Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1996, Page 168
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Of course, this sort of parallel may well be purely coincidental. The Ice-
landic author couples this scriptural citation with another Biblical echo
which is not included in the discussion of charity in CTV. Compare
Spec. Pen. 415-416: ‘og aullvm peim sem med pessv marki finnazt a
d[o]msdeige skipar gud til hægri handar sier. og blezar Joa med himn-
eskri blezan’, and Mt 25:33: et statuet oves quidem a dextris suis, hedos
autem a sinistris.
It should at least be apparent from this rather long-winded account of
the contents of Spec. Pen. and its putative sources that it cannot be taken
for granted that the Icelandic author worked from a single Latin text. If
he did, then the composite nature of his source is evident from the vari-
ety of texts which must be drawn upon to reconstruct the author’s Latin
exemplar. Not only did the Icelandic author (or the author of his Latin
exemplar) not restrict himself to a single source, he was also reluctant
to follow slavishly the order of material in Latin texts he appears to
have consulted, but preferred to sample from various sections of his
sources as he pleased. As we have seen, some of the parallels even from
fairly brief passages in his main source, CTV, require rearrangement to
suit the Icelandic. This penchant for rearrangement is evident especially
in cases where apparent reordering and paraphrasing of the Latin are
sufficiently drastic that at first glance the relationship of the Latin to the
Icelandic is almost obscured. Compare, for example, Spec. Pen. 212-
221 and the Latin parallel in C7Y. The opening lines of this passage,
Spec. Pen. 212-213:
Jra bat er reidi hvn er og af sinv kyni mortale. pat er reide ad fysazt at hefna
hvad Gvdi tilheyrir eda hans vmbods monnum.
appear to draw, albeit loosely, on CTV IILxxiv. 116B, 4-9:
Ira ex suo genere est peccatum mortale, quia secundum Isidorum, ira est an-
imus concitatus ad pænam provocanti inferendam.
The next several sentences in Hugh Ripelin’s text are now passed over
in the Icelandic, before another section of C7V is paraphrased. Com-
pare Spec. Pen. 213-214:
Reidi ma vera synd veniale pat er pa er hann hef<t>ir hana skiott og hefnizt eigi.
and C7Y IILxxiv. 116B, 23-29: