Gripla - 20.12.2016, Blaðsíða 263
263
STEPHEN PELLE
AN OLD NORSE HOMILY
AND TWO HOMILETIC FRAGMENTS
FROM AM 624 4to
1. Introduction
in an article published in this journal in 2013, I identified and dis -
cussed a Latin source for an old norse homily for the feast of the
annunciation, the beginning of which survives in the fragmentary Ice-
landic manuscript aM 655 XXVII 4to (ca. 1300).1 the portion of the
text surviving in this manuscript, I demonstrated, is based on the twenty-
second of the Sermones festivales written by the Victorine author absalon of
Springiersbach (d. ca. 1200). While the 2013 article was in the proof stage,
I discovered that a complete text of the same old norse homily survives
in aM 624 4to (ca. 1500). In the present article, I provide an edition
of the annunciation homily from aM 624 4to, along with two other
fragments of homiletic material in the manuscript that have not hitherto
been published or studied.
2. Manuscript and scribes
Kålund’s initial description of aM 624 4to has been refined and corrected
in recent decades by several scholars who have edited or discussed texts
from the manuscript, most importantly Mattias tveitane, Einar G. Péturs-
son, and Peter Cahill.2 another detailed description would therefore be
1 Stephen Pelle, “twelfth-Century Sources for old norse Homilies: new Evidence from
aM 655 XXVII 4to,” Gripla 24 (2013): 45 –75, esp. 58–70. the contents of the manuscript
have been edited by Hallgrímur J. Ámundason, “aM 655 XXVII 4to: útgáfa, stafagerð,
stafsetning” (B.a. thesis, university of Iceland, 1994).
2 Kristian Kålund, Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, vol. 2 (Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 1894), 37–39 (item 1612); “En norrøn versjon av Visio Pauli,” ed. Mattias
Tveitane, Årbok for Universitetet i Bergen: Humanistik serie 1964, no. 3, 5–7; Miðaldaævintýri
þýdd úr ensku, ed. Einar G. Pétursson, rit 11 (reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á
Gripla XXVII (2016): 263–281