Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Qupperneq 36
II
Fragment of a Thirteenth-Century Irish Missal
a) Stockholm Kungl. Bibi. Isl. papp. 4:o, no. 34. Latin manuscript
fragments used for the binding (see Godel, pp. 306-08).
This manuscript contains excerpts from genealogies, sagas, testa-
ments, etc. The greater number of its 57 leaves were written by the
Icelandic antiquarian Jon Rugman (1636-1679), who lived in Sweden
from 1658 to his death. Ff. 28-41 contain the Logpingsbok of 1663,
written by the Secretary of the Althing (alfiingisskrifari) Påll Gislason,
who, on the last leaf of his copy, addressed it to Benedikt Pålsson, His
Majesty’s Keeper of the Monastery of MoOruvellir in Horgårdalur,
with the date of 20 October 1663. Another note on the same leaf says
that ‘This Thing-book was lent to me by my brother Sira Skuli
Forlåksson. Anno 1665. J(on) T(horlåks) S(on) with my own hånd.’
Skuli and Jon were the sons of Bishop Torlåkur Skulason (1597-
1656). The manuscript was bound in fragments from two medieval
missals, an older one, probably of thirteenth-century date, and a more
recent one, written c. 1400, taken from a Dominican missal.1
The older Stockholm missal fragment consists of one whole leaf,
with the margins somewhat trimmed. The written space, in two
columns, measures 23,5x14 cm; the recto page has 31 lines, the verso
28. Seventeenth-century scribbles are added upside-down in the upper
margin of the verso; the name Jwgrimur bor kelis son is legible. See
Plate 4.
1 The more recent missal fragment contains 14/15 lines of a leaf of two columns. The
written space is 19/20 cm wide, and there is musical notation, now very faded, on four
lines. The script, a late-medieval book-hand dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth
century, has none of the Icelandic characteristics. The contents are from the Sanctorale
with parts of the masses of St. Cecilia, St. Clement, and St. Catherine. The texts
correspond with those of Humbertus de Romanis’ ordinary of 1256, edited by F.
Guerrini, Ordinarium juxta ritum sacri ordinis Fratrum Predicatorum (Romae 1921),
nos. 868-69, 871.