Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Blaðsíða 235

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berg, completed an enlarged revision of the first two parts (Books 1-3
in his version) in Latin, shortly before his death in 1560. His son-in-
law, Caspar Peucer, continued the revision as far as the year 1519
(Books 4-5), but a busy and troubled life frustrated his intention of
bringing the work up to date, and we are thus deprived of a history of
the Reformation by one of its key figures. The various parts of the
enlarged version were published separately between 1558 and 1565,
and the first complete edition of the Melanchthon-Peucer version ap-
peared in Wittenberg in 1572, a folio volume of 746 pages, approx-
imately six times the length of Carion’s original version. Although the
brevity was gone, the prestige of the revisers ensured even greater
popularity for the new version; it saw many editions and was trans-
lated into German, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, and
Swedish.
The first Danish translation was made by Jon Tursen and was print-
ed in Wittenberg in 1544. It follows Carion’s 1531 edition very closely
and even resembles it physically, having been printed by the same
house (George Rhaw). The main difference is that the Danish book
includes an index at the end. The second Danish translation, by Chri-
sten Lauritsen Linved, is an abbreviated version of Melanchthon-Peu-
cer and was printed in Copenhagen in 1595. Other Scandinavian ver-
sions are 1. an abridgement in versified Latin by the Norwegian Hal-
vard Gunnarsen, printed in Rostock in 1596 and 1606, and 2. a Swe-
dish translation of Melanchthon-Peucer, which appeared in Nykoping
in 1649.4
The following notes comment on various appearances (in one case a
supposed appearance) of the Chronica Carionis in Icelandic writings.
They are offered as an initial survey of the extent to which this popular
Reformation work was known among the Icelanders. Of particular
interest is the rather full translation of Carion in British Library Addi-
tional 11153 (see section III below). Five versions of Chronica Cario-
nis, selected from the holdings of the Royal Library, Copenhagen,
have formed the basis of this study.5 To facilitate later reference by
4 The two Danish editions and Halvard Gunnarsen’s Latin edition of 1596 are des-
cribed in Lauritz Nielsen, Dansk Bibliografi 1551-1600 (Copenhagen 1933), pp. 83-4,
174.
5 I have also examined the Low German edition printed in Magdeburg in 1534,
15*