JON RAUDE, ARCHBISHOP OF NIDAROS - 21 DECEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 21st of December

WELCOME!

JON RAUDE, ARCHBISHOP OF NIDAROS

Jon Raude "the Steadfast" (Jón Raudi) became Archbishop of Nidaros in October 1267. He first appears in literary sources in 1253 as a canon in the cathedral chapter of Nidaros. He visited Rome in 1266, when he was tasked by Pope Clement IV with delivering the pallium to the recently appointed Archbishop Hakon of Nidaros. Hakon died just a year later, and the chapter elected Raude to succeed him. The Pope consented, and Raude was consecrated on December 21, 1268 in Viterbo.

Upon his accession to the Archbishopric, Raude was confronted with King Magnus VI's attempts to unify the Norwegian law code, which the King intended to apply to the entire realm. Magnus had secured the approval of his law codes by the ruling councils (Things), but the Archbishop of Nidaros opposed it, because only the church itself can regulate church law. Therefore the King had to accept that the royal revisions of the Law would only apply to secular law.

Raude began to develop a new Norwegian church law shortly afterward, and in this effort he collaborated with Bishop Árni Þorláksson of Skálholt in Iceland. The new law was based on Canon law, but also partially modeled after King Magnus' laws and an earlier edition of the Frostathing Law written by Archbishop Eysteinn Erlendsson. The draft of the new church law was finished in 1273. The negotiations for the new church law were finished in 1273, and the King gave his approval at the Concord of Bergen. After Papal confirmation of the Concord was obtained, the privileges were finally confirmed at the Concord of Tønsberg (Sættargjerden in Tønsberg) on August 9, 1277. Archbishop Raude attended the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, where he was tasked with collecting a new tax from his diocese to finance a planned crusade.

King Magnus died in May 1280 and was succeeded by his son Eric II, who was still a minor. Archbishop Raude crowned the young King in the Christ Church in Bergen in the Summer of 1280. He simultaneously called a provincial council, the first known assembly of its kind in Norway. Shortly after, he formulated a statute that defined the church as both a temporal and spiritual power and stated its rights and privileges. In 1281 he crowned King Eric's wife, Margaret of Scotland, as Queen of Norway. Jon remained Archbishop until he went to his eternal reward on December 21, 1282.

Further reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Raude