Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Page 44

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tion to keep the Christian faith; see Plates 6-7. The ‘we’ of the prece-
ding text for one is replaced by T:
‘E»at vilec lata fylgia måle mino es mer bycker eoss hialpvænlegast
vera oc mestr leifiar viser til paradisar vistar, at bat es upphaf hiålpar
vårrar all<r>ar at vér halldeN (sic) tru rétta ba sem tailb <er> i credo.. .’
The exposition of the creed that follows seems to echo the textus
receptus, and to be unchanged in general terms as far as p. 43, 33
where we read:
‘Hann reis upp af dauba efster pisi sina eN bribia dag. oc vas siban
samvistom vib læresveina sina flora tego daga. . .’
What creed did the homilist expound? The same clause appears in
the creed of the short kristindomsbolkr, in the revised thirteenth-
century law-books, issued by King Magnus Lagabøte, and is also
found in Bishop Åmi I Torlåksson’s kristinréttr for Iceland (as well as
in a late manuscript of the kristinréttr of the Older Frostathing’s
Law):9
‘ ... reis hann upp af dauba ok var siban meb lærisveinum sinum
.xl. daga. frå påskadegi til helga bbrsdags (uppstigningardags)’.
Maurer has adduced good reasons for not dating this text, that is, the
Creed in the context of the royal legislation, earlier than the reigns of
King Sverre and his descendants in the thirteenth century.10 The King,
or the royal jurists, however, certainly did not compose this text them-
selves. They would have chosen a text invested with the authority of
age and long use, preferably, a text sanctioned by archiepiscopal
authority. A Nidaros creed would certainly have been known in Ice-
land when the homilist added his exposition of the Creed to the
homily of All Saints of the Homiliu-Bok, and it is not out of the question
that it may have formed part of the lost twelfth-century collection, from
which both the Icelandic and the Norwegian Homiliu-books are derived.
9 Norges gamle Love, 1 (Christiania 1846), p. 261; 2 (1848), pp. 22, 192, 306; 4
(1885), pp. 50, 195; 5 (1895), p. 16. This text, and also the creed found at the
beginning of Archbishop Pål of Nidaros’ third statute, dated 1336-46, ibid. 3 (1849), p.
285, were printed by K. Maurer, Das Bekenntniss des chrisdichen Glaubens in den
Gesetzbiichem aus der Zeit des Konigs Magnus lagabætir: Sitzungsberichte der philos.-
philol. u. d. hist. Classe der k. Akad. d. Wissenschaften zu Mtinchen, 1892 (Miinchen
1893), pp. 558 sqq.; reprinted by F. Kattenbusch, Das apostolische Symbol, 1
(Leipzig 1894), pp. 199 sqq., with a German translation which was reprinted by A.
Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der alten Kirche3 (Breslau 1897).
pp. 125 sqq.
10 See Maurer, op. cit., pp. 576 sqq.