Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Side 52
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INTRODUCTION
for psalms (as at 9vb33-34 and on 30r) would cause no difficulty. Páls
saga was meant to be read on his feast-day (Post., 236, n. 4). At the
end of Augustinus saga the writer addresses his audience as ‘kiæruztu
bræðr’ (Hms. I, 148/28), which presumably originated in the circum-
stances of Runólfr Sigmundarson as abbot of the Austin house of
Þykkvabær, but could be appropriately used elsewhere. With the Thóm-
as saga first in the volume the sequence of texts is in calendar order:
Thomas Becket 29/12, Anthony 17/1, Conversio Pauli 25/1, Mary
days (Purification 2/2, Annunciation 25/3), Jón of Hólar 23/4, Augus-
tine 28/8. On the other hand, the reading of Vitae patrum was enjoined
as a normal part of conventual edification (cf. Regula Sancti Benedic-
ti, cap. 42), and the slight distinction which can be drawn between this
and the individual saints’ lives might be found to favour the sugges-
tion that the present contents of 234 were originally meant to make
two books.2 For what it is worth, it may be noted that none of the other
extant texts of the Norwegian-Icelandic Vitae patrum is associated
with a lectionary such as the rest of 234 provides; cf. further DI III,
578, 612 and DI V, 288, 290, where the Vitae occur as separate items
at Múli (Aðalreykjadalur) in 1394, at Hólar in 1396 and at Möðruvellir
in both Icelandic and Latin in 1461. On the other hand, the connec-
tions between the Desert Fathers and St Anthony, the influence of St
Anthony’s example on St Augustine (cf. Hms. I, 132) and the rele-
vance of all three to the coenobitic life must be duly acknowledged.
IV. Provenance.
An item in the Skálholt inventory of April 1604 is ‘Helgra manna
Historia í íslenzku upp á kálfskinn’ (Arbók Hins ísl. fornleifafélags
1886, 62). This may be plausibly identified as AM 234 fol. Then, as
we have seen, Þormóður Torfason knew the codex in his time at
school in Skálholt, 1646-54. An inventory of 1674, when Bishop
Þórður Þorláksson came to the see, includes ‘Mariu saga og Helgra
manna (virdt xv aurum)’, an item which Árni Magnússon identified as
234, with the note ‘Er i stóru folio, bandlaust’ (Hándskriftfortegnelser,
2 References to works in two volumes occur here and there in máldagar. Viðey owned
‘Vitæ sanctorum in duobus Voluminibus’ in 1397, DI IV, 111; cf. DI II, 435, 455, V,
288-89.