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a Carolingian preacher’s anthology most fully represented by the
11th-century Anglo-saxon Ms Cambridge, Pembroke College 25….3
Vernacular sermons and sermon fragments are also preserved in
many other early Icelandic Mss. AM 677 4to (ca. 1200) contains
ten homilies from what was probably a complete translation of
Gregory the Great’s forty Homiliae in evangelia. the miscellany
of learned and theological writings in the AM 544 4to section of
Hauksbók includes a sermon based on the old english homily De
falsis diis by Ælfric of eynsham [and] a tract on the evils of sorcery
partially related to the same author’s De auguriis.4
since the publication of Mcdougall’s article, most source study on the
old norse homilies has continued along the lines that he summarized.
Important advances have been made in exploring english — especially
Anglo-saxon — influences on the norse homiletic corpus.5 though some-
3 on this sermon see also joan turville-Petre, “translations of a Lost Penitential Homily,”
Traditio 19 (1963): 51–78; and Helen spencer, “Vernacular and Latin Versions of a sermon
for Lent: ‘A Lost Penitential Homily’ found,” Mediaeval Studies 44 (1982): 271–305.
4 david Mcdougall, “Homilies (West norse),” in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia,
ed. Phillip Pulsiano et al., Garland encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, vol. 1 (new york:
Garland, 1993), 290–91. A bibliography of source studies can be found on pp. 291–92 of the
same article. for an earlier, but still useful, study, see joan turville-Petre, “sources of the
Vernacular Homily in england, norway, and Iceland,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 75 (1960):
168–82.
5 the most important works in this regard are two articles by Christopher Abram: “Anglo-
saxon Influence in the old norwegian Homily Book,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 14 (2004):
1–35; “Anglo-saxon Homilies in their scandinavian Context,” in The Old English Homily:
Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. Aaron j. kleist, studies in the early Middle Ages,
vol. 17 (turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 425–44. More recent contributions that focus on a later
period of influence include two articles by Aidan Conti: “the old norse Afterlife of Ralph
d’escures’s Homilia de assumptione Mariae,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 107
(2008): 215–38; “Gammelt og nytt i homiliebokens prekenunivers,” in Vår eldste bok: Skrift,
miljø og biletbruk i den norske homilieboka, ed. odd einar Haugen and Åslaug ommundsen,
Bibliotheca nordica, vol. 3 (oslo: novus, 2010), 165–86. the second article is significant in
that it is the first to compare the norwegian Homily Book to english vernacular collections
of its own time, rather than to significantly earlier Latin or old english works. Conti’s
critical summary of scholarly attitudes toward the norwegian Homily Book (pp. 166–67)
can be justly applied to the study of the old norse homiletic corpus as a whole: “I det store
og hele har forskerne studert Gammelnorsk homiliebok i et tilbakeskuende perspektiv.
særlig i skandinavia har mye arbeid med kildene og følgelig med bokens intellektuelle og
teologiske bakgrunn kretset rundt dens forhold til karolingiske og angelsaksiske modeller.
de som studerer prekenvirksomhet og prekener i skandinavia i høy- eller senmiddelalde-