Gripla - 20.12.2016, Síða 264

GRIPLA264
redundant. Cahill’s summary is sufficient for our purposes: “[aM 624 4to]
is a small quarto volume of approximately 11 x 15 cm., consisting of 340
pages3 written in altogether seven different hands. the contents are varied,
but mostly of a scientific or religious nature.”4 Judging from these works
(broadly classifiable as liturgical, computistical, homiletic, meditative, and
moralistic5), aM 624 4to seems to have been intended as a kind of ecc-
lesiastical handbook.
three homilies from the manuscript have been edited:6 the youngest
surviving version of the Stave Church Homily (fols. 19r–24r);7 an Easter
homily based on Gregory’s Homilia 21 in Evangelia (fols. 119v–122r);8 and
an assumption homily, part of which has recently been shown to dep-
end on a Latin homily by ralph d’Escures, a twelfth-century norman
archbishop of Canterbury (fols. 122r–126r).9 A series of seven texts on
the theological significance of each day of the week found on fols. 8v–19r
has been classified as a homily or group of homilies by Kålund and Hall.10
the tone of these texts is certainly homiletic, and a great deal of interesting
material can be found in them,11 but the liturgical circumstances in which
Íslandi, 1976), xiii–xvi; Duggals leiðsla, ed. Peter Cahill, rit 25 (reykjavík: Stofnun Árna
Magnússonar, 1983), xxi–xxix. In addition, see now Kristen Wolf, “a treatise on the Seven
Deadly Sins in Icelandic translation,” Gripla 25 (2014): 166–68, which also discusses the
possible history of the manuscript in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
3 following the practice of recent scholars who have written on the manuscript, I use folio
numbers rather than page numbers in the present article.
4 Duggals leiðsla, ed. Cahill, xxi.
5 for a list of contents see Kålund, Katalog, 37–39, but note that Kålund mistakenly conflated
the Old Norse translations of the Visio Tnugdali and Visio Pauli (Duggals leiðsla, ed. Cahill,
xxi, n. 17).
6 In addition to the following references, see thomas n. Hall, “old norse-Icelandic
Sermons,” in The Sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, typologie des sources du Moyen
Âge occidental, vols. 81–83 (turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 702–703.
7 Messuskýringar: liturgisk symbolik frå den norsk-islandske kyrkja i millomalderen, ed. Oluf
Kolsrud (oslo: Dybwad, 1952), 85–107.
8 Leifar fornra kristinna frœða íslenzkra, ed. Þorvaldur Bjarnarson (Copenhagen: Hagerup,
1878), 151–54. See Hans Bekker-nielsen, “Den gammelnorske paaskeprædiken og Gregor
den store,” Maal og Minne (1960): 99–104.
9 Leifar, ed. Þorvaldur Bjarnarson, 154–58. on the homily’s partial source, see aidan Conti,
“the old norse afterlife of ralph d’Escures’s Homilia de assumptione Mariae,” Journal of
English and Germanic Philology 107 (2008): 215–38.
10 Kålund, Katalog, 38; Hall, “old norse-Icelandic Sermons,” 703.
11 the friday text, for instance, contains an example of the apocryphal ‘adam octipartite’
motif, which describes the creation of adam from eight elements: “… af atta hlvtum er