Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Síða 20
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and again, gifts made to the church, by laymen or by clerical persons,
would be recorded.2
The oldest extant original charter is that of the Church of Reykholt
(Borg.), written by seven hånds between the years 1185 and 1275.
About 1206 Snorri Sturluson became owner of this church, and a gift
of belis and other things, presented by Snorri and his wife, was entered
in 1224 or somewhat later.3 Books are not mentioned in this charter.
Before 1200 they appear only sporadically in the charters, while the
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century charters contain detailed book-lists.
Only a small part of the original charters have survived. Most of
them were saved for posterity by their inclusion in the episcopal
registers, of which two are outstanding, covering between them the
whole country. They are the registers of Bishop Vilchin of Skålholt,
dated c. 1397 (DI 4, pp. 27-240) and of Bishop Au6un of Holar,
dated c. 1318 (DI 2, pp. 423-89); the latter is the oldest extant series
for the diocese of Holar.
A perusal of the Icelandic church charters brings home to us the
enormity of our loss. As everywhere else, the inroads on the manu-
scripts started long before the Reformation. Good vellum was always
in demand, and obsolete and partly outwom liturgical manuscripts
could be re-used for charters and new manuscripts. Sometimes a few
un-erased words reveal the identity of a lost manuscript, as for instance
those left on the verso of a charter written ‘å Eyri i Sey6isfir6i’ in
1470 (DI 5, pp. 557-58): ‘corpora mentesque sanctificet. per. Prefatio’,
that is, the end of the secret ‘Haec hostia, domine, emundet nostra
delicta’ of Sunday 3 after Epiphany, followed by the preface, actually
the only witness of a lost twelfth-century sacramentary or missal with
the old prefaces. In faet, fragments of manuscripts dating from the
eleventh and twelfth centuries are scarce.
The Reformation itself (1550) wrought no Wholesale destruction or
confiscation of liturgical manuscripts. An episcopal register from the
2 See article ‘Måldagi’: KLNM 11 (1966), pp. 264-66. See also the following articles
by T. J. Oleson: Book Collections of Mediaeval Icelandic Churches: Speculum 32
(Cambr. Mass. 1957), pp. 502-10; Book Donors in Mediaeval Iceland: NTBB 44
(1957), pp. 88-94; Book Collections of Icelandic Churches in the Fourteenth Century:
NTBB 46 (1959), pp. 111-23; Book Collections of Icelandic Churches in the Fifteenth
Century: NTBB 47 (1960), pp. 90-103. The måldagar in which copies of the Nidaros
Ordinary are mentioned, have been listed in the ON, pp. 39-52.
3 See H. Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script, no. 1.