Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Side 25
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Grates honos hierarchia (AH 50, no. 239), and Alludat letus ordo
(AH 53, no. 189). Both sequences are prescribed by the Nidaros
Ordinary; Grates, however, is not known to have survived in other
manuscripts. Other fragments from these bindings are described in the
present study.
The greatest harvest of Icelandic manuscripts, however, was to be
reaped by Åmi Magnusson (1663-1730).6 A leamed Icelander on the
ascent in the academic world of Copenhagen, he was commissioned in
1702 by King Frederik IV to produce a complete cadastral of Iceland,
where he subsequently stayed for the best part of ten years. His
importance as a collector of Icelandic medieval manuscripts and
charters cannot be over-estimated, but as regards Latin liturgical
manuscripts, he seems to have suffered from a blind spot. We can do
no better than quote Jon Helgason in his introduction to Eggen, vol.
1, p. XLVII:
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 probably not aware of the faet that
some of them were the work of a renowned Icelandic scribe. Their fine
appearance with coloured headings and initials, occasionally also with minia-
tures, made no impression on him. If the books contained passages about
northem national saints, as the Norwegian Hallvardus or the Orcadian
Magnus, he copied them (disregarding the music) or kept these leaves, but
otherwise he treated the codices with the same vandalism as others had done
since the Reformation: 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 (Åmi
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.
From among the fragments of Latin liturgical manuscripts found in
the Copenhagen, Stockholm and Reykjavik libraries, we have tried to
6 For a short biography, see H. Bekker-Nielsen & O. Widding, Arne Magnusson.
Den store håndskriftsamler (København 1963); English edition: Arne Magnusson. The
Manuscript Collector (Odense 1972).