Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Page 319
AM 241 b VI fol.
309
2.
In a series of notes preserved in AM 209 Vil 8vo, Åmi Magnusson lists
five liturgical books that had come to him “Fra Eyre i Skutils firde. rer
allt rifed i sundur, og fortært [added to the right].” The third of these
books he describes as “Breviarii pars, 4to minori, manu non vetustå” (f.
136r). In AM 241 h IXfol. he elaborates on this judgment (“Var vida likt
Breviario Nidros[iensi] impresso. sum stadar £>o ddruvis innrettad.
manu [altered from manus] non erat antiquå, forte circa 1460. vel paulo
prius”) and transcribes nine lessons for Matins of Dominica I in
Quadragesima together with three lessons for the immediately follow-
ing day and two lessons for Thursday in the same week (ff. 1-5); he also
remarks that “Inter lectiones ubiqvæ intersita erant Responsoria et Ver-
sus [the liturgical symbols are added above the line], qvæ ego omisi;
cum ad rem meam nil pertinerent, et præterea similia essent vel fere,
qvæ in Breviario Nidrosiensi et aliis Breviariis inveniuntur.” Nothing
here has a bearing on Nordic saints or Icelandic history, which were the
criteria that usually determined Åmi Magnusson’s behaviour towards
Latin liturgical manuscripts. Several leaves of the breviary must have
been at his disposal, though only one, AM 241 b VI fol., is now known
to exist. It contains the Proprium Officii de Tempore from None of Do-
minica I in Quadragesima to None of the following day. The format is
what Åmi Magnusson calls ‘small quarto’, ca 15.2 x 12.4 cm (cf. [Kr.
Kålund], Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, Copen-
hagen 1889-94, I 211-13, no. 364) and the text is in single columns,
with rubrics and the first letters of important incipits written or touched
in red ink. Spaces for illuminated initials at the beginning of the chap-
ters, Matins lessons, and collect have been left unfilled. The texts be-
ginning on these new lines are continued in any space available at the
end of the previous line. As observed by Lilli Gjerløw (LI I 82), the
chants are without musical notation but are distinguished by being in
slightly smaller script than the scribe’s standard for the rest of the text.
This phenomenon recurs in at least two other Icelandic breviaries, the
fly-leaves of Stockholm isl. perg. 4:o nr 13 and AM 241 b I e fol. (both
mentioned above).
Facsimiles of 241 b VI r-v are available for study in LI II 56-57. The
fourteen lessons copied or still extant from this book were edited ibid. I
84-86 by Lilli Gjerløw, who identified them as borrowed from a horn-