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Hugh ripelin’s Compendium theologicae veritatis, for instance, was an im-
portant source for the Icelandic Speculum penitentis, among other texts.8
norwegians and other European clerics who traveled to Iceland were also
possible conduits of Dominican influence. Such was the case with Jón
Halldórsson (d. 1339), who was a Dominican brother in Bergen before
becoming bishop of Skálholt in 1322 and who seems to have been involved
in the composition of a number of old norse exempla as well as Klári
saga.9 one might also note the great collection of saints’ lives surviving
in reykjahólabók (Holm Perg. fol. no. 3, ca. 1530–1540), whose closest
analogues are found in German legendaries of Dominican origin.10
In the present article, I call attention to a sermon that demonstrates
that, by the end of the medieval period at least, the influence of Dominican
authors on Icelandic religious literature could extend to preaching as well.
this sermon, surviving in two previously unedited fragments from the
early sixteenth century, draws on Latin versions of two of the sermons of
the famous Valencian Dominican preacher Vincent ferrer.
áhöld, ed. Kristján Eldjárn and Hörður Ágústsson (reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmennta-
félag, 1992), 309–10. other Dominicans whose works appear in surviving Skálholt book-
lists include Bartholomew of San Concordio, Bernard Gui, Johannes nider, John of Genoa,
Vincent of Beauvais, and William of Paris (Hörður Ágústsson, “Bækur,” 308–9, 311–12,
317–18, 320–22; cf. olmer, Boksamlingar, nos. 235, 238, 239). A Hólar book-list from
1525 records copies of the works of aquinas and albertus Magnus (DI IX, 298; Sverrir
Tómasson, Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á miðöldum: Rannsókn bókmenntahefðar, Rit 33
(reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), 31).
8 See McDougall, “Latin Sources” and Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “Dómsdagslýsing í aM
764 4to,” Opuscula 10 (1996): 186–93. In addition to these works and others discussed by
McDougall (144–45), unedited fragments of what seems to have been an old norse treat-
ise on the sacraments in aM 686 a 4to (ca. 1400) also depend on the Compendium. The
fragments are worn and difficult to read, but Latin quotations from at least three chapters
of book VI of the Compendium (VI.9 on baptism and VI.20 and VI.21 on confession) can be
clearly identified in the digital images available online (https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/
view/da/aM04-0686-a, accessed 20 June 2018). Kristian Kålund had identified the
contents of aM 686 a 4to as “Íslenzkar homilíur” (Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske hånd-
skriftsamling, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1894), 101 [item 1710]); this was repeated
by trygve Knudsen, “Homiliebøker,” in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra
vikingetid til reformationstid, vol. 6 (Copenhagen: rosenkilde og Bagger, 1961), col. 659.
9 See, most recently, Shaun f. D. Hughes, “the old norse Exempla as Arbiters of Gender
roles in Medieval Iceland,” in New Norse Studies: Essays on the Literature and Culture of
Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Jeffrey turco, Islandica 58 (Ithaca: Cornell university Library,
2015), 255–300, esp. 257–58, 271, and 281.
10 Kalinke, The Book of Reykjahólar, 3–4, 26, 198, et passim.
FRAGMENTS OF AN ICELANDIC CHRISTMAS SERMON