Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 32

GRIPLA30
Stowe MS 980 does not only help to fill the second lacuna of Dunstanus
saga. Even though most of the texts incorporated into Anecdotes are short-
ened in some way, there are instances where they offer a more original
state of the text. For example, in AM 180 b fol., the false coiners are said
to lose both their hands and their feet, and a few lines later, they are said
to have been executed. The source for this anecdote is, according to Fell,
either Eadmer’s Vita sancti Dunstani or Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum
historiale, some details being closer to the latter.75 In both, the proper pun-
ishment does not call for execution but dismemberment of the criminals’
hands, and so it is in Anecdotes.76 Many other readings from Anecdotes can
be used to correct or clarify parts of the saga as it is preserved in AM 180
b fol.
6.2 Af Anselmo and Af Edmundo
Anselm’s and Edmund’s tales are both found in collections of miracles
and legends that accompany Maríu saga in Icelandic manuscripts. For
Anselm’s life, the compiler’s sole source is a version of the Marian mira-
cle Little Devil in Church.77 Three versions of this legend are preserved in
six Icelandic manuscripts. All have been edited by C. R. Unger and are
printed in Mariu saga (1871): from Holm perg 4to 11 (St), with readings
from Holm perg 4to 1 (E) on pp. 174–80; from AM 240 IX fol. (Ka), and
AM 240 V fol. (Kf), on pp. 468–73 (although printed separately this is
the same version as the one found in MSS St and E); from AM 634–635
4to (D), on pp. 1142–45; and from Holm perg 8vo 1 (F), on pp. 1145–47
(incomplete). The Old Norse-Icelandic miracles probably represent three
independent translations of a Latin text more or less identical with the one
included in Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale.78
75 Fell, “Introduction,” xxxiii–xxxiv.
76 Arngrímr Brandsson (d. 1361) includes a version of this anecdote in his Guðmundar saga
byskups and is in agreement with Anecdotes regarding the punishment. See Fell’s discussion
in “Introduction,” lxxxi–lxxxii.
77 Cf. Ole Widding, “Norrøne Marialegender på europæisk baggrund,” Opuscula 10 (1996):
34 (no. 13, “Little Devil in Church”); Irene R. Kupferschmied, Die isländischen und alt-
norwegischen Marienmirakel, Die altisländischen und altnorwegischen Marienmirakel, 2 vols.
(Munich: Herbert Utz, 2017), 2:28–29 (no. 59, “Teufel als Affe”).
78 For Vincent’s text, see book 8, chapter 118 in the Douai manuscript (Ms Douai BM 797),
at SourcEncyMe (Sources des Encyclopédies Médiévales, corpus annoté) http://sourcencyme.
irht.cnrs.fr. Irene R. Kupferschmied has recently discussed this legend and the differences