Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 120
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INTRODU CTION
Mary of Egypt (2/4) begins. The matter of the 921 fragment clearly
followed Ceciliu saga and brings us near the end of the annual cycle.
No palaeographic considerations conflict with this relocation of
fols. 1-2. One detail which shows that they must have been written af-
ter fols. 3-4 is a change in the form of the scribe’s insular <f). On fols.
3-4 this is made with two short bars or a <2>-like element attached to
the right of the stave. From fol. 4va the scribe begins to make the at-
tached element <3>-like, with a tail sometimes separate from the stave,
sometimes intersecting it. This form is then found in all the rest of
Hand A’s contribution, including fols. 1-2. Another point to note is
that on fols. 3-4 the scribe writes both <u> and <v>, but from fol. 5 on-
ward <v> is hardly to be found except in roman numerals; <u> is also
the rule on fols. 1-2.
Agnete Loth calculated that the present fols. 3-4 were the third and
sixth leaves of a gathering of eight but estimated that the lost text pre-
ceding fol. 3 would have filled two and a half leaves (Opuscula V,
118). That implies a lost gathering, or more than one, before that of
which fols. 3-4 are remnants. (Lives that might have been included are
of Maurus and Paul of Thebes, both 15/1 and both in Stock. perg. fol.
nr 2, and Anthony, 17/1, whose life is in AM 234 fol.) The lacunae be-
fore and after the complete quire, fols. 5-12, cannot be estimated. If
the abridged Jóns saga helga covered the whole text found in AM 234
fol. and maintained the proportion evident in the extant text on fols.
10vb20-12 of 235, it would have filled some ten leaves (on a par with
Marthe saga and Martinus saga, the longest texts preserved in 235).
In such a form it would have filled almost the whole of a lost gather-
ing after fol. 12.
Fols. 1-2, the middle pair of a lost gathering, come before fol. 13.
We cannot guess the amount of text missing because Hallvarðs saga is
elsewhere extant only as a fragment and, although we know a compa-
rable text of the Jóns saga haptista that follows, we cannot reconstruct
the lost opening of Pétrs saga which is in progress on fol. 13. Fols. 13-
68 then make seven complete eight-leaf gatherings, with the 921 frag-
ment all that is left of the next.
Saints’ days in February and March are not now represented in the
codex and some in January, May and December may be missing. On
the other hand, no certain principle of selectivity can be discemed: the
only texts relating to festal days in September and October, for exam-