Gripla

						256                                                       GRIPLA

liturgy,20 and with this prayer orientation the Christ symbolism of sol

iustitiae and sol salutis21 naturally aligned itself through exegesis. Hon-

orius Augustodunensis, a popular exegete in the northern Church,22

summed up the threefold reason for praying to the East in his Gemma

Animae I, 95123

Una [sc, causa] est, quia in Oriente est patria nostra, scilicet

paradisus, unde expulsos nos dolemus. Orantes ergo contra

paradisum nos vertimus, quia reditum illius petimus. Alia est,

quia in Oriente surgit corpus coeli et lux diei. Ad Orientam

itaque nos vertimus, quia Christum, qui est oriens et lux vera,

nos adorare significamus, cujus debemus esse coeli, ut eius lux

in nobis velit oriri. Tertius [sic] est, quia in Oriente, sol oritur,

per quem Christus sol iustitiae exprimitur. Ab hoc promissum

habemus, quod in resurrectione ut sol fulgeamus. In oratione er-

go contra ortum solis vertimus nos, ut solem angelorum nos ad-

orare intelligamus, et ut ad memoriam nostrae gloriam resurrec-

tionis revocemus, cum solem, quem in Occidente quasi mori

conspeximus, tanta gloria resurgere in Oriente videmus.

To this syncretic complex of beliefs one ought to add the Church prac-

tice of facing the dying to the East, which in Antiquity was coeval with

praying to the East.24

Now, if with Björn M. Ólsen25 one reads stanzas 39-45 of Sólarljóð

as a description, pure and simple, of the sun setting in the western

ocean, stanza 41 will be discrepant from the Christianized solar myth

'Quod fieri [i.e., bowing to the rising sun] partim ignorantiae vitio, partim paganitatis

spiritu, multum tabescimus et dolemus.'

Sol salutis, p. 256, with reference to Alcuin's De Fide Sanctae et Individuae Trin-

itatis I, ii, 5, and Walafrid Strabo's Liber de Exordiis et Incrementis Quarundam in Ob-

servationibus Ecclesiasticis Rerum 4.

As in two hymns quoted in Sol salutis, p. 381, the older of which may date to the

sixth century.

On his Scandinavian influence, see Paul Lehmann, Skandinaviens Anteil an der

lateinischen Literatur und Wissenschaft des Mittelalters II in Sitzsb. d. Bay. Ak. d. Wis-

sen., Phil.-hist. Abt. H.7, Munich 1937, p. 19, and Gabriel Turville-Petre, Origins of

Icelandic Literature, Oxford 1975, pp. 137-38.

23   MPL CLXXII, col. 575B, quoted by Dölger, p. 257.

24   Sol salutis, p. 260.

25    Sljð. II, pp. 41-44.