Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 282
Acc. 7c, Hs. 94. Fragments of an English homiliary
in the Amamagnæan collection
Ian McDougall
In an article published a little more than twenty years ago, Merete Geert
Andersen (1979) gave an account of the history of the medieval vellum
fragments in the Arnamagnæan collection organized under the press-
mark Accessoria 7 (Acc. 7). These fragments, largely from Latin litur-
gical manuscripts, were acquired by Ami Magnusson in Iceland and
used as bindings for the manuscripts and printed books in his library.
From about the end of the nineteenth century, and systematically during
the period 1911-1913 and afterwards, as Amamagnæan manuscripts
were dismantled in order to be photographed and refurbished, these
leaves were removed and added to the collection Acc. 7, which remains
an “open signature” in the Amamagnaean collection, to which new
binding fragments will be added as they are discovered. The collection
now comprises more than 700 leaves or remnants of leaves, taken from
the bindings of some 300 Amamagnæan manuscripts. Although some
of this material has subsequently received the attention it deserves,'
Merete Geert Andersen (hereafter referred to as MGA) drew attention
to the need for systematic reexamination of the entire collection of frag-
ments, in order to ascertain which should be grouped together, and to
reconstruct the texts from which they derive. Unfortunately, her
preparatory work on this formidable project, which took the form of a
preliminary catalogue description of each of the fragments (MGA
1987), has never been published. This must be counted as a great
1 Particularly in studies by Erik Eggen (1968,1, XLIII-XLVI, L-LII, II, 135-277, PI. 199-
342), and Lilli Gjerløw (1980,1, 5, 8, 41, 43-45, 49, 51, 61, 75, 92n, 95, 100-110, 112-
114,122,128,135,138-141,143-150, 152-155, 192); in work by Selma Jonsdottir( 1980)
on English Psalter fragments preserved in Acc. 7d, Hs. 5; in an account of Acc. 7d, Hs.
115 by C. Westergård-Nielsen 1977, 275-277, and in analysis of the scribal hånds of Acc.
7aa, Hs. 1, and Acc. 7ap, Hss. 2-3, by Stefan Karlsson (1979, 42).