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period, in both England and France,13 and in two churches in Vestland,
in Norway, in early fourteenth-century book lists, possibly reflecting the
path of influence from Anglo-Saxon England to Iceland, but certainly also
showing the shared textual, linguistic, and religious culture of Iceland and
Norway at the time.14 Thus, while the term aspiciensbók almost certainly
developed during the eleventh century when Iceland was first developing
its own liturgical culture, the continued appearance of the word in later
centuries was not without contemporary parallels.
As in Anglo-Saxon England, in Iceland there were also additional
terms that could be used to describe Antiphonals, with varying levels of
ambiguity. The Latin term antiphonarius/antiphonarium is uncommon in
Iceland, but fifteenth-century book lists identify an antiphonarius at four
different Hólar diocese churches between 1431 and 1501; one of them even
owned two.15 None of these lists mention an aspiciensbók, and there are
13 Multiple aspiciens are mentioned among the records of the Abbey of St. Bertin in north-
ern France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Alexandre de La Fons-Mélicocq,
“Les calligraphes et les manuscrits des cathédrales d’Arras, de Tournai, et de l’abbaye de
Saint-Bertin,” Revue du Nord de la France 1 (1854): 23). The English Abbey of St. Albans
records an Antiphonal with the “local house name” of aspiciens being repeatedly lent out
to the monks in the fourteenth and fifteenth century (R. W. Hunt, “The Library of the
Abbey of St Albans,” Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R.
Ker, ed. by M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London: Scolar Press, 1978), 254-55;
The St. Albans Chronicle 1406–1420, ed. by V. H. Galbraith (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1937), xxxvii; The English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. by R. Sharpe et
al., Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 4 (London: The British Library/The
British Academy), 555); ten aspiciens appear at the church of Glastonbury on a list probably
written around 1248, and at the priory of Rumburgh in York there are three aspiciens,
one of them bound together with a sanctor(ale), by 1448 (The English Benedictine Libraries,
210, 792). There is a distinct but interesting use of aspiciens in a late fifteenth-century
catalogue at Leicester Abbey, wherein it appears after antiphonarium in the entries for a
number of books, though several Antiphonals have different descriptors (The Libraries of
the Augustinian Canons, ed. by T. Webber and A. G. Watson, Corpus of British Medieval
Library Catalogues 6 (London: The British Library/The British Academy, 1998), 383–85).
14 At Ylmheim/Ølmheim church in 1321: “aspiciens gott detempore et de sanctis pertotum
annum cum bona litera et nota. Jtem annat aspiciens” (DN XV, 11); at Hålandsdal church
in 1306: “æit aspiciens de tempore et de sanctis per annum” (DN XXI, 7).
15 In the 1431 lists, Tjörn in Svarfaðardalr has two copies, one of them in two volumes,
and Árskógr in Eyjafjörðr has one (DI IV, 465–66). In the 1461 lists, Húsavík and
Höskuldsstaðir each own a copy, though the Höskuldsstaðir list makes it clear that this is a
later addition to the máldagi, and the book was given to the church sometime between 1492
and 1501 by Abbot Jón Þorvaldsson of Þingeyrar monastery (DI V, 274, 346).
THE LOST LITURGICAL BOOKS OF ICELAND