Gripla - 20.12.2010, Blaðsíða 36

GRIPLA36
have attempted to imitate in our edition, is a feature of the poem that
should not be overlooked as insignificant (see further section 7). What
immediately stands out is the pattern of 16 lines ending with the letter e.
The same layout is also found on leaf 5r in AM 732b 4to, a 14th-century
copy of an illustrated encyclopedic codex originally composed in the late
12th century. The similarity of layout here to the first leaf of AM 382 4to,
and the association of both manuscripts with the Hólar diocese in the first
half of the 14th century may well be of significance.67 Playfulness of layout
and a predilection for repetitive patterns is otherwise a sure sign of 14th-
century versification as may be ascertained by viewing the carmina figurata
(pattern poetry) of Liber de distinccione metrorum by Jacobus Nicholai of
Denmark, composed in Cambridge on the subject of the plague in the mid-
dle of the 14th century, in particular in memory of a certain Adamarus, the
deceased Earl of Pembroke.68
AM 382 4to is written in a Gothic bookhand, but the script shows
some cursive influences, such as small hoops or a slightly lighter, more
ornate style concerning letters like ‘g’, ‘y’, ‘h’, or ‘ð’. The script of the Latin
praise poem is more filigree and smaller than on the remaining pages and
appears even more influenced by cursive, since for example the stems of
the ‘descending s’ and the ‘high-stemmed f ’ reach under the imaginary line
for writing, which is more common for Gothic cursive than for Gothic
67 On leaf 5r, there is a row of proverbial Latin hexameter distichs (two-liners), the first being
Leonine hexameter, Ut uer dat florem, flos fructum, fructus odorem / Sic studium morem, mos
sensum, sensus honorem, together with other distichs widely known to medieval scholars.
The main hand on the first 8 leaves, containing a learned miscellany, was dated by Kristian
Kålund to the first quarter of the 14th century. The manuscript contains mostly Latin but
also vernacular texts, and two Latin poems, which are, curiously, composed in vernacular
meters. One of these poems, on the margin of 5r, is dedicated to a certain Audoenus, or
Auðunn, who Kålund identified as Bishop Auðunn rauði Þorbergsson of Hólar (1313–22).
The poems have recently been edited by Jonathan Grove in Margaret Clunies Ross, ed.,
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages VII. Poetry on Christian Subjects. Part 2: The
Fourteenth Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2007), 471–475.
68 Iacobus Nicholai de Dacia, Liber de distinccione metrorum, ed. Aage Kabell (Uppsala:
Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967). As the poet informs the reader in the prologue and colophon,
the work was finished in 1363. A separate poem to The Virgin Mary, “Salutacio beate Marie
virginis gloriose”, found in a different manuscript tradition, and counting no less than 269
stanzas, was composed around 1350, probably by the same poet, displaying an identical
fondness for untiring and virtuous repetition, all but the last stanza beginning with the
word Salve. Published by Lehmann, Skandinaviens Anteil, 84–104.