Gripla - 20.12.2011, Blaðsíða 99

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is, Judgement Day.95 An easy elaboration on the rainbow occurs also, for
example, in the roughly contemporary Anegenge, vv. 1982–1999, this time
deriving from Gen. 9, 12 ff., but it is actually little more than a versified
biblical citation, which only touches briefly in a homiletic tone on the arcus
as a token of peace, since God will never again send such a flood upon the
earth.96
A more interesting parallel treatment of the colours of the rainbow is
found in the so-called Wiener Genesis, a long epic poem on the matter of the
biblical book, enriched by allegorical and homiletic reflections from various
sources. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the structure, style
and verse form of this poetic narrative; suffice it to say that its composition
is placed around 1060–80, and that the Vienna manuscript anthology in
which it is preserved (Wien, Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek nr. 2721)
is dated to the second half of the twelfth century; a younger version of the
same poem, the Millstätter Genesis (cf. Millstatt-Klagenfurt manuscript,
Kärntner Landesarchiv, Geschichtsverein Hs. 6/19, also from the second
half of the twelfth century), is also dependant on the same older unknown
manuscript which the Vienna text was copied from.
In vv. 721 (1441) ff. of the Vienna text, the biblical episode of God giv-
ing Noah and mankind the rainbow as a token in memory of the covenant
preserving the world from any further flood is narrated. As is usual in
exegetic and homiletic tradition, and as also occurs in our Old Icelandic
text, the event in the Bible serves as a starting point for allegorical, in
this case also tropological, interpretation. What is especially interesting
from our point of view is that in the Old German poem we can trace the
same standard layout belonging to the exegetical sources we have been
examining in the previous paragraph (mainly Bede on the two-coloured
rainbow as a symbol of baptism), but also significant differences and a
clear identifi cation – typical within the general allegory of the ark as a
figure of the Church – of water and blood with the person of Christ as the
95 Cf. de Boor, Die deutsche Literatur, 192–193. See also Hartmut Freytag, Die Theorie der
allegorischen Schriftdeutung und die Allegorie in deutschen Texten besonders des 11. und 12.
Jahrhunderts, Bibliotheca Germanica 24 (Bern-Munchen: Franke Verlag, 1982), 64 and esp.
223, note 38.
96 Cf. the edition of the text by Dietrich Neuschäfer, Das Anegenge. Textkritische Studien, Diplo-
matischer Abdruck, Kritische Ausgabe, Anmerkungen zum Text, Medium Aevum 8 (München:
Fink, 1966); see also Freytag, Die Theorie der allegorischen Schriftdeutung, 223, note 38.
THE RAINBOW ALLEGORY