Gripla - 20.12.2018, Qupperneq 45

45
animae is listed in the 1397 inventory of the Viðey monastery.45 Among
other Christian writers who were presumably known in medieval Iceland
is the french theologian alain de Lille (c. 1128–1202), whose unspecified
work is listed in the same inventory.46 The idea that the four humours
in man represent the four elements appears in his Distinctiones dictionum
theologicalium: “Et sicut mundus constat ex quatuor elementis, sic homo ex
quatuor humoribus, elementorum proprietatibus consonis.”47 [and in the
same way as the world is composed of four elements, man is composed of
four humours with the same qualities.]48
the creation of man is linked to the four elements in one of the oldest
extant Icelandic manuscripts: the old norse translation of Elucidarius by
Honorius of autun (c. 1080–c. 1150). this theology textbook, popular
among the laity in Europe, survives in numerous manuscripts, including
eight Old Norse fragments.49 The oldest of these, AM 674a 4to, dates to
c. 1200 and is thus among the earliest translations of the Latin text into a
vernacular.50 this fragment contains the following answer to the question:
from what was man created?
of Medieval Norway: Studies in Memory of Lilli Gjerløw, ed. by Espen Karlsen (oslo: novus,
2013), 274; Espen Karlsen, “fragments of Patristic and other Ecclesiastical Literature in
norway from c. 1100 until the fifteenth Century,” ibid., 228.
45 “Jtem liber Hugonis de abusibus clavstri.” Jón Sigurðsson and others (eds.), Diplomatarium
Islandicum, 16 vols (reykjavík/Copenhagen: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafjelag, 1857–1972),
vol. IV, 111. See also “Hugo de folieto” in Gottskálk Jensson (ed.), Islandia Latina.
46 “Jtem alanus,” Diplomatarium Islandicum, vol. IV, 110. For the Viðey-inventory, the edi-
tors of DI use several manuscripts (see DI II, 247–8; DI IV, 29–35). they note the variant
reading “alarius” in one of them (aM 256 4to, 17th century), see vol. IV, 110n3.
47 Alanus de Insulis, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, ed. by Jean-Paul Migne, Patrologia
Latina 210 (Paris: Migne, 1855), col. 866.
48 of other Christian writers linking theology and the humours, we can name Peter alfonsi
(see footnote 20), who wrote on the creation of adam in the context of the elements and
humours in his Ex Judaeo Christiani dialogi, ed. by Jean-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina
157 (Paris: Migne, 1854), cols. 641–42, and the french abbot William of Saint-thierry
(1085–1148), see Guillelmus abbas S. theodorici, De natura corporis et animae libri duo, ed.
by Jean-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina 180 (Paris: Migne, 1855), cols. 695–726.
49 all eight manuscripts are published in Honorius augustodunensis, Elucidarius in Old Norse
Translation, ed. by Evelin Scherabon firchow and Kaaren Grimstad, rit 36 (reykjavík:
Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1989).
50 on the manuscript and its background, see firchow and Grimstad, Elucidarius in Old Norse
Translation, xvii–xxxix; Jón Helgason (ed.), The Arna-Magnæan Manuscript 674a, 4to:
Elucidarius, Manuscripta Islandica 4 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1957).
HUMORAL THEORY IN THE MEDIEVAL NORTH