Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 248

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is therefore a different, and significantly shorter, book from the truly com-
plete Antiphonal. However, Möðruvellir appears to have owned five differ-
ent copies of this Antiphonal for the summer sanctorale; this may suggest
a scriptorium copying a particular book for sale or distribution, or short
working books being actively used by the resident choir, or perhaps both.
The largest aspiciensbœkr could thus be complete choir books for all
the Office liturgies for the full year, sometimes split into two volumes
but seemingly sometimes bound together into one great tome; others
could be much smaller, possibly more utilitarian volumes.35 The vari-
able structure of the Icelandic Antiphonals could also result in additional
books: the Hymnal, usually expressed as hymnarium in the Icelandic lists,
contained all the hymns for the Office. Hymns could be incorporated into
the Antiphonal in various ways, but were often all collected in a sepa-
rate section in the back of the book, and this section could thus easily be
turned into a separate volume of its own.36 Judging from the frequency
of the term hymnarium in the Icelandic book lists, this separation was
probably the standard practice in the later medieval Iceland.37 This is
perhaps emphasized by the fact that several Icelandic Antiphonals are
specifically noted as including hymns.38 Likewise, in cases like that of the
35 Even the antiphonarius given to Höskuldsstaðir by Abbot Jón at the end of the fifteenth
century, rather than a particularly impressive or even complete book, is noted as being a
small book for the summer season (DI V, 346).
36 As Hughes notes: “Hymns, which are generally proper to seasons, may be given in their
correct place within the offices, lending a distinctive appearance to the book, but are more
usually placed in a separate section at the end or quite separately in the Psalter or in an
independently bound book” (Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office, 161).
Exploring the frequency and distribution across Latin Europe of such separately bound
Hymnals in the fourteenth and fifteenth century could throw additional light onto the
Icelandic book lists.
37 According to Oleson’s count in the 1318 Hólar lists, thirteen churches had one Hymnal
each, and a fourteenth had three copies (Oleson, “Book Collections of Mediaeval Icelandic
Churches,” 504).
38 On the island of Grímsey in 1318 there are two: “Aspiciensbok medur Hymnum fra
Trinititatis viku til Aduentum ad Dominicum de sanctis allt oc so suffragium Aspiciens
Bok forn frä päskum til huijta daga. med ollum Hymnum” (DI II, 443; An Antiphonal
with hymns from Trinity week to Advent, complete for Sundays and the sanctorale, and
also suffrages . . . an old Antiphonal from Easter to the week of Pentecost, with all hymns).
These are both excellent examples of how, even including the hymns, Icelandic Antiphonals
could be very heavily broken up, the latter book covering a mere seven weeks! At Laufás
in 1461: “aspiciens bok oc tekr til de trinitate med ymnvm oc oraciones oc de sanctes” (DI
V, 267; An Antiphonal, and it begins on Trinity week, with hymns and prayers and the