Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 49
“Codex D” (1). In this group the text-lines are in a smaller script
than that which is used elsewhere.
The facsimiles may give an impression of more difference than the origin-
als do, for instance if the reproduction of a fragment like fac. 324 is
compared to a much more reduced rendering of a full page like fac. 199.
In Icelandic church-inventories (maldagar) from the time before the
Reformation liturgical hooks are frequently mentioned, and among them
“Sequence Books” often occur (se the indices in Diplomatarium Island-
icum: kirkja, bækr). Af ter the Reformation most of them were ruined.
Sometimes the writing was erased and the vellum used again. Sometimes
the leaves were taken apart and used for binding; a few such leaves
have been preserved and then the outward page is usually very worn
(examples in facs. Nos. 173-74, 317—18, 328-29, 336—37).
A few books of this kind survived in a more or less complete form
until they were acquired by Årni Magnusson. He mentions for example
a “Mass-book” from SkarS on SkarSsstrond and another from Gufu-
dalur. The great collector, to whom all historical sources and literary
works, especially from Iceland, were treasures, had no interest in
Catholic liturgical books in Latin. He failed to realize that they were
proud monuments of the Icelandic book tradition and that they described
an important factor of medieval life, the divine service. He was prob-
ably not aware of the faet that some of them were the work of a re-
nowned Icelandic scribe. Their fine appearance with coloured headings
and initials, occasionally also with miniatures, made no impression on
him. If the books contained passages about northern national saints, as
the Norwegian Hallvardus or the Orcadian Magnus, he copied them (dis-
regarding the music) or kept these leaves, but otherwise he treated
the codices with the same vandalism as others had done since the Re-
formation: he took them apart and used the leaves for binding his other
manuscripts or printed books (no doubt many such covers disappeared
when a part of his library was lost in the fire of 1728). We have his
own words that he deliberately tore liturgical books and psalters to pieces
(Årni Magnussons Levned og Skrifter II pp. 219, 223, 251), and the
best confirmation of this is the faet that a number of manuscripts which
never had been in the same place until they came to his collection were
provided with covers which, taken together, prove to be in the same
hånds and contain consecutive texts.
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