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winter halves, or with even more divisions. This type of division would
not generally affect the contents or their organization.31 Breaking up
large liturgical books into summer and winter parts was a widespread
medieval practice.32 In the Icelandic book lists, such divisions are usually
communicated as being from one feast day to another, most commonly
the beginning of Advent to Easter.33 There were also two central types of
liturgical cycle around which books were structured, usually communi-
cated in Icelandic lists with the terms de tempore (temporale) and de sanctis
(sanctorale): the temporale cycle, which covers the moveable holidays,
such as Easter and Pentecost, in addition to Christmas, and the sanctorale
cycle, which covers the feasts of saints. Books could be only de tempore
or de sanctis, but a truly complete volume included both cycles, and thus
incorporated all the liturgical events of the year. While some medieval
Antiphonals mixed the temporale and sanctorale sections together, creating
a single unit for the full calendrical year, it was more common to maintain
them as separate sections.34
Some examples from the Antiphonals of the 1461 Möðruvellir list
can help clarify the full range of these divisions. One of the Möðruvellir
books is described as an “antephonarius de tempore et de sanctis per an-
num sæmiligur” (an excellent Antiphonal for the temporale and sanctorale
through the whole year). It was thus a truly complete Office choir book,
noted as being sæmiligr, and probably an expensive and exceptional book.
Another, however, is given as “antefonarivm de sanctis fra jonsMesso
baptiste til aduentu” (an Antiphonal for the sanctorale from the feast of
John the Baptist to the beginning of Advent). Thus, it is strictly a book of
saints’ feasts from 24 June to a saint’s feast marking the end of the sancto-
rale before the moveable beginning of Advent between 27 November and 3
December; this may have been St. Cecilia on 22 November. This Antiphonal
31 Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office, 193. Hughes notes that the most ext-
reme example he is aware of is an Antiphonal from the monastery of El Escorial, which is
divided into a set of 223 separate books.
32 Palazzo, A History of Liturgical Books, 158–59, 171.
33 Some Icelandic liturgical books could focus on even shorter periods, most exemplified by
the jólabók (Christmas book), which may have included texts for the Mass or Office, or
perhaps both, for the Christmas feast and perhaps some period around it. At least four
churches had jólabœkr at some point in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Svalbard,
Illugastaðr, Gufudalr, and Glæsibær (DI II, 440; DI III, 520, 590; DI V, 300, DI VI, 203).
34 See Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office, 243.
THE LOST LITURGICAL BOOKS OF ICELAND