Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Síða 171

BREVIS COMMENTARIUS
151
from Joh. Freder in Rostock, written Whitsunday 1593 (11/6),
see III 92.
The original edition was printed in Copenhagen by Iohannes
Stockelmannus (Hans Stockelmand)1, and we may safely assume
that AJ read proofs of it himself—at least, the text has con-
siderably fewer errors than AJ’s later hooks which were printed
without his personal supervision. Apart from the errors (rela-
tively few in number) corrected at the end of the book2, only
some quite insignificant mistakes have been noted (see correc-
tions and footnotes to the text, I 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 19, 39, 83).
Nearly half of these errors are corrected in ink in the two exem-
plars of Brevis comm. which bear autograph dedications from
AJ (see below), i.e. the errors at I 322, 4®, 530, 816, 1428. The last
error, which is the most serious since it concerns the determina-
tion of the latitude of Hålar, is also corrected in Crymogæa (II
14), where AJ adds the note that he corrected the mistake in the
copies he sent to the King, to both chancellors and others. We
have therefore every reason to believe that the corrections in the
preserved dedication-copies were made by AJ himself.
Brevis comm. was reprinted in Latin and with an English
translation in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations etc.,
London 1598, Vol. I, pp. 515-90, and is found also in later edi-
tions of this work (see above, p. 35). Here as an appendix (pp.
590—91) is included a letter from Bishop GuSbrandur to Hugh
Branham, priest in Harwich, England, dated 25/3 1595. The
letter answers questions arising out of Brevis comm. and is chiefly
of interest to us because it shows that AJ’s work became more or
less immediately known in England3. We know too that AJ sent
the book to David Chytræus (see III 96), and that it quickly
came into the hånds of several other scholars (see above, p. 35).
1 Active as a printer in Copenhagen 1590-1615, see Lauritz Nielsen, Dansk Biblio-
grafi 1551-1600, 1931-33, XXXVI—XXXVII.
3 They are the following: I 21” qui > quæ; 26“ tiraulo > tumulo; 37“ exornerat
> exonerat; 37” tenuires > tenuiores; 4214 Sten > Steinn; 451* immortalitis >
immortalitatis; 54“ Cathedram. > Cathedram Hol.; 6215 et 30 > v. 30; 66“ pro-
clive: accusat > proclive accusat; 7020 libri > liberi.—These corrections have of
course been adopted without comment in the present edition.
3 On Branham and Bishop GuSbrandur’s letter, see also E. Seaton, Literary Rela-
tions of England and Scandinavia, pp. 11-12, 181-2.