Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 175

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the book most frequently listed in the Icelandic church charters. The
universal custom of reciting the Psalter for the dead is enjoined in
Archbishop Eiliv’s third statute, dated 1320:8
And when a priest dies, all the priests of the neighbourhood shall come to the place of
the deceased and have the psalter recited for his soul, and whoever fails in this, shall
pay a fine of half a mare or two shillings to the bishop.
This statute was published in Iceland by Bishop Jon I Halldorsson
of Skålholt in 1323 (DI 2, p. 538).
Descriptions of private devotions are found only in the Sagas of the
Icelandic bishops. Hungrvaka, the history of the bishops of Skålholt -
and Holar - up to the election of Bishop Thorlak II of Skålholt, the
saint, in 1176, says of Bishop Thorlak I, third bishop of Skålholt
(1118-33), that every day he sang one third of the psalter ‘slowly and
attentively’.9 If this implies that he used a tripartite psalter, the psalter
in question could have been an Irish or a German psalter, or also the
very common type of psalter in which the division by tiers of fifty
psalms co-exists with the liturgical division of the psalter in eight parts,
as for instance in the original MS D of our Psalter. The Sagas of St.
Thorlak, bishop of Skålholt 1178-93, the second of that name, and of
St. Gudmund, bishop of Holar 1203-37, are more explicit about the
devotional habits of their protagonists.
The Saga of St. Thorlak, the pearl of Icelandic hagiography, was
written while his memory was still fresh, and his habits of devotion
have been described lovingly and at length. The following texts have
been cited by the hagiographer as forming part of the Saint’s curricu-
lum:10
Moming prayers: Credo, Pater noster, the hymn Jesu nostra
redemptio, St. Gregory’s prayer (Gregoriusbæn), Ps. 1 (Beatus vir).
At church: The praise of the Holy Trinity (lof heilagri prenning)
and of the patron saints of the church in question, the Office of St.
Mary (Marm-tid ir), (private) prayers for all Christians.
Every day: One third of the Psalter, with more ‘between the psalms’
than other people used to sing; Gloria patri, Miserere mei. deus,
8 Norges gamle Love, 3 (Christiania 1849), p. 267.
9 Byskupa sogur, 1 (1938), p. 96. The reading of ‘one third of the Psalter’ seems to
have become a standard expression in Icelandic hagiography. However, there is no Old
Norse or Icelandic expression corresponding to the Irish ‘Three Fifties’ for the Psalter.
>0 Ibid., 2 (1978), pp. 217-20.