Saint Magnus of Orkney

His story comes down chiefly through the Orkneyinga saga, the history of the earls of Orkney, which the page of the Catholic Church in Orkney quotes, and Paolo Gulisano, writing for santiebeati.it, mentions that the saga tradition carries it. ²⁵ The parish page is frank about the saga's limits: some of its best-known episodes may have been added later "to emphasise Magnus's piety," and its date for his death is wrong. ⁵ What follows gives each account as its source tells it.

In the second half of the eleventh century the earldom of Orkney was shared between twin brothers, Paul and Erlend. ²⁵ Magnus was Erlend's eldest son, and his cousin Hakon was Paul's son. ⁵ Fabio Arduino dates his birth to about 1075 and says that he seems to have been a pirate before his conversion. ² The earls of Orkney, Oswald Hunter-Blair writes in the Catholic Encyclopedia, were "nominally under the Kings of Norway" but "practically independent." ³

In 1098, the parish page says, King Magnus Barelegs of Norway arrived in Orkney, removed both earls and took them to Norway, where both died that winter, and set off raiding with Hakon and the eighteen-year-old Magnus aboard. ⁵ Arduino says instead that it was the exiled Hakon who persuaded the Norwegian king to move against Orkney. ²

The raiders reached Anglesey, where the Norwegian fleet fought the English and the Welsh. ²⁵ Arduino says Magnus refused to fight men who had done him no wrong, was held prisoner on one of the ships, and escaped to Scotland, where he began a life of prayer and penance. ² The parish page tells it from the saga: he stayed on the ship singing psalms, angering the king, and later escaped, swam to the Scottish shore and stayed out of sight until King Magnus died in Ireland in 1102. ⁵ It adds that historians doubt the episode, since Magnus is absent from other accounts of the raid. ⁵

The Martyrology keeps a version of it in a phrase. Magnus, it says, embraced the Christian faith, and was rejected by the king of Norway for protesting against the arrogance of his people. ¹

By the time he returned, the parish page says, Hakon held the earldom, and Magnus was granted a share of it by the Norwegian crown. ⁵ The two governed together from 1105 to 1114 in what it calls a golden age. ⁵ It quotes the saga's portrait of him as "a man of extraordinary distinction, tall, with a fine, intelligent look about him," "a man of strict virtue, successful in war, wise, eloquent, generous and magnanimous." ⁵

Then the cousins fell out. The saga does not say why, the parish page notes, only that men of "evil disposition" sowed discord between them. ⁵ Arduino says Hakon tried to take the islands for himself and Magnus led an army against him, after which they lived for a time under an uneasy truce. ² A battle was averted, and the two agreed to meet on Egilsay at Easter, each with two ships and an equal number of men. ⁵

Magnus came with the agreed number. ⁵ Hakon came with eight warships. ⁵ The Martyrology says simply that he was killed by wicked treachery while going unarmed to treat for peace with the cousin who was his rival for the island. ¹ Hunter-Blair says he "was treacherously killed by his cousin Haco about 1115." ³

The parish page follows the saga through the end. Magnus offered to go on pilgrimage and never come back, or to be imprisoned in Scotland, or to be maimed or blinded; the chieftains insisted that one earl must die. ⁵ Hakon's standard-bearer, Ofeig, refused to kill him, and Hakon ordered his cook, Lifolf, who wept. ⁵ The saga gives Magnus's words to him: "Be not afraid, for you do this against your will and he who forces you sins more than you do." ⁵ He asked to be struck on the head and not beheaded "like thieves," and said, "I have prayed to God for thee, that He be merciful unto thee." ⁵

Arduino, writing more briefly, says Magnus refused to defend himself and died praying for his killers, and that this is why he was venerated as a martyr. ² The parish page gives the year as 1115, 1116, 1117 or 1118, and Arduino as 1116. ²⁵

Hakon at first refused him Christian burial, the parish page says, until Magnus's mother, Thora, pleaded with him, and the body was taken to Christchurch at Birsay. ⁵ Arduino too says he was first buried at Christ Church, Birsay. ² Hunter-Blair says his sanctity "was said to be attested by miracles soon after his death." ³ The parish page tells how Bishop William the Old of Orkney opposed the cult at first and became convinced after he was struck blind and cured at the grave, and how, about 1135, the bishop had the remains exhumed, washed and tested in consecrated fire, and declared Magnus a saint. ⁵

His nephew Rögnvald, Hunter-Blair writes, promised that if he won back the islands he would build a stone minster at Kirkwall in his uncle's memory. ³ He did, and the church of Saint Magnus, begun in 1137, became the cathedral of the see of Orkney, a suffragan of Trondheim. ³ Pius Wittman calls it "the great monumental, architectural work of the whole archipelago," surpassed only slightly by the cathedral of Trondheim. ⁴ Arduino says the relics were translated there in 1136; the parish page says they rested first in Saint Olaf's church and were brought into the new cathedral about 1150. ²⁵

The parish page says the shrine was dismantled after 1560 and the bones were presumed destroyed, until a box holding a skull and bones was found in the cathedral in March 1919. ⁵ The skull bore clear signs of injury, believed to be his death wound, the remains were identified as his, and they were put back in the cathedral, where they remain. ²⁵ The same page says that on July 11, 1898, Leo XIII confirmed his cult. ⁵ Arduino says his cult spread through Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. ²

Santiebeati.it names Saint Magnus patron of the Orkney Islands in its summary and of Norway in its list of patronages. ² No other source consulted names a patronage, and neither is among the concepts this library uses for its filter, so both are given here as santiebeati.it gives them.

Saint Magnus's feast is April 16, the day he was killed. ¹⁵ The current Roman Martyrology lists him that day as a martyr in Scotland, and santiebeati.it keeps him there too. ¹²

He belonged to a warrior family, and most of what the sources say he did was political: a share of an earldom, a rivalry, an army, a truce. ²⁵ He is a saint for how it ended.

He went to a peace meeting on the agreed terms, and the other side did not keep them. ¹⁵ The Martyrology does not soften it; it calls it wicked treachery. ¹

At the end, by the saga's account, he was not concerned with himself. He offered exile, prison or blinding, and when none was taken he spent his last words on the man ordered to kill him. ⁵

The cathedral built for him still stands at Kirkwall, and the bones found in it in 1919 carry the wound. ³⁵