Eirik Ivarsson

Eirik Ivarsson († 1213 ) was the third Archbishop of Norway .

He came from a noble family. His father was Ivar Kalfsson , Bishop of Nidaros in the 1240s . He had studied at the monastery of St. Victor in Paris , so he had received his education from the leading figures of the Gregorian reform movement of the time. With these ideas he came back to Norway and in 1171 became Bishop of Stavanger .

In 1188 he was elected Archbishop of Nidaros. His election violated on several points the electoral regulations that had been drawn up in 1153 when the archbishopric was founded. The election had not taken place in Nidaros, and he had already been chosen by his predecessor Øystein Erlendsson . But King Sverre opposed his election mainly because he was a supporter of the Gregorian reform movement. Eirik went to Rome to get the pallium from the Pope and stayed on the road for a year. According to a letter in the Lateran of January 28, 1189, where he is already titled Archbishop, he had received the pallium before this date.

The first thing Eirik did after returning to Nidaros was to convene an imperial synod. On the occasion he also wanted to ordain new bishops for Stavanger and Hamar . Four bishops , many abbots and even more priests came together at the synod . This synod passed a statute with threats of excommunication for various widespread crimes: breaking the peace of the church, assault in the church or in the cemetery, violence against women, mistreatment against priests or monks. Men with religious orders were also forbidden from holding secular offices.

King Sverre was the victorious leader of the Birkebeiner at the beginning of the civil war and at that time he was already the sole ruler of Norway. Sverre therefore wanted to be crowned in the autumn of 1189. But there was a serious conflict on this issue. Because the church stood by King Magnus , whom he had defeated and who had been anointed king by it, and thought Sverre was only an anti-king. Sverre derived his kingship directly from God. The church did that too, but he went beyond that and in his pamphlet Entale mot biskopene (A speech against the bishops), which he had written by a learned clergyman, derived from God the supremacy of the king over the church. The archbishop refused the church coronation without the consent of the Pope. After a long dispute, Archbishop Eirik had to leave the country in 1190, he found refuge with the Danish Archbishop Absalon von Lund . His entire property was confiscated from the king. So Eirik turned to the Pope. Suddenly Norway no longer had an archbishop. The Norwegian people were upset about this.

The Augustinian monastery Æbelholt had existed in Denmark since the 1860s and its abbot Wilhelm was a pioneer of the Gregorian reform movement. Archbishop Absalon had the abbot provide support from the archbishop, who provided him with a secretary. Because Eirik had gone blind after his trip to Denmark.

Pope Celestine III confirmed in a bull of June 15, 1194 the most important privileges of the Archdiocese of Nidaros and in particular the protective provisions reinforced with the threat of ban, which Pope Anastasius IV had already issued for Nidaros in his founding bull . This meant that King Sverre from now on the excommunication had fallen. When Eirik received the papal letter, he had it read out publicly in the cathedral church in Lund and pronounced the ban on King Sverre at every Sunday service. Nevertheless, Bishop Nikolas of Oslo anointed King Sverre in church on June 29, 1194. The bishops who were present at the coronation were also banned by the Pope in November.

On October 6, 1198, the Pope sent a letter to the Norwegian bishops and the clergy, in which he ordered them to exhort the Norwegian people to cease to obey the banished king. The bishops should banish the supporters of Sveres and all churches should be closed. In the part of the country that was on Sverre's side, no more religious acts were to be carried out, except baptism and the giving of the sacraments; and if followers of Sverre died, they should be denied an ecclesiastical burial. However, this papal directive has probably not been implemented. According to the Sverres saga , a comparison with the church is said to have come about in the summer of 1202.

Because Eirik had grown old and blind, he decided in the winter of 1204/1205 to resign as archbishop and had the canon of Hallvard's Church in Oslo, Tore , elected as his successor against his reluctance. Eirik lived for a few years after his resignation and did not die until 1213.

Web links

• Olav Martinsen: Eirik Ivarsson (1188-1213). Den katolske kirke, December 21, 1996, accessed July 15, 2016 (Norwegian). 

predecessor	Office	successor
Øystein Erlendsson	Archbishop of Nidaros 1188 - 1205	Tore Gudmundsson