Gripla - 20.12.2016, Blaðsíða 276

GRIPLA276
et passibilitatis.”35 another possible example of the homilist’s debt to
twelfth-century sources is the phrase “hꜳleita litelæti” (119r/22), which
is reminiscent of Bernard of Clairvaux’s praise of Mary’s humility at the
annunciation in his fourth homily Super “Missus est”: “Quae est haec tam
sublimis humilitas?”36
the subjects of the two homiletic fragments edited above, which deal
with the various ornaments of the old testament tabernacle and with the
proper observance of Lent, respectively, are different enough to suggest
that they were not part of the same text, and that the two leaves lost
between fols. 24v and 25r contained at least the missing conclusion of the
first homily and the beginning of the second. Because only the first 250
words or so of the first homiletic fragment now survive, and because the
text is not rubricated for any particular occasion, it is difficult to speak
with any confidence about its intended purpose. the fragment has some
generic similarities to the third book of Bede’s De tabernaculo37 and to
the second book of Peter of Celle’s Mosaici tabernaculi mystica et mor-
alis expositio,38 insofar as all three describe both the historical function
and the symbolic significance of the washing basins at the entrance to
the tabernacle, but there are no noteworthy verbal parallels. I would
tentatively suggest that this text may have been used for the dedication of
a church (or the commemoration of its dedication), and that it was included
in aM 624 4to to act as a kind of companion piece to the Stave Church
Homily, which it immediately follows in the manuscript, since it seems to
attempt to allegorize the tabernacle of Exodus in a similar manner as the
author of the Stave Church Homily allegorizes Solomon’s temple and the
Christian church.
the second homiletic fragment is a Lenten piece. this is suggested by
the author’s encouragement to refrain from vices “nu  þessí tid er einkum
er sett til synda drvnar” (26r/3), and later confirmed by his concluding ex-
hortation to do penance “sua at ver megim oll a hinum fyrsta paskadegí taka
35 the manuscript has been digitized and is available online through the Gallica project,
accessed august 3, 2016, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9081071w/f14.item.
36 Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. Jean Leclercq and Henri rochais, vol. 4 (rome: Editiones
Cistercienses, 1966), 55.
37 ed. D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 119a (turnhout: Brepols, 1969),
136–38.
38 PL 202, cols. 1075B–1076C.