Gripla - 20.12.2013, Page 69

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source shows that the author of the old norse homily was familiar with the
same texts as thirteenth-century religious writers in mainland europe.
5. Conclusions
the evidence of AM 655 XXVII 4to therefore suggests that not all later
old norse homilists were content with simply copying or imitating early
medieval texts, and that they considered more modern texts to be at least
potentially useful for the pastoral care of their audiences. If this attitude
was common among preachers in later medieval norway and Iceland, we
must also view younger copies of the earliest old norse homilies in a dif-
ferent light. If old norse homilists preached from the sermons of authors
like Absalon of springiersbach, the fact that they also continued to preach
from the older texts may not indicate antiquarian tendencies, but rather
that they considered these texts to be as relevant and useful to their con-
gregations as the newer works. However, whether there are more traces of
the use of Latin works from the twelfth century and later in the old norse
homiletic corpus remains to be seen. An investigation of these matters will
require editions and studies of neglected homily manuscripts, especially
those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I hope that this essay stimu-
lates some interest in such texts, since it appears that there remains a great
deal to find in them.84
6. Postscript
After submitting the present article, I was able to identify another, com-
plete copy of the old norse Annunciation homily that I discuss in section
4. this copy survives on pp. 235–238 of AM 624 4to (ca. 1500). I hope to
edit this text, together with some other unpublished homiletic works from
the same manuscript, in the near future. I have not yet been able to make
84 I owe thanks to Hallgrímur Ámundason, who gave advice on a number of points and also
kindly provided me with a copy of his B.A. thesis, of which I make extensive use above.
I am also grateful to the Arnamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen for providing me with
digital images of AM 655 XXVII 4to. david Mcdougall, Ian Mcdougall, and Andy
orchard gave useful feedback on earlier versions of this essay. finally, I thank the org-
anizers and participants of the 7th Annual fiske Conference on Medieval Icelandic studies
at Cornell university, where I presented part of my research.
tWeLftH-CentuRy souRCes foR oLd noRse HoMILIes