Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Qupperneq 283

Acc. 7c, Hs. 94
269
shame, since the typescript of this catalogue, available in the Amamag-
næan library in Copenhagen, contains the most detailed descriptions
available of many of these leaves, and testifies to the considerable ad-
vances the author made in identifying the texts from which the frag-
ments were taken. The mechanic process of hunting down the sources
of some of the fragments is now made considerably easier by the recent
appearance of research tools unavailable to MGA when she worked on
her catalogue. The newly-published Chadwyck-Healey electronic data-
base to the Patrologia Latina,2 and the fourth edition of the Cetedoc
Library of Christian Latin Texts (CLCLT-4), would have helped her to
identify some of the leaves. For example, two leaves formerly used to
bind AM 316 fol., now catalogued as Acc. 7c, Hs. 104 (listed as uniden-
tified in MGA 1987, 111, where the scribal hånd is tentatively described
as German, and the text is described as “Bibeltheologisk Traktat?”), are
in faet parts of books 16-17 of Augustine, De civitate Dei. The rem-
nants of the binding to AM 458 12mo, now Acc. 7c, Hs. 140, described
by MGA (1987, 154) as “Grammatik, ikke identificeret”, tum out to be
lines from Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae Il.xxv-xxvi. MGA (1987,
154) suggests that this fragment was written in Iceland, c. 1300.3 If this
localization of the script is correct, this would be of some interest, since
this would make Acc. 7c, Hs. 140 the only surviving fragment of a me-
dieval Icelandic copy of Isidore’s Etymologiae, a text which was with-
out question widely read in medieval Iceland.4
It is to be regretted that, despite the careful work done to catalogue
the collection to date, the sources of several fragments remain untraced,
and most of those which have been identified remain unedited. If only
2 Released in 1996, described on the world-wide web at http://pld.chadwyck.com/
3 Visible in what remains of the text are lines from Isidore, Etymologiae II.xxv.3, xxvi.2,
xxvi.9, and xxvi.14. The script resembles in several respects the hånd of Reykjavfk Lbs.
fragm. 61, a leaf (dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century) of the so-called Pa-
ter Noster P'salter, taken from the binding of the copy-book of the Church of RefsstaSir
1748-1775 (see Gjerløw 1980,1, 113; II, 115).
4 See, e.g. Lehmann 1936-1937, II, 16, 37, 38, 45, 82; rpt 1962, 341, 358, 363, 392; and
Gjerløw 1962. If Acc. 7c, Hs. 140 is rightly dated to c. 1300, the inference that the text
was written in Iceland would not be unreasonable. Copies of the Etymologiae are listed in
Icelandic registers from Holar, 1396 (DI 3, 613): ysodorus ethymologiarum, and ViSeyj-
arklaustr, 1397 (DI 4,110): Ysidorus ethimologiarum non pienus (see Olmer 1902, 53, nr.
261); and there is no reason to assume that every copy of the book found in Icelandic
scriptoria was an import.