Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 342

GRIPLA340
Rubrics
The second development is the use of rubrics for Legenda material that
only refer to the Quest and not the Cross. In these six manuscripts, the
story of the cross is not abbreviated, but instead the Legenda is found in
full, further exemplifying the remarkable use of rubrics that ignore the
role of the Cross in the story. Our first example is found in AM 65 a 8vo,
dated to the seventeenth century. That the Quest was the most important
part of the text to the scribe copying or recording it is demonstrated by the
title, which draws special attention to the beginning of the Legenda (i.e.,
the Quest) through the rubric Eitt æfintir af Adam.45
For the medieval audience, rubrics “gloss the text and cue ‘sedimented
reading habits’ which in turn determine the context for the texts’ inter-
pretation. For the modern reader, the rubrics serve as written records
of the reading experience and allow us to filter through the ‘sedimented
layers’ of […] reading habits and interpretive patterns.”46 The text itself
tells us a lot about what was interesting or important to readers in the time
period in which the manuscript was produced, but the rubrics give us a
further look into how these texts were classified and read. AM 65 a 8vo
offers a first glimpse at the trend of rubricating the Legenda material with
titles that label the ensuing story as that of Adam and Seth rather than that
of the story of the True Cross.
Further examples include the late seventeenth-century Lbs 457 4to,
which titles the Legenda material Fróðleg frásaga af Adam og Seth hans syni,
assigning no importance to the material that follows the Quest.47 The
rubric appears on the last line of 154v, but 155r is blank, and text begins
on the first line of 155v.48 Similarly, ÍBR 74 4to, which is dated to 1782,
includes the Legenda which is titled Hier skrifast Eitt Æfinntyr af Seth.49
This specification that the text is about Seth is entirely the doing of the
scribe, as ÍBR 74 4to is a transcript of Lbs 1228 8vo, which entitles the
45 Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 65 a 8vo, 59r.
46 Benjamin C. Withers, “Unfulfilled Promise: The Rubrics of the Old English Prose
Genesis,” Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999): 112.
47 Reykjavík, Landsbókasafn Íslands – Háskólabókasafn, Lbs 457 4to.
48 This is a rather strange occurrence, being the only blank page in the manuscript, and it is
not at the beginning or end of a quire.
49 Reykjavík, Landsbókasafn Íslands – Háskólabókasafn, ÍBR 74 4to, 99v, line 1.