Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 299

KNOWLEDGE OF JÓNS SAGA
257*
sott’. The other variations from the Guðmundar saga text given in (i)
above cannot be traced to a particular recension of Jóns saga. On the
face of it, it would seem straightforward to accept ‘Jarteikna bok’ as a
reference to the section of Jóns saga which describes the new saint’s
acta from the translation onwards. But this is an uncommon usage and
may deserve discussion. The word bók most often means “codex, vol-
ume” (cf. Else Mundal, Festskrift til Ludvig Holm-Olsen, 260), and
though it also occurs for “liber”, a demarcated section of a larger
work, like the books of the Bible or sections of laws (cf. e.g. Stjórn,
246, 349; NgL V, s.v. bók (3)), it is hard to find a parallel to this in
works of native Icelandic origin. AMOrdbog otherwise records the
term jarteiknabók, jartegnabók only in Flat. II, 436/7, cf. íf. XXXIV,
113, n. 2, and in Post., 681/2 and 13, 709/23. The first of these in-
stances refers to the miracle-book of St Magnús of Orkney, and is gen-
erally accepted by commentators as evidence of a separate dossier-like
collection maintained in Kirkwall from 1137 or thereabouts but evi-
dently known in some form in Iceland as well; see Finnbogi
Guðmundsson, If. XXXIV, Ivii-lxi, where the views of earlier scholars
are discussed. The exx. in Post. are all in Tveggja postola saga Jóns ok
Jakobs. They refer ultimately to the Pseudo-Callixtine book of St
James’s miracles, BHL 4072, a text found as ‘liber II S. Jacobi ... de
xxii miraculis eius’ in the twelfth-century Codex Callixtinus (Hamel,
Úberlieferung, 7, 13); but the Icelandic text is from the version of the
miracles given in Vincent, Spec. hist. XXVI, cap. 30-42 (Foote, Pseudo-
Turpin, 17-18). Vincent refers to the work as ‘libellus ... de mira-
culis’, while the author of the Pseudo-Callixtine prefatory letter speaks
of ‘codex’, Tiber’, and his wish to have the miracles ‘in uno volu-
mine’. The Icelandic editor could be in no doubt of the nature of the
work he calls St James’s jarteiknabók. There is also evidence which
demonstrates the existence of a separate book in which early miracles
of St Þorlákr were collected (and modem editors refer to it as his
jarteinabók, jartegnabók, Bps. I, 333, Bysk.s., 119). The oldest source
is AM 645 4to (c. 1220), in which the writer says precisely: ‘A alþiqe
þeso eno sama. lét Poll biscop raþa vp at bón maNa. jarteiner eNS sgla
Thorlacs biscops þgrer her ero scrifaþar aþesi bóc’ (Bysk.s., 151/41:1-
2). (Another two collections of miracles which apparently had a sepa-
rate existence are found in manuscripts of Þorláks saga C, see íf. XVI,
c-ci.) It is natural to presume that a similar sort of book, recording the