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respects similar in content to Spec. Pen., preserved in AM 672 4to and
three other fifteenth-century manuscripts also incorporates much mate-
rial from CTV. Ole Widding, who first drew attention to the several Ice-
landic versions of the text in AM 672 4to, described in Kålund’s cata-
logue as ‘Parva pars oculi dextri sacerdotis - en håndbog for klerke’,
identified this treatise as an Icelandic rendering of the theological man-
ual Oculus Sacerdotis, compiled by the English writer William of Pagu-
la around the years 1319-1328.21 Although parts of the Icelandic treatise
In hoc nomine, Jesus, sunt quinque litteræ, quæ possunt esse initia istarum dictio-
num, jucunditas moerentium, æternitas viventium, sanitas languentium, ubertas
egentium, satietas esurientium.
See J. W. Marchand, review of R. Klinck, Die Lateinische Etymologie des Mittelalters,
in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 69 (1970), pp. 720-721, and Marchand,
‘Sagena Piscatoris: An Essay in Medieval Lexicography’, in Linguistic Method: Essays
in Honor of Herbert Penzl, Janua Linguarum, series maior 79 (The Hague, 1979), p. 132.
Marchand takes his reference from Gustav Roethe, who discusses a similar etymology of
the name Maria by Reinmar von Zweter (fl. 1241). Roethe cites a fifteenth-century Ger-
man analogue in which the same method used in CTV is employed in an explanation of
the six letters of the name Ihesus: innicheit, (ge)hoersamheit, envoldicheit, sympelheit,
vredsamheit, sorchvoldicheit. See G. Roethe, Die Gedichte Reinmars von Zweter (Leip-
zig 1887), p. 626; cf. pp. 120-122. This method of letter-by-letter etymology was of
course commonly used by medieval preachers (see, e.g., R. Klinck, Die Lateinische Ety-
mologie des Mittelalters (Munich, 1970), p. 165); and therefore it is not necessary to as-
sume that the author of Tveggja postula saga Jons ok Jakobs knew Hugh Ripelin’s text at
first hånd. However, although the ordering of phrases in the Icelandic is a little confused,
the Icelandic version of this etymology is sufficiently close to the wording in C7V to sug-
gest some connection between the two texts. It might be noted that another version of this
explanation of the name Jesus is preserved in a late thirteenth-century manuscript in the
Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 922, ff. 153v-155r:
Jocunditas merentium, Eternitas viventium, Suavitas dolentium, Ubertas egentium,
Sanitas languentium.
See R.E. Kaske, ‘Dante’s “DXV” and “Veltro”, Traditio 17 (1961), p. 197, n. 34; A.
Pelzer, Codices Vaticani Latini 11,1 (Vatican, 1931), p. 331. Plays on the letters of the
name Jesus were very popular throughout the middle ages. Compare, for example, Au-
gustine, De Civitate Dei XVIII, c. 23, CCSL 48 (Turnhout, 1955), pp. 613-614; Pope
Damasus, Carmina 4-5, PL 13, col. 377B-378A; Cornelius a Lapide, ‘Comment. in Joan-
nem I, 29: ECCE AGNUS DEI ...’, Commentarii in Scripturam Sacram VIII (Lyon and
Paris, 1864), p. 892.
21 The treatise in question is preserved in AM 672 4to, ff. lr-55r; see O. Widding, ‘AM
672, 4° - en skyggetilværelse’, Bibi. Am. 20/ Opuscula 1 (1960), pp. 344-349. Parts of
the same treatise are found in AM 624 4to (s. xv), pp. 117-140; AM 684 4to (c. 1400-
1425), lr-8v; and AM 688a 4to (s. xv), ff. 1 Or-14r; see Widding, ‘AM 672, 4°’, pp. 345-
346. On the Identification of the source of the first section of AM 672 4to and its variants
as a reworking of William of Pagula’s Oculus Sacerdotis, see Widding, ‘AM 672 4to’, pp.
348-349; and H. Bekker-Nielsen and O. Widding, ‘Religiøs prosalitteratur: Norge —>