Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 101

83
docens qualiter ad eum... colloquiis de scripturis sanctis succedant’
(Grégoire, AF I, 70); for lessons 7-9, Gregory the Great’s sixteenth
homily on Matth. 4, 1-12, ‘Ductus est Jesus in desertum..beginning
‘Dubitari a quibusdam solet’, ed. PL 76, cols. 1135-38 (Grégoire,
PD I, 76). For Monday the Breviary adopts Ps.-Haymo, Hom. 29, ed.
PL 118, 203D-204A (Barre, p. 51: Post biduum Pascha facturus), for
Thursday, lessons from Genesis, 15, 1-6.
We do not know when the system of lessons found in the Nidaros
Breviary came into being. It was obviously unknown to our Icelandic
redactor, who helped himself out by using Gregory’s sixteenth homily
almost as a lectio continua for the nine lessons of Sunday and for the
three lessons of Monday and Thursday.
In the ecclesiastical province of Nidaros, as elsewhere, Gregory’s
homilies were standard texts. They are mentioned in two late-medieval
Icelandic ordines as the priest’s curriculum, ‘Hann skal kunna £>y5ing
gubzspialla ok ommiliur Gregorij.. .’*
MS Uppsala C 29, written in the twelfth century, has been identified
by Oluf Kolsrud as the copy of Gregory’s homilies that is listed in the
catalogue of books belonging to Bishop Arne of Bergen (1305-14).1 2
Gregory’s homilies were among the first Latin texts to be translated
into the vernacular. The most important surviving manuscript is the
Icelandic MS AM 677 4° B, written shortly after 1200, edited in
facsimile by D. A. Seip (CCI 18, 1949). It contains ten homilies,
beginning with Sunday 1 after Whitsun. In his introduction to the
facsimile-edition, pp. 24 sqq., Seip has listed fragments of translations
of Gregory’s homilies and works in the vernacular in which they have
been cited. To Seip’s list should be added Gregory’s twentieth homily,
identified by H. Bekker-Nielsen in MS AM 238 XVIII fol., f. 4.3 No
fragment of a translation of the sixteenth homily has come to light, but
1 Ed. O. Kolsrud, Messuskyringar (Oslo 1952), p. 110.
2 See O. Kolsrud & G. Reiss, Tvo norrøne latinske kvæde med melodiar =
Videnskapsselskapets Skrifter. II. Hist.-filos. Klasse 1912, no. 5 (Kristiania 1913), pp.
63-65.
3 H. Bekker-Nielsen, Et overset brudstykke af en af Gregor den Stores homilier:
Opuscula 2/1 = Bibliotheca Amamagnæana, 25/1 (Hafniæ 1961), pp. 37-47. This
homily, ‘Redemptoris precursor quo tempore uerbum’ (PL 76, 1160-70; Grégoire, p.
78 = PD I, 13) is prescribed for Saturday of the Christmas Quatember by the ON, p.
150; it recurs in the BN, p. 39.