Gripla - 20.12.2018, Side 236

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3. Structure and style of the sermon
So little survives of aM 696 IX 4to fol. 2, which contains the beginning of
the extant part of the sermon, that it is difficult to follow the text without
the aid of its source (see section 4 below), which here offers an extended
allegory comparing the state of mankind before the coming of Christ to a
besieged city. after a substantial lacuna, the sermon picks up again on the
recto of aM 696 VIII 4to, where we find a discussion of how we can take
the Christ-child, Mary, and Joseph into our homes in two ways (aM 696
VIII 4to 1r5 “med tuefalldre grein”): spiritually, by repenting of and con-
fessing our sins, and physically, by receiving the poor into our homes and
caring for them. this is followed by an exemplum (aM 696 VIII 4to 1r16
“eítt dæme”) describing how a merchant in france (aM 696 VIII 4to 1r17
“i uallande”) would invite into his home every Christmas Eve an old man
and a young woman with a child, in commemoration of the Holy family.
this merchant is rewarded by being granted, in the hour of his death, a vi-
sion of Christ, Mary, and Joseph, who assure him that they will welcome
him into their heavenly home. this section provides rare evidence of the
use of exempla in medieval Icelandic preaching.19
The remainder of AM 696 VIII 4to and most of fol. 1 of AM 696 IX
4to are a retelling of the birth of Christ, which includes conversations
between Mary and Joseph and their joyful prayers to the newborn Savior.
the surviving portion of the sermon breaks off with Mary entreating
God the father to fill her breasts with milk so that she can feed his Son.
these imaginative conversations and prayers of Mary and Joseph, none of
which has any Biblical basis, are perhaps the most striking characteristic
of the sermon’s style. a noteworthy element in these episodes of direct
speech (and one that is taken over from the sermon’s Latin source) is
their frequent use of second-person plural pronominal forms in respectful
address to a single person. Examples can be found in Joseph’s speech to
Mary (aM 696 VIII 4to 1r19 “blezad[a m]ey, huada ogurlig birte stendur
19 See Hughes, “old norse Exempla,” esp. 260–71. though collections of Icelandic exempla
appear in several late medieval manuscripts, their actual incorporation into surviving
preaching texts is not well documented. the introduction and part of the conclusion of
another exemplum survive in an Icelandic sermon fragment in aM 687 c 1 4to and aM
667 XVII 4to (ca. 1500–1540), where the term dœmi is also used, see Stephen Pelle, “an
unedited Sermon from the Eve of the Icelandic reformation,” Opuscula 16 (2018): 142.