear to him to which each was consecrated; a little afterward a certain man approached him, asking whither he was going. When he learned that the temple of Olaf was sought, he bade him follow him as guide: for he knew the way that led thither. And the bridge being crossed, and the street adjoining the temple passed, when he had come to the gate, following with difficulty the guide as he entered, and when he had cast himself over the threshold, suddenly he walked whole without hindrance; but the guide vanished. I pass over the other prodigies, because from their fabulous circumstances they seem either wholly fabricated, or at least incredible; as also what Olaus Magnus relates in the History of the Northern Peoples, book 2, chapter 15, concerning giants changed by him into stone statues.

* perhaps "too much"

* read Magnus