Gripla - 20.12.2014, Side 80

GRIPLA80
Bishop guðmundur was hardly an obscure bishop within Iceland, but the
translator takes the trouble to further identify him within the Icelandic
diocese of Hólar.
8. Antiquarian Connections
Latin was useful as a scholarly language in the face of confusing medieval
vernaculars not only for Worm but also for many other early modern
scholars, not least whomever copied the text that now forms the first part
of Beinecke MS 508.
Since the current binding of the manuscript is modern, we cannot
say for certain when the annals were bound together with their current
companion, excerpts from the Archaionomia, a text the catalogue dates to
slightly later, perhaps ca. 1700. It would not be at all surprising, however,
if the two were bound together in the early modern period. Both texts are
in their own ways products of a Latin oriented scholarly milieu interested
in the “germanic” Middle Ages. the Archaionomia has been identified
as a very early, perhaps the earliest, book to be printed in Anglo-saxon.58
Directed at an English antiquarian audience, the work contains legal texts,
a mixture of laws and treaties associated with several Anglo-Saxon kings
including Ina, Edgar, and Ethelred. the laws are printed in Anglo-Saxon
with a facing-page Latin translation, except in cases in which only a Latin
text was available. the book is organized and indexed for ease of use. It
also contains a guide to interpreting Old english.
Beinecke MS 508 does not reproduce this entire work. It contains
only two texts, both only in their Latin versions. one of these is a copy
of a treaty made between King Edward the Elder and the Danish king
guttorm in the Danelaw, the other reproduces parts of the laws of Edward
the Confessor, beginning with an enumeration of which areas are “under
the laws of the English” i.e. not a part of the Danelaw.59 the manuscript
does not contain, or seems to have ever contained, the other texts in the
Archaionomia.
58 Lutz, “Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books,” 135.
59 new Haven, Beinecke MS 508, fol., 5r. the catalogue is more doubtful on this point than
Lutz, who identifies the treaty copied as one of Edward the Elder and the other law text as
that of Edward the Confessor, cf. Lutz, “Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books,” 135.