Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 245

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“engeños”).44 Such agreements are primarily interesting not because they
prove that these three vernacular versions of ferrer’s sermon have any
textual relationship to each other, but because they show that preachers in
Spain, Denmark, and Iceland were, in some cases at least, making use of a
common store of imagery to elaborate on their sources.
The exemplum about the hospitality of the merchant in the Icelandic
text is noteworthy for several reasons.45 First, as I mentioned above,
it is drawn from a Christmas Eve sermon by Vincent ferrer instead of
the Christmas sermon on which the Icelandic text is otherwise based.46
Second, it not only augments but replaces a portion of that Christmas
sermon, which the Icelandic author removes to make room for it. the rele-
vant Latin version of ferrer’s Christmas sermon here criticizes those who,
rather than properly preparing to welcome Jesus into the houses of their
bodies in the form of the Eucharist through fasting and confession, instead
defile themselves with sins and rich foods.47 this rebuke, along with any
FRAGMENTS OF AN ICELANDIC CHRISTMAS SERMON
44 Cátedra, Sermón, 508/42.
45 I consider it to be sufficiently proved at this point that the Icelandic author was drawing
on the Latin text of Vincent ferrer’s sermons found in the early printed editions. Latin
versions of the merchant exemplum also appear in the Perugia and Valencia manuscripts
discussed above, but these have little bearing on the Icelandic text. the Perugia manuscript
– again preserving only an outline of the relevant sermon – simply has the note “Exemplum
hic de mercatore invitante annuatim die crastina aliquem pauperem antiquum, et aliquam
juvenculam habentem parvulum” (Œuvres de Saint Vincent Ferrier: Tome Second, ed. Père
fages [Paris: Picard, 1909], 193; Sermonario de Perugia, 110). the version in the Valencia
manuscript is fuller, but, critically, leaves out the appearance of the Holy family to the
merchant before his death: “Et ideo, iusta [= iuxta] hoc do vobis unum consilium quod
observabat quidam mercator Valencie, et credo quod sit salvus, nam talia opera faciebat
ut tali die sicut cras qui est nativitas Dei Christi, quod invitetis duos pauperes, scilicet
quendam hominem et quandam iuvenem que habeat filium parvulum ut etiam portetur
in brachiis, et detis eis ad comedendum, nam virgo Maria significabatur per mulierem et
Iosep per senem, et Christus per filium parvulum...” (Sermones, 623; for the same passage in
another Valencian manuscript, see Œuvres de Saint Vincent Ferrier: Tome Second, 202–3).
46 the Icelandic author was not alone in removing this exemplum from its original context.
Around the year 1600, the same exemplum was excerpted from ferrer’s sermon and inserted
in a slightly modified form into the Vita della beatissima Vergine madre di Dio by the Italian
Jesuit Lorenzo Maselli. It occurs on p. 140 of the 1606 naples printing of the work.
47 Ferrer, Sermones hyemales, 162: “Virgo grauida de filio Dei est hostia consecrata quam
ducit sacerdos ut Ioseph. Quis uestrum recepit eam communicando deuote? Credo quod
nullus. De bono consilio debebatis sibi preparare domum conscientie per contritionem,
confessionem & satisfactionem. Sed multi excusant se ut Iudei dicentes: Ego habeo recipere
unum magnum militem scilicet dominum Caponem, dominum Hedum, dominum Porcum.