Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 185

167
Omnis liber sacræ scripturæ håbet proprias divisiones et proprias numeri
significationes, verbi gratia. Psalterium dividitur in tria, et præfert tria sæculi
tempora, videlicet, ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia, quibus omnes justi contra
vitia et peccata pugnaverunt, quorum victorias psalmi canunt. Qui psalmi in
quindecim decadas dividuntur, quæ veluti totidem gradus cuidam scalæ, ad
cælum erectæ, inseruntur, per quam victores de valle lacrymarum scandant ad
regna cælorum.
Honorius’ fortune in the Province of Nidaros is extraordinary. His
Gemma animæ and his Speculum ecclesice were used by the compilers
of the Icelandic and Norwegian vemacular homilies, which have
survived in manuscripts dating from c. 1200 and c. 1220 respectively;
his Elucidarium is among the oldest Icelandic translations; and his
work was extensively used by the redactors of the thirteenth-century
Nidaros Ordinary (see ON, pp. 96 sqq.).
We should therefore perhaps not wholly exclude the idea that the
Pater Noster Psalter could have originated in Norway. All the
calendars identified as formerly belonging with the Psalter are based on
the calendar of the Nidaros Ordinary, and certain relationships with
the Nidaros liturgy, in particular as regards the prayer following ps.
100,3, would seem to point in the same direction.
Nineteen Icelandic manuscripts of the Pater Noster Psalter have
survived, fifteen manuscript fragments and four manuscripts known
only by the excerpts made by Åmi Magnusson. There are two
Norwegian fragments, one Swedish. In the course of time some of
these manuscript fragments received marginal additions, with or with-
out musical notation, adapting them to the ferial Office. But we have
also seen that in Iceland a twelfth-century foreign psalter, MS D, in
the fifteenth century was adapted to the Pater Noster Psalter family.
The number of surviving Icelandic breviary fragments is very small.
Four breviary fragments have been described above (pp. 83-93); more
are likely to come to fight, but their number will hardly approach
anything like the nineteen copies of our psalter. In Iceland, the psalter
itself may actually have served as a makeshift breviary, at least before
the breviary texts became generally available to the clerics, and before
copies of breviaries could be made. According to its Suscipe-prayer,
MS C was written for a woman, and MS P seems to have been