Gripla - 2021, Síða 34

GRIPLA32
Theobald, Thomas “er kallaz sæmd ok prydi allz einglanz” (who is called
the honour and splendour of all England), and John are mentioned,82 be-
fore Edmund is introduced.
Af Edmundo is identical with a legend that is only preserved in a col-
lection of Marian miracles in AM 634–635 4to (D), an early eighteenth-
century copy of a lost medieval manuscript, and tells of Edmund’s meeting
with Jesus Christ during his school days in Paris.83 These two texts are
closely related and must go back to a common ancestor. The compiler of
Anecdotes omits a reference to St Thomas Becket (as he has already been
mentioned) as well as the last two lines compared with the text of D and
instead inserts a short text about Stephen Langton, whom the compiler
incorrectly calls Edmund’s successor, when he was in fact his predecessor.
Here we are told that when a psalter Stephen had composed was placed
over a dead man, he was resurrected. I have not been able to find the source
for this anecdote.
6.3 Af Cuthberto
Af Cuthberto is split between Stowe MS 980, f. 41v, and AM 764 4to, f.
36r, twenty-seven lines are in the former and five in the latter. It has pre-
viously been noted that the five lines in 764 can be traced to Bede’s Vita
Sancti Cuthberti, chapters 38 and 39.84 The same is true for the twenty-
saga, ed. Unger, 1143.2), the F-version (“ok a hans halse hanga eitt blekhorn,” Mariu saga,
ed. Unger, 1145.19–20), and Speculum historiale (“in collo eius cornu scriptoris,” see book
8, chapter 118 at SourcEncyMe).
82 John (“jon”) was, according to the compiler of Anecdotes, Thomas’s successor and Edmund’s
predecessor. In the sixty-four-year period that separates Thomas and Edmund, three
men by the name of John were elected for the archbishopric, but each time their elec-
tions were quashed. It is unlikely that an Icelandic compiler would mention any of them.
However, in Thomas saga erkibyskups II, we are told that “Jon af Sarisber” was elected arch-
bishop, see Thomas saga erkibyskups: Fortælling om Thomas Becket erkebiskop af Canterbury.
To Bearbeidelser samt Fragmenter af en tredie, ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania [Oslo]: B. M.
Bentzen, 1869), 454. This must refer to John of Salisbury (d. 1180) but is based on a mis-
conception as John was never made archbishop. In 1176 he became, however, bishop of
Chartres. The compiler of Anecdotes is probably repeating that same mistake.
83 Edited by C. R. Unger in Mariu saga, 727–28. Cf. Kupferschmied, Die altisländischen und
altnorwegischen Marienmirakel, 2:64 (no. 126c, “Erzbischof Edmund”); Widding, “Norrøne
Marialegender,” 76 (no. 227, “Pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol”).
84 Ole Widding, Hans Bekker-Nielsen, and L. K. Shook, “The Lives of the Saints in Old
Norse: A Handlist,” Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963): 307. See Bede, “Vita sancti Cuthberti
Auctore Beda” in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne