Gripla - 20.12.2010, Qupperneq 43

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In lines 2-13 the poet praises St Þorlákr’s moral qualities, his character
and appearance in a long list of adjectives. Although the lexicographical
stylistics of this section may have limited appeal as literature in the 21st
century, they make for a beautiful feature in a laudatory piece of religious
music, an extended, almost breathless enumeration of the many glorious
attributes of the saint – the longer the enumeration, the greater the glory
of the saint. The musical notation for the poem was presumably the same
as that of the Responsorium (Nr. 48) in Leonine hexameter found in the
Þorlákstíðir, which Róbert Abraham Ottósson compares to the Latin poem
in AM 382 4to.80 It may be mentioned here that the epilogue of the
so-called Jarteinabók II, which we connect to the B-version of Þorláks saga
helga, also ends with alliterated prosody in Old Norse-Icelandic which uses
the stylistic feature of enumeratio.81 But there is more to this list of adjec-
tives than music and a fashion of repetition. In the original Latin Vita
st Thorlaci there once was a passage, which is now preserved in all the ver-
nacular versions, even the D-redaction, a fragment from the middle of the
13th century, AM 383 4to I. In it, Archbishop Eysteinn is made to praise
St Þorlákr as the perfect Christian bishop, referring especially to the
Pauline letter to Titus:
Hann sagði svá at hann þóttisk øngan byskup þann hafa vígt er
honum þótti jafn gǫrla með sér hafa alla þá mannkosti er byskupum
er skylt at hafa, sem Páll postoli segir í pistli sínum, þeim er hann
sendi Tito: ‘Byskup hœfir at sé,’ sagði hann, ‘lastvarr ok lærðr
vel, dramblauss ok drykkjumaðr lítill, ǫrr ok óágjarn, skýrr ok
skapgóðr, góðgjarn ok gestrisinn, réttlátr ok ráðvandr, hreinlífr ok
hagráðr, tryggr ok trúfastr, mildr ok máldjarfr, ástsamr viðr alþýðu
en ávítsamr viðr órœkna.’ Ok má sjá at þat er heilags manns at vera
með þeim hætti.82
80 Róbert Abraham Ottósson, Sancti Thorlaci Episcopi Officia, 69, 87–88, 117–118.
81 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Biskupa sögur II, 250.
82 Ibid., 66. It is worth noting that Bergr Sokkason adds a reference to the letter of Titus in
the very same context in his translation of Nikulás saga erkibyskups. The epistle is here read
as a checklist of twelve episcopal virtues, which Nikulás of course possesses in addition to
many other virtues. – C.R. Unger, Heilagra manna søgur: fortællinger og legender om hellige
mænd og kvinder II (Christiania [Oslo]: B.M. Bentzen, 1877), 78. See our discussion of Bergr
and the saga in section 7 of this article.
THE FORGOTTEN POEM