Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 35

33
seven lines in 980, which relate material from chapters 1–4, 6, 10–11, 13,
25–26, 30, and 33 in the Vita. The text is heavily condensed, but that is not
the compiler’s doing. In a manuscript from the first half of the thirteenth
century, AM 655 XXI 4to, we find two fragments of the same text.85 The
texts of the two manuscripts are very similar except for the end of the nar-
rative where they diverge considerably, and on two earlier occasions where
980 has a slightly fuller text (980] 655):
er adianus het] omitted.
j þeím stad er lindefarnensis he⟨i⟩ter ok fylldi hann sæmiliga byskups
tign j kenningum sínum ok jartegna giorþ] oc syndi hann byscups
tign ikeɴingom ociarteinom.
It is notable that in both cases, 655 omits a name, either a personal name
(Adianus, an error for Aidanus) or a place name (Lindisfarne). In both cases,
980 is closer to the Latin source. This is also the case for the end of the
narrative (now in 764), where Cuthbert cures the monk Valstot of dysen-
tery (blóðsótt). 655 refers to the monk but does not name him.
6.4 Af Beda presti and Af Játvarði konungi
Af Beda presti and Af Játvarði konungi are wholly in AM 764 4to (ff. 36r
and 37v) and have thus been more accessible to scholars, who have given
these texts some attention. Af Beda presti tells an anecdote about why Bede
is called venerabilis and not beatus. It features a man who has trouble find-
ing the correct words to finish inscribing Bede’s burial marker and has
only managed to come up with “Hac sunt in fossa.” When he returns to it
later, he finds that it has miraculously been finished with the words “Bede
venerabilis ossa.” The anecdote is largely identical with a part of a legend
in Holm perg 4to 1 (E), which in turn appears to have been incorporated
and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985 [1940]), 280–84.
85 Edited by Þorleifur Bjarnarson in Leifar fornra kristinna frœða íslenzkra: Codex Arna-
Magnæanus 677 4to auk annara enna elztu brota af ízlenzkum (sic) guðfrœðisritum
(Copenhagen: H. Hagerup, 1878), 168. Hans Bekker-Nielsen has suggested that AM
655 XXI 4to might have been a Benedictine service book, see Hans Bekker-Nielsen,
“Homiletisk haandbog? To fragmenter med tilknytning til fastetiden,” Opuscula 1 (1960):
343–44.
ANECDOTES OF SEVERAL ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY