Gripla - 20.12.2011, Page 103

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Christians to be saved. The interpretation of the flood as a symbol of bap-
tism which washes away all sins, of Noah as a figure of Christ, and of the
ark as an allegory of the Church, which is in fact the sole opportunity for
men to be safe in this world and in the life to come, are common features
of exegetical literature about the Genesis, of course. The three-coloured
rainbow of the Icelandic homily – and also the two-coloured rainbow of
the Vienna poem – can in a way be considered almost a condensed image of
the wider symbolic implications of the whole biblical event of the flood: the
Icelandic explanation, more traditionally linked to the elemental and escha-
tological fire – the allegorical and tropological interpretation of blood as the
explication of the colour red in the Wiener Genesis more original – but at
the same time well integrated in patri stic tradition about the flood, which
also treated Noah’s ark (cf. the doorway opened in its side) as identical with
Christ’s body (cf. the wound opened in His side, from which water and
blood flowed). Besides, both texts explicitly refer to martyrdom (cf. Wiener
Genesis v. 732b [1465] unde der gotes martere gedenchet “and think of God’s
martyrs”; Old Icelandic sermon í lífláti fyr Guðs sakar lit. “in losing one’s life
for the sake of God”), and this leads us to our investigation’s last point.
VI
The relevance of the doctrine of penance for the Old Icelandic rainbow
allegory has been underlined extensively in this paper. The text is quite
clear in this respect, and the triadic structure is self-explaining both in
form and subject-matter.103 Now, as far as medieval penitential doctrine
and discipline are concerned, especially in the Germanic milieu, it is well-
known that a leading role was played by the Irish. It was Irish monks’
work to gradually change the practice of penance from the public canonical
trial system to the so-called ‘tariff ’ system, which, in short, led to private
forms of confession and penance and to the elaboration of the so-called
Penitentials or handbooks of penance, guidebooks of a sort for confessors
containing tariffs, namely, a catalogue of sins and proportionate penanc-
es.104 This is not the place for a thorough survey of Irish penitential prac-
103 See also below.
104 It is worthwhile remembering, however, that the two penitential systems remained com-
plementary rather than mutually exclusive throughout the medieval period.
THE RAINBOW ALLEGORY