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it is recorded that in 1403 the monastery at Pingeyrar in Vatnsdalur
owned a copy of a text entitled compendium teologie dexteram partern
et sinistram partern.'5 A work by the name of Veritas Theologica is in-
cluded in the early fourteenth-century list of hooks owned by a certain
‘b aquila’, who has sometimes been identified as Bishop Ami Sigurd s -
son of Bergen.16 Regardless of whether this identification is correct or
15 DI ID, no. 573, p. 685, lines 12-13. Cf. Olmer, Boksamlingar, no. 45, p. 12. This entry
could, in faet, describe a copy of William of Pagula’s Oculus Sacerdotis, which was ori-
ginally divided into two parts, the Dextera Pars and Sinistra Pars (compiled between
1319 and 1322), later supplemented by a third section entitled Pars Oculi (written in
1327-1328). See below n. 21 and Appendix II.
16 See Andersson-Schmitt and Hedlund, Mittelalterliche Handschriften der Universitats-
bibliothek Uppsala. Katalog iiberdie C-Sammlung, vol. 6, p. 26, MS. C564. The title Ve-
ritas Theologica might derive from the opening words of C7V: Veritatis theologicae sub-
limitas ... Hugh Ripelin’s work circulated under a variety of titles. Compare, for example,
other names of manuscripts of CTV listed in Steer, Hugo Ripelin, pp. 48-146. The book-
list in question is written on the inside back cover of UB Uppsala MS. C564. The list is
headed: ‘hos libros possidet b aqu/la’; and the reference to what may be a copy of C7V
appears as the third item recorded: ‘veritatem theologi[cam] quam malogh appellauit’.
See Gustav Storm, ‘Den Bergenske Biskop Arnes Bibliothek’, (Norsk) Historisk Tids-
skrift 2, II (1880), pp. 185-192, and a fuller treatment of the list by Oluf Kolsrud in O.
Kolsrud and G. Reiss, Tvo Norrøne Latinske Kvæde med Melodiar, Videnskapsselskapets
Skrifter. II. Hist.-Filos. Klasse 1912. No. 5 (Kristiania, 1913), pp. 33-37, 58-70, and facs.
PI. IX. Storm suggests that the Norse term malogh applied to this book corresponds to a
descriptive tag used of the seventh item in the list: ‘flores doctorum snb asseribws quem li-
bram desertum vocauit’, where desertum is a variant reading of disertum, ‘eloquent’
(‘Den Bergenske Biskop Arnes Bibliothek’, p. 189). Kolsrud dismisses this suggestion
out of hånd (‘Tvo Norrøne Latinske Kvæde’, pp. 34 and 58n.), preferring to interpret mal-
ogh as ‘verbose’ and desertum as ‘barren’, i.e. ‘boring’, ‘tiresome to read’. Bjarne Berulf-
sen repeats Kolsrud’s remarks (Kulturtradisjon fra en storhetstid (Oslo, 1948), pp. 94 and
116; on Årni’s books, cf. pp. 91-96 et passim). Nevertheless, Storm is almost certainly
correct. Examples of Latin desertus used in the sense ‘boring, tiresome’ are nowhere at-
tested; on the other hånd desertum as a variant of disertum is by no means unparalleled in
medieval or, for that matter, classical texts. See, for example, Thesavrvs Lingvae Latinae
(Leipzig, 1909-1934; rpt 1987), V.l, col. 1377, s.v. disertvs: ‘de formis: scribitur ...
desertus’; and R.E. Latham, et al., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources III
(London, 1986), p. 628, s. v. desertus: ‘v.... disertus’; cf. exx. s.v. disertus, p. 685.
The tenth item in this inventory is a penitential, said to be a gift from ‘Bishop Årni of
Skålholt’: ‘pen/tcmciarium quem do minus Arno ep iscopus scaloten.v/.v dedit sibi’ (see
Storm, ‘Den Bergenske Biskop Arnes Bibliothek’, pp. 186-187; Kolsrud and Reiss, ‘Tvo
Norrøne Latinske Kvæde’, pp. 58, 66, and PI. IX). Storm identifies this dominus Arno as
Årni Helgason, who was Bishop of Skålholt from 1304 until his death in 1320. Årni
Sigurdsson was Bishop in Bergen from 1305 to 1314. Storm argues that the booklist was
drawn up during or after the year 1308, when Årni Sigurdsson wrote a letter to his name-
sake in Skålholt thanking him for some ‘fair and noble’ items (including, perhaps, the
aforementioned penitential) which the latter had sent (see Diplomatarium Norvegicum
[DN], 21 vols. (Oslo/ Bergen, 1849-1976), II, no. 91, p. 78). If Årni Sigurdsson is, in —>