Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1996, Page 176
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The once worrisome doublet/rez/ur eda veizlur may be reasonably read
as a simple tautological rendering of convivia; although it might still be
argued that fæzlur developed out of a corruption of fåtækum in the ori-
ginal Icelandic text. In any case, since the text of BD is clearly doser to
the original reading of Spec. Pen. 142-144, there is no further compel-
ling evidence for questioning the stemma proposed by Jonna Louis-Jen-
sen; and it can stand as it is.
The parallel texts printed in Appendix I are presented in the hope that
they will be of help in the eventual identification of a more precise
source for Spec. Pen. At the same time, they may serve to give some
impression of the popular Latin literature of pastoral care which circu-
lated in Iceland during the fifteenth century.64
Appendix I: Latin sources of Spec. Pen.
Lines in Spec. Pen. are indicated on the left. Scriptural citations are taken from
R. Weber et al., edd., Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, except where
they are recorded within a Latin text cited as a source. In such cases, scriptural
passages and titles of Books of the Bible follow the form given in the edition
from which they are cited. Parallels from Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg, Compen-
dium Theologicae Veritatis (CTV), presented here are taken from the text print-
ed in Venice in 1492, reproduced in S.C.A. Borgnet, ed., Opera omnia Alberti
Magni, vol. 34 (Paris, 1895). Book and chapters are indicated by Roman nu-
merals. Arabic numerals accompanied by letter ‘A’ or ‘B’ and a second set of
Arabic numerals mark the appropriate page, column and line in Borgnet’s edi-
tion. Variant readings which are doser to the Icelandic rendering are inserted in
italics and the relevant reading in Borgnet’s edition is recorded in a footnote. In
cases where parallels are less exact, I have usually avoided paring down the
Latin to fit the Icelandic. I have tended instead to cite the immediate context of
see Morin, CCSL 103, p. XLIII). Further, albeit slight, evidence that the author of Spec.
Pen. knew Caesarius’ sermon through an intermediary such as Chobham’s Summa Con-
fessorum might be seen in Chobham’s version of the parallel to Spec. Pen. 141-142,
where the Icelandic text: til heyrir ... til heyrir accords somewhat more closely with
Chobham’s repetition of the verb oportet (‘is fitting’), than with the variation between
oportet and expedit (‘is expedient’) in Caesarius’ text. See Appendix I, p. 171, n. 13.
64 Research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Hu-
manities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful to Jonna Louis-Jensen and Joseph
Goering, who read through an earlier draft of the article and made many helpful sugges-
tions and corrections.