Gripla - 01.01.1995, Qupperneq 172

170
GRIPLA
ments concerning Sth. 3 suggest that he thought the discrepancies in
Sth. 3 were the work of the copyist - whom we now know to have
been Björn Þorleifsson - rather than that they already existed in his
source. This is not the case. Widding writes that Sth. 3 „giver ofte en
noget forkortet og delvis omredigeret Tekst med sproglige Fornyelser.
Der findes dog ogsaa betydelige Udvidelser i Forhold til Holm 2 fol.
og 661, 4°, som Haandskriftet i det hele er nært beslægtet med“ (p.
151). The explanation for the deviations in Sth. 3 in the Inventio
section of Stefanus saga is that this portion of the legend derives not
from the common source of the other manuscripts, but rather from an-
other text that contained a redaction of the dream similar to that
found in the Legenda aurea, which reads as follows:
Ostenditque ei tres calathos aureos et quartum argenteum, quo-
rum unus erat plenus rosis rubentibus et alii duo rosis albis.
Quartum etiam ostendit argenteum plenum croco dixitque
Gamaliel: hi calathi nostri sunt loculi et nostrae reliquiae sunt
hae rosae. Calathus plenus rubeis rosis est loculus sancti Ste-
phani, qui solus ex nobis martirio meruit coronari, alii duo rosis
albis pleni mei et Nicodemi sunt loculi, qui sincero corde in con-
fessione Christi perseveravimus, quartus vero argenteus croco
plenus est Abibae filii mei, qui candore virginitatis pollebat et
mundus de mundo exivit. (pp. 462-63)
The dream in Sth. 3 derives from a redaction that modified the orig-
inal vision into a superior narrative; it is more of a literary construct
than Lucianus’s original dream. The logic could not be more lucid nor
the structure more contrived. In all there are four caskets, and these
are subdivided into three gold caskets and one silver. Of the gold cas-
kets one contains red roses, while the other two contain white roses;
the silver casket is filled with saffron (of the other redactions, only Sth.
2 also specifies the herb, although it contains the older Latin, rather
than the ultimately Arabic loan word, which had currency both in Lat-
in and in the vernacular in the Middle Ages). The sequence of the
symbolism as well as the explication of the same follows the order in
which saints are generally classified, that is, martyrs, confessors, vir-
gins; hence, St. Stephen; Sts. Nicodemus and Gamaliel; St. Abibas. Or,
to put it another way, the most important and oldest saint, the proto-
martyr, and the least known and youngest, Abibas, bracket the two