Gripla - 20.12.2010, Page 22

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1199, when St Þorlákr’s miracula were read at the Alþingi and Latin
lec tiones and a complete Latin liturgy were necessary for the new Mass of
St Þorlákr.9
The earliest remains of a vernacular Þorláks saga helga are found in
AM 645 4to, dated to around 1220, which is among the very earliest exis-
tent Icelandic manuscripts.10 It contains several acta and passiones of apos-
tles, confessors and holy men, translated from Latin (into a Latinate,
almost macaronic Old Norse-Icelandic, which was purged by C. R. Unger
in his editions), beginning with “Miracula nonnulla S. Thorlaci, aptanaf
þorlaks Sǫgu” [Some miracles from the end of a Þorláks saga], as Árni
Magnússon wrote in one of his notes.11 Interestingly, this oldest vernacular
9 Jakob Benediktsson, “Brot úr Þorlákslesi,” Afmælisrit Jóns Helgasonar, eds. Jakob Bene-
diktsson et al. (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1969), 106; Gottskálk Jensson, “The Lost Latin
Literature of Medieval Iceland,” 150–168; Gottskálk Jensson, “Nokkrar athuga semdir,”
97–109.
10 For the date of AM 645 4to, see Harald Spehr, Der Ursprung der isländischen Schrift und
ihre Weiterbildung bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1929), 174, and
Hreinn Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script as Illustrated in Vernacular Texts from the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Centuries (Reykjavík: Manuscript Institute of Iceland, 1965), xx. Two other
fragments of the vernacular saga have been dated to the 13th century, AM 383 4to I, from
around 1250, and AM 383 4to II, from the end of the century. Neither falls neatly within the
so-called ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C-redactions’, and so they have been dubbed ‘D’ and ‘E’ respectively. D is
printed in Guðbrandur Vigfússon, ed., Biskupa sögur I (Copenhagen: S. L. Möller, 1858), 391–
94. Variants from D are indicated in Jón Helgason, ed., Byskupa s†gur, vol. 2 (Copenhagen:
C. A. Reitzels Boghandel A/S, 1978), 214–217, while E is printed in Guðbrandur Vigfússon,
Biskupa sögur I, 322–26 and Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ed., Biskupa sögur II (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka
fornritafélag, 2002), 287–294. D has a section of Chapters 11–12 and E miracles which
overlap with miracles in AM 645 4to and the A, B and C-redactions.
11 The beginning of AM 645 4to is defective and the fragment of Þorláks saga preserved here
first opens well into a collection of St Þorlákr’s miracles, which have, misleadingly, been
treated as an independent Jarteinabók on the evidence that it is stated towards the end (28)
that Bishop Páll Jónsson had these miracles read at the Alþingi (“þær er hér eru skrifaðar
á þessi bók” [those which are written in this book]), clearly referring to AM 645 4to. The
point of this statement is not, however, that it was specifically this written version of the
miracles, which was read at the Alþingi (since the scribe of the manuscript knew that this
was not so and adds miracles occurring after the event), or that what was read was an
independent book of miracles. The same miracles are also found at the end of the B and C
redactions of the saga, along with the reference to the reading at the Alþingi. Independent
miracle collections are not attested in the tradition, and the saga almost certainly preceded
the miracles in AM 645 4to, as is indicated in one of the miracles (22, “þann vetr eptir er
heilagr dómr ens sæla byskups hafði verit upp tekinn ór j†rðu áðr [of] sumarit ok nú hefir
áðr verit mj†k mart frá sagt” [the winter after the holy relics of the blessed bishop had
been translated from the grave, in the summer before, of which much has now been told]).