Gripla - 2022, Page 252

GRIPLA250
Neither brevarius nor brefér appear in the 1318 Hólar lists, which could
indicate that the Breviary was still only coming into use in Iceland early
in the fourteenth century. The relative rarity of these terms in the later
period – alongside the more widespread circulation of Collectars and
Lectionaries, some of which were presumably Office Lectionaries – sug-
gests that even while Icelanders began to use Breviaries, they never became
the sole Office book for the celebrant. Many of the extant examples of
brefér also show books with distinctive or unusual features, including parts
of the Mass liturgy being incorporated into the book, and are therefore
in need of more focused study.50 For present purposes, the terminology
of the book lists provides sufficient evidence to show that the Icelandic
Antiphonals were distinct books, whether used in conjunction with a
Breviary or its component parts.
Finally, the frequency of aspiciensbœkr in Icelandic collections can help
emphasize their importance to liturgical practices: they were a standard
and widely distributed type of book. There are thirty-seven aspiciensbœkr
in the great 1318 collection of Bishop Auðun of Hólar, distributed among
twenty-two churches;51 as Oleson notes in his count, the majority of these
two at Álftamýri in 1378 and 1397 (DI IV, 12–13, 147), one listed in 1467 among the private
debts of Björn ríki Þorleifsson after his death (DI V, 504), one at Árskógr in 1461 (DI V,
262), and one at Holt undir Eyjafjöllum around 1480 (DI VI, 330). One brevarius noted by
Olmer, at Viðey monastery, is listed as a brevarium Augustini and was thus presumably a
very particular book for the liturgy of the Augustinian canons (DI IV, 111); the other is at
Melstaðr in 1461 (DI, 338); a third, at Tjörn in 1431, is discussed below and is not noted by
Olmer (DI IV, 465).
50 One of the books at Möðruvellir in 1461 is described as a “brefere de sanctis med Messum
syngiande j tueim hlutvm fra jonsMesso baptiste til aduentu” (DI V, 286; A Breviary for
the sanctorale, with Masses, with music, in two parts, from the feast of John the Baptist
to Advent). This book thus only contains the sanctorale section of the full Breviary, not
the temporale, but syngjandi suggests it does include musical notation, making it a sort of
Noted Breviary. Yet it includes some sort of Mass texts as well, and the division into two
parts suggests a large book. It would appear that the book represents a type of ultra-comp-
lete liturgical volume, a Noted Breviary-Missal, but limited to a narrow part of the calendar,
the summer sanctorale.
51 There are purportedly two references to aspiciensbœkr from older máldagar: an 1179 one
from Miðarnarbæli undir Eyjafjöllum, and a 1270 one from Vallanes (DI I, 255; DI II, 84).
However, these dates are pure guesswork from the editors of the first two volumes of
the Diplomatarium Islandicum, and – like most máldagar – the manuscripts they are refe-
rencing are from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; lacking an explicit dated
event upon which to base the dating, as with Bishop Auðunn’s 1318 collection, we cannot be
confident that the sources of the early modern scribes were any older than the fourteenth