Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Síða 45
IV
Fragment of Twelfth-Century Gospels
Reykjavik Lbs. fragm. 58 (see J. Benediktsson, p. 13) consists of a
bifolium of non-consecutive leaves; there are four leaves missing
between f. (1) and f. (2). The upper margins have been somewhat
trimmed. The written space is 14,5/15x8,3 cm, with 26/27 long lines
to the page.
The bifolium dates from the late twelfth century. The script is a
regular, rounded book-hand. In the system of abbreviations, the Insular
symbols for et and enim, the latter placed between two dots, have been
preferred. The Caroline contraction for et appears once. Corrections,
and additions of letters and words over the line, have been marked
with a comma on the lille. To indicate reversal of word order, two dots
have been used, placed over the words or passages in question. The
same reversal-sign was used in the Icelandic Homiliu-Bok c. 1200.1
See Plates 12-13.
In the upper margin of f. (l)r there is an addition in a sixteenth-
century (?) hånd, written upside-down, ‘Maaldaga Registur Wallna
Kirkiu’. In the outer margin of the same page is a note in a cursive
hånd: ‘A kongst(odvm) morkud | kyr 3 Vetur gra | J>ar vantor Hus J vt af
Bænum’. Kongssta&ir is a farm in the parish of Vellir, mentioned in the
Vellir church charters. St. Olav’s Church of Vellir in Svarfabardalur
(Eyj.) was made the prebend of the scolasticus (skolameistari) of
Holar Cathedral School by Bishop Laurentius Kålfsson (1324-31).2
As a ‘school farm’, however, it had traditions from the times of Bishop
Gudmund (1203-3 7).3 The oldest extant church charter of Vellir dates
from c. 1318, and the last one before the Reformation was written in
1 See Seip, p. 63.
2 Biskupa sogur, 1 (1858), p. 850; Laurentius Saga = Rit Handritastofnunar Islands,
3 (Reykjavik 1969), pp. 102 sq.
3 For the Vellir library, see article ‘Bibliotek’: KLNM 1, p. 530.