Gripla - 01.01.1995, Page 139

STEFANUS SAGA IN REYKJAHÓLABÓK
137
„imidlertid er der ikke tale om nogen slavisk afskrift, det har 0jensyn-
ligt været kompilators hensigt at modernisere foredraget og den sprog-
lige iklædning ... Den tendens til en overbrodert fremstilling, vi har
konstateret i Holm 3 i forhold til den nedertyske tekst i Pass ved andre
legender ... genfinder vi her i forholdet til en hjemlig kilde“ (p. 116).
The same view, albeit expressed somewhat differently - they refer to
the „long-windedness“ of the style (p. 251) - had already been voiced
in their article of 1962, where Widding and Bekker-Nielsen noted that
„a few minor corrections as well as a whole chapter are taken from the
PassionaeP‘ (p. 251). No accounting is given of the „minor correc-
tions“; indeed, none of the assertions is supported by textual evidence.
Finally, in Widding and Bekker-Nielsen’s survey, „The Lives of the
Saints in Old Norse Prose. A Handlist" (p. 333), there is a remark to
the effect that the Sth. 3 redaction of Stefanus saga is „based“ on a
text similar to Sth. 2/AM 661, but „supplemented“ from the Passionael
96b-98c (the pagination is incorrect [it includes another legend, that of
Pope Stephen] and should read 97b-98c). The reference is to „Van
Sunte Steffen als he ghefunden wart.“ The „supplementary“ material
in Reykjahólabók is ch. 13, which is the account of the translation of
the relics to Rome.
In the following I wish to take exception to the assertions of Wid-
ding and Bekker-Nielsen and demonstrate that: 1) Stefanus saga in
Sth. 3 (Rhb), while related to the Sth. 2/AM 661 (Hms) redaction, is
not a modernized, embellished version of the same; 2) the Icelandic
source of the text in Sth. 3 resembled the redaction represented by
Sth. 2 in many ways, but also deviated significantly, especially in the
Inventio section; 3) although Stefanus saga in Sth. 3 can for the greater
part be considered a faithful copy of a no longer extant Icelandic re-
daction, the text did undergo two types of intervention at the hands of
the Rhb compiler: a) the omission of matter that was shared with an-
other legend; b) the inclusion of supplementary matter that derives
from a Low German redaction, but not the Passionael; 4) the style of
Stefanus saga in Sth. 3, that is, the text copied from an older source,
was not revised on the basis of the Passionael redaction.
The discrepancies in Sth. 3 vis-á-vis the other Icelandic manuscripts,
including fragments, are of three kinds: 1) divergences that normally
arise in the process of copying a manuscript, that is, scribal errors, such
as omitted words or misreadings; changes in the sequence of words;