Gripla - 20.12.2010, Side 21

21THE FORGOTTEN POEM
Records of a Vita et miracula Sancti Thorlaci episcopi et confessoris have
survived in four sets of fragments, the most important of which is
AM 386 4to I, consisting of three separate parchment leaves (evidently
reused in a book binding), containing text from the original vita and Latin
miracula, and dated by Kristian Kålund to ca. 1200 on paleographic evi-
dence. Three other Latin fragments have survived (LatII, LatIII and
LatIV), which contain a compendium from the saint’s vita and lectiones for
his feast days, some of which have also been rescued from 16th-century
book bindings, while the last one derives from a printed Norwegian brevi-
ary. At least one copy of the Vita et miracula St. Thorlaci existed as late as
1397 in the church at Melar in Melasveit (DI IV, 193), and there may have
been at the same time another, including legends, in the church at Hólmur
on Rosmhvalanes (DI IV, 105). Since even the Latin vita is referred to in
the church inventories as “Þolláks saga”, or some such, it cannot be dis-
missed out of hand that further copies existed at this time or later.
Furthermore, a Latin office for St Þorlákr, dated to the 14th century by
Róbert Abraham Ottósson, survives in the manuscript AM 241 A II fol.7
The composition of this office marks an important event in the history of
St Þorlákr’s cultus. Finally, we possess an Old Norse-Icelandic translation
or adaptation of St Þorlákr’s vita, which is extant in several versions
(marked ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’ in modern editions). Like all saints’ lives in the
West, Þorlákr’s vita was originally composed in Latin, although an older
generation of Old Norse scholars has sometimes been reluctant to acknow-
ledge as much. Recently, comparison of the second Latin fragment
(AM 386 4to II), a compendium of Þorlákr’s vita, with the three vernacular
versions has established that the vernacular texts, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, derive from
the Latin vita.8 The observation redefines the relationships of the vernacu-
lar texts to the Latin vita as that of translations and adaptations to an
original text. The vitiated state of the vernacular texts, which occasionally
mistranslate or alter the sense of the Latin original, indicates, furthermore,
that they were not made by the author of the Latin text or his collabora-
tors. The Old Norse-Icelandic versions were, therefore, written later and
not in the same clerical milieu as the Latin source, which originated in
7 Róbert Abraham Ottósson, ed., Sancti Thorlaci Episcopi Officia Rhythmica et Proprium Missæ
in AM 241 A fol (Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard, 1959), 68–74.
8 Gottskálk Jensson, “The Lost Latin Literature of Medieval Iceland,” 158–163.