Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 58

GRIPLA58
sponsiveness to contemporary theological trends in mainland europe than
is often credited to the authors of old norse homiletic literature. further
indications of this use of newer sources can be found in item 11 of the same
manuscript, which I discuss below.
4. AM 655 XXVII 4to, item 11
Item 11, the last piece in AM 655 XXVII 4to, is found on fols. 12r–13v. It
ends imperfectly, but its surviving portion is better preserved than many
of the other texts in the manuscript. the piece is clearly a homily. It has a
rubricated title designating it for the feast of the Annunciation and con-
sists of a phrase-by-phrase interpretation of the angel’s greeting to Mary
in Luke 1:28. unlike most of the other Marian homilies in the manuscript,
the text is not drawn from any known version of Maríu saga. the homil-
ist’s exposition is structured on a series of careful threefold divisions: the
three types of peace Christ brought to the world (section a, below), the
three types of grace (c–f), the three kinds of gifts that filled Mary (g), and
the relationship of each of the three Persons of the trinity to the Blessed
Virgin (h). therefore, while not based on the Biblical distinctiones charac-
teristic of contemporary scholastic sermons, the homily and its high degree
of organization and theological nuance do strike the reader as rather more
modern than the texts one finds in the Icelandic and norwegian Homily
Books, which are generally of a more hortatory and moralizing tone.42
such stylistic differences can be explained by comparing the homily to
its hitherto undiscovered source, a sermon by the twelfth-century abbot
Absalon of springiersbach.
scholars have been trying to piece together the details of Absalon’s life
for centuries, and several issues remain unsettled. What is certain is that he
was a canon at the Abbey of saint-Victor in Paris for several years before
he was appointed abbot of the Augustinian monastery in springiersbach,
near trier, sometime around 1193.43 Beyond this, little is known for sure.
42 for interesting and highly relevant analyses of the influence of the scholastic or “thematic”
sermon style on english vernacular homilies from ca. 1200, see Millett, “Pastoral Context”;
Bella Millett, “the discontinuity of english Prose: structural Innovation in the trinity
and Lambeth Homilies,” in Text and Language in Medieval English Prose: A Festschrift for
Tadao Kubouchi, ed. jacek fisiak et al. (frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005), 129–50.
43 dominique Poirel, “L’école de saint-Victor au Moyen Âge: bilan d’un demi-siècle his-
toriographique,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 156 (1998): 201–202; Gabriele Ziegler,