Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Síða 233
XIII
The Hours of the Passion of MS AM 241a fol.
Ff. (32)r-(35)r = pp. 23-29 contain the Hours of the Passion, generally
attributed to St. Bonaventura ( t 1274, canonized 1482), and printed
among his works.1 According to the editors of the Analecta Hymnica
50, no. 382, where the hymns of this Office have been printed, the
attribution to St. Bonaventura does not appear in the manuscripts till
after his canonization. Modern scholars are, nonetheless, inclined to
accept his authorship.2
Thirty-eight manuscripts, dating from the early fourteenth century
onwards, have been listed by the editors. Of these, seven have been
chosen for the text edition, MSS A-G. These seven manuscripts
represent two families of texts, MSS ACEFG, containing the longer
Office of three lessons, the main text of the edition, and MSS BD,
containing the shorter Office of one lesson, printed in the apparatus of
the edition. Distinctive features of the BD family are the invitatory
‘Regem Christum crucifixum’ (‘Christum captum et derisum’ in
ACEFG), the single lesson from Is. 53, 2-5, at matins, and a different
choice of chapters, antiphons and responses from that of ACEFG. It is
to this BD family that our Icelandic manuscript belongs.
1 Sancti Bonaventurae opera omnia, 8 (Ad Claras Aquas 1898), pp. LXI-LXIII,
152-58.
Prayers in commemoration of the Passion, distributed per horas, appear in the
Caroline prayer-books; see Wilmart, Precum libelli, pp. 25-26, 34-36, 97-99. This
series, with some variations, is included in some early breviaries, e.g. in the Leofric
Collectar, where they appear twice, between Sunday 5 after Epiphany and Sep-
tuagesima Sunday under the rubric of Cotidianis diebus (pp. 70-71), and on Good
Friday (p. 131). They are also found in a twelfth-century breviary fragment used in
Norway, Oslo Lat. fragm. 667 (= Br 13), ed. AN, pp. 61 sq. Bonaventura’s prayers at
terce and sext read as expanded versions of the corresponding prayers of the older
series.
2 See F. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry2 (Oxford 1953), p. 424.