Gripla - 2023, Page 247
THE LIBRARY AT BRÆÐRATUNGA 245
Maríumessur allar (‘the Masses of Our Lady’), and there was a Maríu saga
hin stærri, a Maríu saga hin minni and a Maríu historía that Kalinke identi-
fies as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Kalinke 1994, 45).
There were vernacular legends of saints and apostles: Ólafs saga, Tómas
saga, Benediktus saga, Martínus saga, Jóns saga biskups, Guðmundar saga, Jóns
saga postola, Barlanus saga, Péturs saga and a volume identified as Meyja
sögur (i.e., virgin martyr saints’ legends). In 1525, the prior Jón had in his
keeping two manuscripts containing offices: the aforementioned Maríu
historía and Dýradags historía (Office of the Feast of Corpus Christi).
At least some of these manuscripts may have come from other religious
houses to replace books lost in the 1429 fire, but the inventory provides
evidence that book production took place at Munkaþverá as well.
The monastery’s Latin liturgical books lost their religious function in
post-Reformation Iceland, and their vellum was put to other uses over
time. Unfortunately, no inventory survives of the books at Munkaþverá
in the seventeenth century. Gísli Baldur Róbertsson (2006) has plausibly
suggested that a paper copy of the Life of St Anne, now AM 82 8vo, was
produced in the first half of the seventeenth century at Munkaþverá from
an older exemplar still kept at the former monastery and subsequently
bound in leaves from a fourteenth-century gradual that had been part of
Munkaþverá’s library. In 1525, Munkaþverá had a chapel for St Anne, with
an altarpiece and a statue of St Anne (DI 9, 305). A Life of St Anne is not
found in the 1525 inventory, but it might have been produced or entered
the library after the inventory was compiled, not least given that the source
text of the Icelandic translation was the 1507 Low German De historie von
hiligen moder sunte Anna or the St. Annen-Büchlein (Bekker-Nielsen 1964;
Wolf 2001).
One manuscript of saints’ legends at Munkaþverá in Helga’s child-
hood was the manuscript AM 232 fol., which contains Barlaams saga og
Jósafats, Maríu saga with miracles, Framför Maríu (Transitus Mariae),
Jóns saga baptista and Heilagra feðra ævi (Vitae patrum). It was discovered
at Munkaþverá by Sveinn Torfason (c. 1662–1725), who received con-
trol of Munkaþverá after Helga’s brother Björn lost his position as its
proprietor in 1695 after accusations of mismanagement. Sveinn gave the
manuscript to Magnús Jónsson (1679–1733), who presented the codex
to Árni Magnússon in 1698. Helga’s nephew Guðbrandur Björnsson (c.