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large Möðruvellir Antiphonal, when particular emphasis is laid on how
comprehensive the book is, it may have been understood that such books
also contained hymns.
Having explored what an aspiciensbók and an Antiphonal were in medi-
eval Iceland, it is worth clarifying what they were not. As the second sec-
tion of this study will show, it has been common for scholars to interpret
the aspiciensbók as a type of Breviary. This makes some sense: the Breviary
and Antiphonal were the two core Office books of the later Middle Ages
and had a significant amount of overlap in their contents, with the Breviary
written for the celebrant and the Antiphonal for the choir. The distribu-
tion and make-up of Breviaries in medieval Iceland, moreover, is complex
and unclear. However, Icelandic Antiphonals and Breviaries were separate
books, and there is some distinct terminology to show this.
The core issue is that there seem to be multiple terms for a Breviary
in Iceland, and at the same time the component parts of the Breviary –
the earlier books that developed into this compilation – are present and
fairly common in the Icelandic lists. Two books that formed the basis for
the Breviary in the thirteenth century, the Collectar and the Lectionary,
appear to be present in the Icelandic lists. According to Gneuss, in the
Anglo-Saxon lists, both collectaneum and capitularium could refer to a
Collectar; because the book contained two types of readings, collects and
chapters, either term could be a fair description.39 Both of these terms ap-
pear frequently in the Icelandic lists.40 We cannot be sure that the terms
sanctorale). It is unclear what types of prayers/liturgical texts are meant by oraciones here.
There is a different Antiphonal, but still with hymns, at Laufás in its 1525 list (DI IX, 331),
though it is possibly one of the two descriptions was made incorrectly.
39 Gneuss, “Liturgical Books,” 112–13. For the development of the Collectar, see Palazzo, A
History of Liturgical Books, 145–48. While this study proceeds following the assumption
that collectarius in Iceland generally refers to an Office book related to the Breviary, there is
one example of a collectarius missalis per annum at Möðruvellir (DI V, 286). I am inclined to
think that this is a wholly different type of book, probably a Missal, and that collectarius is
functioning as a descriptive adjective of some kind; the 1461 Möðruvellir list is particularly
rich in Latin terminology and uncommon liturgical books. The example does, however,
provide some room for doubt.
40 Oleson counts capitularius/capitularium and collectarius separately, and both terms appear
at twelve churches in the 1318 Hólar lists (Oleson, “Book Collections of Medieval Icelandic
Churches,” 503). Both terms do not seem to ever appear together on the same list in 1318,
which could support the idea that they are used to describe the same book, but more close
and detailed research is needed.
THE LOST LITURGICAL BOOKSOF ICELAND