Gripla - 2022, Page 242

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aspiciensbók, probably derive from Anglo-Saxon usage, presumably com-
ing from books brought from England to Iceland in the first half of the
eleventh century, either directly or through Norway or Denmark.10 As
with many aspects of the early Icelandic Church, there may have also been
some German influence on this vocabulary, though it is impossible to say
how much.11
As Gneuss points out, both the Latin term antiphonarius and the
Anglo-Saxon sangboc could refer to choir books for both Mass and Office,
so more specific terms provided more clarity. For the Gradual – the choir
book for Mass – the term Ad te leuaui was sometimes used, on the same
principle as aspiciens: it was the introit for the Mass sung on the first
Sunday of Advent.12 Aspiciens continues to appear in the later medieval
10 The Old Norse terms söngbók, messubók, handbók, and aspiciensbók all have clear Old English
parallels; söngbók and aspiciensbók will be discussed in detail as part of this study. In an
Anglo-Saxon context, mæsseboc referred to a Sacramentary (Gneuss, “Liturgical Books,”
99–101), and messubók would have referred to the same when it was first used in Iceland.
By the fourteenth-century, it likely more often referred to the larger Missal, but we cannot
be certain that that is the case in every instance – both the terms messubók and missale are
used in the fourteenth-century lists and later, and some scribes may have maintained a
distinction between them. Handbók/handboc is without a doubt the least ambiguous term:
it refers to a Manual (manualis), a basic book that priests used for their main ritual duties
outside the core Mass/Office cycle: baptism, marriage, burial, etc. (Gneuss, “Liturgical
Books,” 134–35). The book was called a ritual in continental Europe (Harper, The Forms
and Orders of Western Liturgy, 63), corresponding to the modern title Ritual, and it is
unclear whether the term manualis or handboc came first in English usage.
11 A Messbuch appears in a 1065 inventory for Limburg Abbey (Mittelalterliche Schatzverz -
eichnisse I: Von der Zeit Karls Des Grossen bis zur Mitte des 13, Jahrhunderts, ed. by Bernhard
Bischoff (Munish: Prestel, 1967), 49), as well as a Sequentialbuch, which roughly parallels
the Norse sequentíubók. At Trifels in 1246 there were other messbücher, but also a metten-
buch (book for Matins) (Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse I, 99–100), which does not
resemble the parallel Norse term for a Matins book, óttasöngvabók, but at least suggests
related naming practices, since there is no parallel Latin term. These Matins books may
have been Nocturnals: the list of Matins services for the full year, separated from the rest
of the Antiphonal (Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office, 118–19, 193). In any
case, the precedent for the Icelandic terminology for liturgical books may have come from
multiple sources, and more comparative research is needed into German, Icelandic, and
English book lists, and possibly other traditions.
12 Gneuss, “Liturgical Books,” 102–4. See footnote 21. For further discussion of these specific
books, see Michael Lapidge, “Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England,” Learning
and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. by Michael
Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 56–57,
69–73 and Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 510–11.