Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 246

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mention of the Eucharist, is totally absent from the Icelandic text. finally,
the setting of the exemplum has changed in the Icelandic text. ferrer says
that the merchant was a resident of his own home town of Valencia, a
“mercator Valentinus,”48 but the Icelandic sermon calls him a merchant in
france, “kaupmann j uallande” (aM 696 VIII 4to 1r17). the phonologi-
cal similarity between Latin Valentinus “Valencian” and Icelandic Valland
“france” is probably partly responsible for this change. However, rather
than simply a poor translation, I would suggest that the relocation of the
story from Valencia to Valland may have been purposeful. the name of
the city of Valencia, if it was known at all to the audience of the Icelandic
sermon, would have held little meaning for them, and the less specific and
better-known setting of france would likely have been easier to visualize.
5. Date and conclusions
Based on the evidence here presented about the sources of the sermon in
aM 696 VIII and IX 4to and its language, we are now in a position to
draw some conclusions about the date of its composition. Vincent ferrer
began his career as an itinerant preacher in 1399, and the first manuscript
witness to the Christmas Eve and Christmas sermons that were to eventu-
ally become the sources of the Icelandic text dates from 1407.49 However,
the standardization of ferrer’s sermons did not begin until 1416, and since
the Icelandic sermon derives from this standardized version, 1416 must be
considered the real terminus post quem of the Icelandic text.50 It is likely,
though, that the sermon was written a good deal later than this, probably
in the later decades of the fifteenth century or the early decades of the six-
teenth. the dates of the first recorded appearances of some of the sermon’s
German/East norse loanwords suggest that the sermon was probably not
written much earlier than around 1460. the word heimugliga, for instance,
alius dicit: Ego habeo recipere magnam dominam nobilem scilicet dominam Gallinam,
alius dominam Perdicem &c. Sed nolunt recipere dominum Iesum Christum.” this passage
remains mostly intact in Pedersen’s Jærtegnspostil (Danske Skrifter, 79) and in the Castilian
version of the sermon (Cátedra, Sermón, 515/291–309).
48 Ferrer, Sermones hyemales, 157; “mercator Valencie” in the Valencia manuscript (see n. 45
above).
49 Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, 34–5; Perarnau, “Manuscrits,” 197.
50 Catédra, Sermón, 89; Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, 194.