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general sentences about the poem in addition to their transcriptions. The
editio princeps belongs to Jakob Langebek and P. F. Suhm, who published
the poem in 1776 towards the end of volume 4 of the multivolume, monu-
mental Scriptores rerum Danicarum medii aevi (1772–1878), only seventy-four
years after Árni Magnússon received the manuscript AM 382 4to.44 Suhm
refers to the poem as “Carmen latinum in honorem hujus sancti manu Arnæ
Magnæi descriptum inter ejus Mss. No. 382 4to.” [A Latin poem in praise
of this saint, copied by the hand of Árni Magnússon, (is found) among his
manuscripts, No. 382 4to.].45 This note shows that Árni Magnússon him-
self had already produced a transcription of the Latin poem, and that the
first edition in Scriptores rerum Danicarum medii aevi is based on Árni
Magnússon’s apograph, although the editors may be responsible for both
the emendations and conjectures.46 Secondly, the manuscript JS 537 4to
contains a transcription of the poem by Jón Sigurðsson, one of the editors
of the 1858 edition of the Biskupa sögur. The manuscript must be younger
than the edition, since a marginal note on folio 5r, on which the poem is
preserved, refers to footnotes 2-4 on page 263 of the edition. Jón
Sigurðsson’s transcription is almost identical with and clearly based on
44 Jakob Langebek and P. F. Suhm, eds., Scriptores rerum Danicarum medii aevi, partim hactenus
inediti, vol. 4 (Copenhagen: A. H. Godiche, 1776), 631. This part of the fourth volume
was published after Langebek’s death in 1775. Suhm mentions in the preface that before
Langebek died he had finished the work to page 525, from where he himself had continued
the edition, based on Langebek’s extensive notes. Suhm added the notes and introductions
in the later part of the volume, which includes the edition of the Latin fragments on St.
Þorlákr. – See Dansk biographisk lexikon, vol. 10 (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels
Forlag (F. Hegel & Søn), 1896), 57 et seq. and Langebek and Suhm, Scriptores rerum
Danicarum medii aevi, a2r, 623–624.
45 Ibid., 624.
46 Árni Magnússon’s transcription is not preserved in any of his notes. Langebek and Suhm
both sat in the first Arnamagnæan commission and thus had ready access to the collection.
It is possible that Langebek was not able to return Árni’s notes to the collection before
his own death. If this is the case, Árni Magnússon’s apographum may still be preserved
amongst Langebek’s notes. The authors of this article attempted to determine whether
this was indeed the case, but their research, so far, has not recovered Árni Magnússon’s
transcription of the poem. However, in Langebeks Excerpter Nr. 237, at the Royal Library
in Copenhagen, a folder with notes on saints in alphabetical order, there is a folded sheet
marked “Torlacus” containing a short list of Arnamagnæan manuscripts, where one finds
the following item: “+382 Thorlacs saga. Carmen Latinum – heraf udtaget 1 Blad Lat.” The
last words of the note show that Árni’s transcription was written on a single sheet of paper
and that it was originally stored with AM 382 4to, from where it was removed by Langebek
or Suhm, never to be returned.