Gripla - 01.01.1995, Page 187

STEFANUS SAGA IN REYKJAHÓLABÓK
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also contained them. The Legenda aurea confirms this. Although Jaco-
bus de Voragine has reduced the accounts of the six resurrection mira-
cles to one or two sentences each, they follow the same sequence
(Legenda aurea, p. 465) as that found in Reykjahólabók. Since Jacobus
de Voragine tended to abbreviate and summarize matter from his
sources, one can assume that the longer versions in Reykjahólabók ul-
timately derive from a Latin redaction - there is no evidence of Low
German influence here - which contained fuller reports of the mira-
cles, and this redaction may also have been the source of the miracles
in the Legenda aurea. At the conclusion of the Passio narrative, the
Legenda aurea relates miracles 1, 4,11, and 12 above, while the Passio-
nael only transmits miracles 4 and 12.
The deviation of the miracle sequence in Sth. 3 from the one in Sth.
15/Sth. 2/AM 661 on the one hand, and AM 655 XXII on the other,
supports the thesis that Björn Þorleifsson’s source was an Icelandic re-
daction that deviated markedly from the other manuscripts. A number
of corrupt readings in the miracle sequence (cf. section I above) were
incurred in the process of copying a manuscript. The scribal errors
may already have existed in Björn’s source. Since the sequence of the
resurrection miracles in Sth. 3 corresponds to that in the Legenda au-
rea, the source of which was a Latin redaction, the bipartite sequence
of miracles in Reykjahólabók - which deviates from that in the other
manuscripts - presumably derives ultimately from a source similar to
that known to Jacobus de Voragine.
V. Conclusion
Stefanus saga in Reykjahólabók is the result of four different types
of literary activity: copying, editing, translating (from Low German),
and compiling. The scribe has been identified as Björn Þorleifsson,
and there is every reason to presume that he was also the translator of
the Low German texts in the legendary, and ipso facto the editor and
compiler.37 There is no evidence that Björn was a revising, „embellish-
ing“ scribe; on the contrary, he was a careful, albeit not error-free,
37 Sverrir Tómasson writes in íslensk bókmenntasaga II (Reykjavík: Mál og menning,
1993), p. 278, that Reykjahólabók „hefur að geyma 25 helgisögur sem Björn Þorleifsson
á Reykhólum setti saman og sumpart þýddi".