Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Qupperneq 91

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These four themes are developed with citations from Scripture and
from St. Ambrose, Galienus, and St. Bernard. It ends on a citation
from St. Bernard:20
Affirmate ergo lectionem quia liber appensus est ante oculos in quo scripta
sunt obedientia et humilitas christi ihesu et abstinentia ut sibi compesciamur
iuxta dictum bernardi. quam dulciter bone ihesu cum hominibus/ conuersatus (5)r
es. quam habundanter multa et magna hominibus largiri dignatus es. quam
aspera pro hominibus passus es. ut liceat sugere mel de petra oleumque de
saxo durissimo amplectenda crucis supplicia. Rogemus ergo etc.
St. Thorlak is the only non-Roman saint honoured with a sermon in
MS Uppsala C 301. Whatever the origin of the sermon, its adaptation
and insertion in the series is likely to have taken place in Iceland. Is
the manuscript either of Icelandic origin or copied from an Icelandic
exemplar? The handwriting has nothing specifically Icelandic about it,
except perhaps for the treatment of the loop of the g which produces a
form similar to that of Icelandic fourteenth-century scribes. From
another fragment it appears that Nicolas de Gorran was known in
Iceland.
MS AM 241b la fol. (see Kålund, AM 1, pp. 211-12) is one leaf
from a book of sermons. To judge from the creases in the partly
damaged margins, it has served as a book cover. The outer measures
seem to have been c. 29x21,5 cm, those of the written space
21,5x15,5 cm, with 28 lines to the page in two columns. Rubrics are
in red; each sermon begins on a decorated initial over two lines, filled
in with the usual fine filigran scrolls which also protrude into the mar-
gin. It is written in a regular, fourteenth-century book-hand, not yet
very quadrangular. The handwriting itself has no Icelandic features, but
the spelling of valide, line 24 of the verso, betrays its Icelandic make.
The leaf contains the following sermons by Nicolas de Gorran:
[De uirginibus. Que parate erant (Matth. 25,10).
Festinantes ingredi in illam requiem. . .] Serue bone. . . omnia parata sunt U)r
uenite ad nupcias. = Schneyer, Repertorium, op. cit., p. 314, no. 891.
sermo de eisdem. Adducentur regi uirgines post eam. Ps. (44,15).
Secure uadit ad festum. . . prudentes uirgines acceperunt [oleum], = Ibid., no
892.
20 Cf. Sancti Bernardi Epistolae, no. 106, Ad Magistrum Henricum Murdach: PL
182, 242B.