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almost entirely correct, but appears in such an odd place that it is hardly
surprising it has been unnoticed or ignored. Tucked away in the index of
the second volume of his edition and English translation of Thómas saga
erkibyskups, from 1883, Eiríkr Magnússon states:
Aspiciens-bók, an antiphonary of the pars hiemalis of the church
service according to the Roman Breviary, i.e., from the first Sunday
in Advent to the first Sunday in Lent, derives its name from the first
word in the respond of the first lesson on the first Sunday in Advent:
“aspiciens a longe, ecce video Dei potentiam venientem, etc.”67
The only error here is the seasonal restriction: presumably the relation to
the first Sunday in Advent led Eiríkr to assume that aspiciensbœkr were
only winter books, but multiple máldagar attest to summer aspiciensbœkr.68
The definitive misinterpretation of aspiciensbók came at the end of a
study of Hólar cathedral which Guðbrandur Jónsson published piecemeal
in Safn til sögu Íslands between 1919 and 1929. In the final section of this
study, Guðbrandur provides a detailed study of the book lists of medieval
Hólar, including definitions. In the section on Office books, he states:
Frammistöðubækur voru afarstór brefver, er ætlað var að standa á
kóri, og voru með svo stóru letri að margir gátu lesið á þær og úr
fjarska; voru líka kallaðar aspiciensbækur.69
(Frammistöðubækur were very large breviaries, which were intended
to be placed in the choir, and had such large letters that many could
67 Thómas Saga Erkibyskups: A Life of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Icelandic, ed. by Eiríkr
Magnússon (London: Longman, 1875–83), Vol. 2, 589. The difficulty of finding Eiríkr’s
definition is magnified by the fact that this index entry is a reference to a footnote in the
preface of the volume, wherein Eiríkr is noting the presence of English books in the mál-
dagar corpus (Thómas Saga, Vol. 2, ix).
68 For summer books, see for example DI II, 428, 430; for books covering the full year, see
DI IV, 182. As discussed earlier, because of their size Antiphonals were often divided up,
and this was certainly true of the Icelandic aspiciensbœkr.
69 Guðbrandur Jónsson, Dómkirkjan á Hólum í Hjaltadal: Lýsing Íslenzkra Miðaldakirkna, Safn
til sögu Íslands og íslenzkra bókmennta að fornu og nýju V, Nr. 6 (Reykjavík: Prentsmiðjan
Gutenberg, 1919–29), 408. Here Guðbrandur uses the term tíðabækur to describe Office
books, as opposed to messubækur, books for the Mass. This is Guðbrandur’s own usage,
which I do not believe reflects, at least not in a straightforward way, the broader sense of
the medieval tíðabók. See note 47.
THE LOST LITURGICAL BOOKS OF ICELAND