Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 64
62 GRIPLA
the beginning of the thirteenth century. Viðrǿða líkams ok sálar, edited by
Ole Widding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen (hereafter abbreviated WB),13 is
transmitted in four manuscripts:
1. Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 619
4to, fols. 75v–78r (N), better known as the Old Norwegian
Homily Book, written in Bergen between 1200 and 1225, and
erroneously rubricated as Visio sancti Pauli apostoli.14
2. Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 764 4to,
fols. 30r–v (R1), often called Reynistaðarbók, a large codex that
transmits Veraldar saga and numerous exempla, transcribed
in the Benedictine convent of Reynistaðr (northern Iceland)
between 1360 and 1370.15 The dialogue has no title, but
the code transmits a singular attribution of the vision to an
otherwise unidentified Auxentius.16
3. Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 696
XXXII 4to (R2), a fragment most likely also transcribed in the
scriptorium of Reynistaðr or the Abbey of Möðruvellir towards
the end of the fifteenth century. 17
4. Reykjavík, Landsbókasafn Íslands – Háskólabókasafn, JS
405 8vo, fols. 10r–15v (A), a paper manuscript compiled by
13 Ole Widding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen, “A Debate of the Body and the Soul in Old Norse
Literature,” Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959): 272–89, at 278 (hereafter cited as Widding and
Bekker-Nielsen).
14 The error made by the scribe causes one to question the knowledge of the Visio Pauli in
Norway at the beginning of the thirteenth century. See especially Dario Bullitta, ed. and
trans., Páls leizla: The Vision of St. Paul, Viking Society Texts (London: Viking Society for
Northern Research, 2017), 26.
15 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “The Resourceful Scribe: Some Aspects of the Development
of Reynistaðarbók (AM 764 4to),” in Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages, ed. Slavica
Ranković et al., Papers in Mediaeval Studies 22 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 2012), 328.
16 The most logical identification would be Auxentius, bishop of Milan (d. 374, Milan),
who was later declared a heretic and mentioned in Augustine, Letter 238, PL 33:1039a;
Augustine was mentioned in the epilogue of the Norse text. However, this attribution
seems to be a contradiction since the witness and narrator of this exemplum cannot possi-
bly be a heretic. The most plausible explanation is a scribal error or an incorrect interpreta-
tion on the part of the copyist of R1.
17 Gunnar Harðarson, Littérature et spiritualité en Scandinavie médiévale: La traduction norroise
de De Arrha Animae de Hugues de Saint Victor. Étude historique et édition critique, Bibliotheca
Victorina 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995).