Good news at the end of the earth. Proposed date of commemoration: August 30.
Earthquake. Volcanic eruptions. Pestilence. Famine. It could have been the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, but actually it was just Iceland at the turn of the eighteenth century.
It’s not as though Iceland has a mild or pleasant climate to begin with, but in the late 1600s and early 1700s it was worse than usual, with the result that nine thousand Icelanders starved to death between 1695 and 1702. Winter fishing claimed many men’s lives annually as well, and the unusually rough weather only increased the death toll. A smallpox epidemic in 1707 killed off a third of the population. Deforestation meant not enough firewood to heat through the brutal winters, and poor sanitation made the long enforced stay indoors that much unhealthier.
As if that weren’t bad enough, what little wealth the island did have was concentrated in the hands of a few. Landowners set exorbitant rents that peasants could never pay, leading to spiralling debt. The Danish crown imposed a trade monopoly on behalf of one of its own companies and heavily penalized those who took their business elsewhere.
Into this harsh environment Jón Vídalín was born in 1666. His father was a pastor, theologian, writer, and physician; his maternal grandfather had been murdered by the same Algerian pirates that kidnapped Hallgrímur Pétursson’s wife-to-be. Despite the extreme and unpromising circumstances, his family was determined that Jón would get a good education. He started on Latin when he was seven, and upon his father’s death, when Jón was only eleven, relatives took the boy in so he could stay in school. He was sixteen when he graduated from the diocesan school in Skálholt, the spiritual center of the nation. Taking a break from his studies, Jón took to the sea, joining the winter forays of fishermen and learning first-hand the dangers of that line of work.
Nevertheless, the call to minister the word of God was strongly at work within the young man, and already at the age of nineteen he was issued a preaching license. At the age of twenty-one he went with his brother to Denmark to study theology, as all aspiring Icelandic pastors did in those days. He earned his keep by working with a cataloguer of old Icelandic manuscripts, giving him an in-depth acquaintance with the majestic language of the sagas. In two short years he earned his degree with high honors, but instead of returning home after school he took to the sea once more, enlisting in the Danish navy this time. It was not a success: in another two years’ time he had to be bought out of his commission by compassionate relatives. He came home penniless. The only thing for it was to return to his studies, this time in Hebrew.
In 1691 he finally landed on a successful vocation, being ordained and called to serve at the cathedral in Skálholt. In due course he was called to his father’s home parish in Gardar, but not long afterward, in 1698, he was consecrated bishop of Skálholt at the tender age of thirty-two, an office he held until his death. In the same year as his consecration he received an honorary master’s degree from the University of Copenhagen, earning him the affectionate local nickname “Magister Jón,” which stuck with him the rest of his life.
After becoming a bishop Jón quickly became a husband, marrying Sigrídur Jónsdóttir in 1699. They were a happy match, despite the heartache of their only two children both dying young, one stillborn and the other little daughter stricken in the smallpox epidemic. As a contemporary approvingly wrote, “Sigrídur, his wife and mistress of his house, was an intelligent person, loyal, upright and conscientious toward others, humble, good at delegating work, and benevolent, especially toward her friends and neighbors.”
Jón was a much greater success as a bishop than as a fisherman or naval officer. The same contemporary wrote glowingly of him: “Magister Jón Vídalín was a man of distinction in his appearance, stature and personality, and handsome to boot. He was extremely knowledgeable in Latin, Greek, and other foreign languages; a master in most areas of literary scholarship; and one of the most skillful composers of Latin verse in the country. His diction was clear and unaffected; as a preacher he held the attention of all, and his sermons were very well thought out. Excellent and highly talented though he was as a speaker, still he always worked hard at his sermons, and insisted that others should do the same… No needy person who turned to him for help was ever rebuffed, even if there had formerly been unpleasantness between them. With his friends and acquaintances he was calm and cheerful; to the general public he was responsive and unassuming; with the arrogant and those who intended to do him some mischief he was high-spirited and impassioned. His mood hardly every varied except under the influence of strong drink.” Susceptibility to mood change under the influence is no doubt a widespread characteristic, not unique to Jón, but his periodic indulgence did have an unhappy impact on his life. In one case, his long-standing nemesis, one Oddur Sigurdsson, dropped by; the two men got drunk and Oddur tried to attack Jón, failing only because of the intervention of others. The bishop pressed charges and the result was a long, drawn-out court case resolved only by Jón’s death.
He is better remembered, though, for his constructive contributions to Icelandic church and society. Bishops at that time had to supervise schools and farms as well as the church. Jón’s own holdings went from poverty to affluence through good management, and he disposed of his abundance generously. One story tells of how, when Skálholt was short on fish, he sent a message asking a farmer on a western island to send as much fish as he could—and to name his own price! Jón encouraged the immigration of Norwegian fishermen to improve Icelandic fishing techniques and expressed alarm at rapid deforestation of the country, showing a prescient concern for ecological matters.
But it was certainly the church that absorbed most of his time. He made a full tour of his diocese once every three years, examining the state of the pastoral ministry and maintaining church discipline, speaking out against misbehavior in worship, commending fasting and prayer, and condemning the abandonment of corpses without proper burial. He helped young pastors work on their sermons and petitioned for pensions for pastors’ widows. A new church law established in 1635 required pastors to make sure that every child committed Luther’s Small Catechism to memory; Jón took it one step further and paid house calls as well to be sure that parents were training their children in the faith. It was by no means assumed that religious instruction was solely the preserve of the ordained. Rather, it was every Christian’s duty and calling. And to strengthen the whole people of God in this ministry, Jón penned his most famous work, the Húspostilla or house postil.
The postil is an ancient Christian genre: a collection of sermons to be used either as a model for apprentice preachers still learning their craft or, in Jón’s case, as a household devotional resource. Jón’s collection of seventy-six sermons for all the Sundays of the year plus twenty-four holidays became one of the two standbys in the long Icelandic tradition of house church, alongside Hallgrímur Pétursson’s Passion Hymns. It went through eleven editions from 1718 to 1838, and within a century of its publication 90% of all Icelandic households had a copy of the Húspostilla, even those that couldn’t yet afford a Bible!
The postil begins with the affectionate dedication: “To my most dear mother, the Christian Church in Iceland, the bride of Jesus Christ bought by Him at great cost, I wish peace and joy in her Bridegroom.” The book was published in two parts: a “winter part” that covered the Sundays from the First of Advent to Pentecost, and a “summer part” from Trinity Sunday to the end of the church year. Nearly all the sermons are based on the Gospel lesson appointed for the day, but they generously draw their insights from all over the canon of Scripture. Each sermon averages about eighty biblical references from both Testaments.
One striking characteristic of Jón’s house postil is his vivid, disturbing depictions of sinners—sharp words for a harsh society. Repentance was a note rung again and again. But such warnings were always enveloped in the extraordinary love of God for sinners shown on the cross. Jón’s passion was to form a new community among his people, for the gospel had to take effect and blossom even if nothing else in Iceland would. As he wrote in his sermon for the first Sunday in Advent: “‘Behold, the Lord proclaims unto the end of the earth: say to the daughter of Zion, “See, your salvation is coming”’ (Isaiah 62:11). And so, my children, because we too who dwell at the ends of the earth have heard this proclamation, and because this salvation has been preached to us as well as to other nations, let us use today’s holy gospel to meditate upon what sort of persons the subjects of this King ought to be.”
And he didn’t hesitate to give plain instructions, naming sins for what they were and pointing his flock in a more godly direction. “If someone is dull, sickly, ugly, or has a speech impediment or other natural handicap that he cannot help, there will never be wanting senseless people who will shamelessly ridicule him. Look here, sinful man! Is your neighbor poor? Tell me, in what respect are you any richer? He may be short on the possessions that moth and rust can corrupt; but you are short on the knowledge of God and of yourself. He may be deformed and not very handsome; but do you dare to brand that as ugly which God has formed? Examine your own inner nature, if you can; and consider how the devil has so deformed your soul that you are unable to look on God’s creatures rightly. Suppose he is dull and does not know how to behave. Are you any more intelligent, since your self-conceit and disparagement of him put you as much ahead of him in ignorance as a madman is worse off than a fool?”
Jón came to be deeply loved and long remembered by the Icelandic people, despite his raw words, because he lived as he preached. His faith was palpable, passionate, and contagious. Once somebody challenged him on the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. His response was to consecrate the bread and wine then and there, and the overawed doubter testified to seeing Christ’s own blood and flesh in their place!
With such a demanding ministry, it is little surprise that Jón died relatively young at the age of fifty-four. He was on his way to preach at his brother-in-law’s funeral when severe chest pains forced him to a halt. He found his way to an emergency shelter but couldn’t travel onward and started hallucinating. His pastoral companion offered him a final holy communion but he declined, fearing he was not worthy to receive it with his mind in such a mess. Nevertheless, he told his friend not to worry: “God’s arms of mercy are continually outstretched toward me, and the doors of His grace are open to receive my soul.”
For Further Reading
The only work on Vídalín available in English is Michael Fell’s translation of about half of the postil, with an extended introduction: Whom Wind and Waves Obey: Selected Sermons of Bishop Jón Vídalín (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). In fact, this is the only translation of Vídalín into any other language at all! Jón also published two collections of Lenten sermons and a compendium of doctrine and translated a number of works into Icelandic.