Gripla - 01.01.1995, Page 175

STEFANUS SAGA IN REYKJAHÓLABÓK
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myns soens abibas. vnde bedudet de kusckheyt de he hadde van
synen kyntliken daghen. (xcvii, c-d)
The coincidence of the Sth. 3 and Passionael redactions in the dream
vision is per se not remarkable, since the same coincidence exists be-
tween Sth. 3 and the account in the Legenda aurea. Furthermore, to be
noted is a deviation at the end of the vision, where we read in the Pas-
sionael that the silver vat, that is, vessel or container, full of saffron sig-
nifies Abibas’s „chastity from the days of his childhood.“ The Sth. 3
redaction expresses this in a rather different way. There the silver cas-
ket signifies „hans hreinan og ofleckadan meydom amedan hann lifde
og þvi synezt hann silfre biarttare med godvm jlm“ (229:26-28). The
basic meaning in both redactions is the same, of course, but the man-
ner of expressing it is rather different. The Icelandic suggests a Latin
source, one presumably deriving ultimately from redaction B of the
Epistola Luciani, where we read: „Quoniam filius meus castus et im-
maculatus excessit e mundo, propterea in similitudinem argenti mun-
dissimi apparuit" (col. 814).29 Not only does Sth. 3 duplicate the Latin
collocation „castus et immaculatus,“ but it also transmits the explana-
tion for the silver. Furthermore, in the Germanensis codex of the Epi-
stola Luciani, the variant „virgo et immaculatus“ occurs (col. 184, fn.
2), which is reflected in the Icelandic meydómr.
The question to be answered is whether the Sth. 3 dream already ex-
isted in the manuscript being copied or was interpolated from another
29
The correspondence between Sth. 3 and the Passionael in writing saffran (as
opposed to krog in Sth. 2) does not prove Low German provenance. Although Wester-
gárd-Nielsen lists the word safran as a loan from Low German, the word had currency
both in Norway and Iceland. It is attested in the fourteenth century, for example, in the
phrase „pipar ok safran“ in Kong Magnus Erikssöns Retterbod of 1346 (Norges gamle
Love III 166:17) and again in Kong Haakon Magnussöns Retterbod of 1358, where we
read „pipare safran" (NGL, III. 177:5). The word also occurs in two fifteenth-century
manuscripts, the so-called Lækningabók (Kr. Kálund, ed., Den islandske lægebok.
Codex Arnamagnæanus 434a, I2mo. (Copenhagen, 1907) and in the RoyalIrAcad 23 D
43, edited in An Old Icelandic Medical Miscellany by Henning Larsen (Oslo, 1931). In
the latter, the identification of crocus with sæfran is clearly established (12v, # 38, p. 65),
thereby suggesting that krog and saffran were understood as synonyms. Of interest to us
is that a new section of the manuscript, according to Larsen, „forms the beginning of a
leechbook“ (fn. 2, p. 115), which has as title the sentence: „Hier hefir lækna boc þorleifs
biorns sonar“ (p. 21; cf. p. 115 of the edition) whom Henning Larsson conjectures to be
the father of the copyist of Reykjahólabók (pp. 21-23).