Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 244

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Marianne Kalinke
of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. It can be
shown, however, that the translated legends in Reykjahólabók do not derive
from the Passionael, but rather from longer and narratively superior texts,
which existed at the end of the Middle Ages, presumably in manuscript
rather than print, but which have not been transmitted to us or the existence
of which is as yet unknown. Reykjahólabók thus plays a significant role in
the transmission of medieval hagiography and is the last representative of the
great vernacular legendaries of the Middle Ages.
The language of Reykjahólabók is characterized by a large number of
German loan words, and in 1960 Ole Widding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen
pointed out that the disposition and content of the legends approximate
those in Steffan Arndes’s 1492 Liibeck imprint of the Passionael, a Low
German prose legendary, which in the High German redaction, of which it is
a translation, is known as Der Heiligen Lehen.7 They concluded that, with
the exception of the St. Anne legend, the Passionael was the chief source of
Reykjahólabók. Agnete Loth questioned their thesis, however, and in the
introduction to her edition of the legendary, she pointed out that many
details, even entire episodes, have no parallel in the Passionael. Furthermore,
the nature of the discrepancies suggests that the translator had additional
sources, and thus she concluded that perhaps the sources were more likely to
be found in manuscripts than incunabula (Rhb, I, XXXVI).
The most widely disseminated and received vernacular legendary of the
Middle Ages was Der Heiligen Lehen, a Middle High German compilation
from the turn of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century.8 In its transmission
through 197 extant manuscripts, 33 High German and 8 Low German
imprints (the latter under the title Dat Passionael), copies of the anthology
inundated the entire German and Dutch language area and even reached
Scandinavia (Williams-Krapp, p. 188). Widding and Bekker-Nielsen identi-
fied the Low German version of Der Heiligen Lehen as the source of
Reykjahólahók; furthermore, they thought that the Passionael was a Low
German translation af the Legenda aurea;9 neither is the case. Der Heiligen
Lehen - and therefore also its Low German translation Dat Passionael - is a
compilation that derives its matter from a number of individual legends as
7 Ole Widding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen, “En senmiddelalderlig Legendesamling,”
Maal og Minne (1960), p. 111. Cf. also Hans Bekker-Nielsen, “Islandsk
senmiddelalder” in Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen, Ole Widding,
Norron fortællekunst. Kapitler af den norsk-islandske middelalderlitteraturens historie
(Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1965), pp. 140-43.
8 Werner Williams-Krapp, Die deutschen und niederlandischen Legendare des
Mittelalters. Studien zu ihrer Uberlieferungs-, Text- und Wirkungsgeschichte
(Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986), p. 189.
9 “En senmiddelalderlig legendesamling,” p. 111: “de mange udgaver af den nedertyske
oversættelse og bearbejdelse af Jacobus a Voragine’s Legenda aurea i udvidet
skikkelse, kendt under navnet Passionael. ”