Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Síða 327
AM 241 b VI fol.
317
western area of the country. If it was meant to have been a parish
priest’s book, the priest or his patron must have been a man of means,
for this is a book written by a thoroughly competent, though occasion-
ally inattentive, scribe who planned to have it illuminated (see section 2
above).
The question arises, however, whether the intended user of 241 b VI
was not an ordinary priest but rather a member of some community
where the canonical hours were sung in choir.12 Though the great bulk
of the variable texts are written out in full, the absence of neumes tells
us that the book was not copied for a member of the schola cantorum. It
is suggestive that the collect, homily, and scriptural readings (with the
exceptions noted) not only are given in their entirety but were to have
been highlighted by painted initials. This could indicate that 241 b VI
was intended for the dignitary presiding at the Divine Office, for ex-
ample - though this is meant only as an illustrative guess - the prior at
the Austin house of Helgafell in western Iceland. A stray English intru-
sion into a late medieval Icelandic liturgical text would be unsurprising
in view of the strong English presence in the country in the fifteenth
century. The translation of English preachers’ exempla into Icelandic is
an established faet;13 English (Dominican) influence has been docu-
mented in the office of the national saint Porlåkr;14 and at least one Eng-
lishman in Iceland, Bishop John Craxton, traded in souls as well as
stockfish. Though the evidence is hardly conclusive, Craxton may even
have been an order priest himself.15
12 Apart from the two cathedral churches, any of the secular religious houses of Iceland
might be a candidate; for a list of these see Magnus Mår Lårusson, Kulturhistorisk lek-
sikonfor nordisk middelalder VIII, Copenhagen, etc. 1963, 544-46.
13 See first and foremost Einar G. Pétursson (ed.), Midaldaævintyri fydd ur ensku,
Reykjavlk 1976. - The fragment of an English homiliary studied by McDougall (n. 1)
was penned ca 1300 but could have been exported to Iceland a good deal later; I hope to
write on another occasion about liturgica Islandica as objects of barter on the eve of the
Reformation.
14 Robert Abraham Ottosson (n. 6), ch. IV.
15 A Vatican doeument issued in connection with his episcopal ordination calls him frater,
cf. Diplomatarium Norvegicum XVII, Christiania 1902-13, 353, no. 446 = 939, no. 995.
For the wider historical background and the career of Craxton (Jon Vilhjålmsson) see
Bjom borsteinsson, Enska oldin ( sogu Islendinga, Reykjavlk 1970, here esp. 136-47.