Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 198
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Kirsten Wolf
et fragili, cypressini odoris, folio perparvo, densoque, cujus cacumina in
aristas se spargunt. Pigmentarii spicas, et folia nardi celebrant, unde ad com-
mendationem unguenti, ait Marcus, spicati pretiosi. Erat enim de nardo In-
dica. Alia enim genera nardi vilia sunt. Joannes qualitatem expressit, dicens:
Libram unguenti nardi pistici, id est fidelis. Pisteuo enim credo, et pistis
fides dicitur, nulla scilicet adulterina admistione corrupta. Quidam tamen
pisticum dictum a loco putant. Fregit autem, vel aperuit Maria alabastrum,
et effudit unguentum super caput Jesu, et etiam unxit pedes ejus, et extersit
capillis suis, et domus impleta est ex odore unguenti. (1597C-D)2
Comestor’s text and the Icelandic rendering are not fully congruent; the
translation is quite paraphrastic. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt
that sph, along with ax, translates spica/spicatus (“spike”/“spiked”).
The doublet rendering suggests not only that at the time the noun spiz in
the meaning “spike” was not commonly known, but also that the trans-
lator (and probably Comestor) thought of the Himalayan perennial herb
as a cereal plant and presumed that the precious ointment was made
from its ears rather than from the roots and spike-like woolly young
stems of the plant, which may be the parts to which the Vulgate’s spica-
tus refers.
If spiz was current in Old Icelandic at the time the translator com-
piled MQrthu saga ok Mariu Magdalenu or whether he introduced the
word cannot be ascertained, but it seems that the word never gained
ground in Icelandic, possibly because of the well established synonym
ax. According to Åsgeir Blondal Magnusson (1989: 937 s.v.) no occur-
rences of spiss “point” are recorded until the seventeenth century. Al-
though the possibility that these later occurrences represent use of the
earlier occurrence in MQrthu saga ok Mariu Magdalenu cannot be ex-
cluded, it seems more likely that they represent an innovation, and there
can be little doubt that the spiss in these later texts is the Danish spids
used as a loan word in Icelandic. The Danish spids in tum goes back to
the Middle Low German spisse (“point”, “tip”, “spike”, etc.), which
would appear to be the origin of also the spiz in MQrthu saga ok Mariu
Magdalenu. However, the Danish loanword spiss gained no more
ground in Modem Icelandic than did the Middle Low German loan-
2 Comestor in tum derived his account from Bede’s In Marci Evangelium Expositio
(IV,xiv,3 [605-607]), which contains a lengthy excursus on the ointment (cf. Comestor’s
“Addition 1” [1598C]).