Gripla - 01.01.1995, Blaðsíða 165

STEFANUS SAGA IN REYKJAHÓLABÓK
163
ter many hours of prayer. He sleeps so lightly that „travtt visse hann
hvort at hann vagtte eda svæfe“ (227:12-13). In this somnolent state an
old, bearded man appears to him, touches him with a golden wand,
and calls his name three times. He identifies himself as Gamaliel and
relates that St. Stephen’s body had been left unburied outside the city
walls after his martyrdom. Gamaliel, who knew of Stephen’s sanctity,
had his body secretly removed at night to his own town, twenty miles
distant from Jerusalem. There he placed the saint’s body into a new
sarcophagus, which he had intended for himself. In the same tomb are
now three other persons: in a coffin at the feet of St. Stephen lies Ni-
codemus, and in another sepulcher rest Gamaliel’s son and, at his
son’s side, Gamaliel himself. Lucianus is to ask the bishop of Jerusa-
lem to seek out the remains and to give them an honorable burial. Up-
on being asked where to look for the bodies, Gamaliel tells Lucianus
the name of the place, and disappears.
The above is the first of three apparitions by Gamaliel. Upon awak-
ening, Lucianus prays to Christ and asks that the vision be repeated as
a sign that it was sent from God and that he could trust what he was
being told. Consequently, Gamaliel visits him again, the first time to
inquire why Lucianus has not yet acted upon his request, and sub-
sequently to reproach him angrily for still not having taken action.
These appearances are accompanied by a vision. In the first Gamaliel
shows him several caskets filled with roses and saffron and tells him
that they symbolize the coffins he is to find. The priest’s second dream
vision occurs when Lucianus is once again in a state between sleeping
and waking, for „þa dreymde hann annan dravm mote þvi at hann
vaknnade“ (230:14-15). In the latter dream Lucianus himself is one of
the protagonists; it is the ox-and-cart dream discussed in section I
above.
The roses-and-saffron vision is transmitted in five manuscripts, in
Sth. 15, AM 655 XIV, Sth. 2, AM 661, and Sth. 3. The variants in the
account of the vision manifest not only that the text of Sth. 3 is for the
most part a faithful copy rather than a revision of an older Icelandic
text but also that the Inventio section of the legend derives from a dif-
ferent redaction than the other manuscripts.
In the casket vision the several coffins containing the remains of St.
Stephen and three other individuals are symbolically identified for Lu-
cianus. There is an odd discrepancy, however, between the vision