Niorstigningar Saga
Page 18
in Italy, Genoa, Biblioteca Universitaria, A.III.2, at the end of fifteenth.
56 For a detailed discussion of the all the vernacular renditions of Latin T, see
Izydorczyk and Bullitta, “The Troyes Redaction,” 577–86.
57 Paris, BnF, fr. 1850, from the thirteenth century; Oxford, Queen’s College, 305,
from the fifteenth; and Dijon, BM, 525. On this version and its relations to Latin T,
see Izydorczyk, “The Latin Source,” 265–79.
58 Barcelona, Biblioteca de la Universitat, 1029. See discussion in Izquierdo,
“The Gospel of Nicodemus in Medieval Catalan,” 145.
59 The manuscript is London, BL, Harley 149. The connections of the two Middle
English versions to Latin T were first pointed out by Shields, “Bishop Turpin,”
497–502.
60 London, BL, Cotton Galba E.IX; BL, Harley 4196; BL, Addit. 32578; Sion
College, Arc. L. 40.2/E.25. Its text is edited in Hulme, The Middle English
Harrowing of Hell.
61 The manuscripts were all written at Vadstena: Stockholm, Kb, A 110, in the last
years of the fourteenth century; Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Skokloster 3 4to, in the
fourth quarter of the fifteenth century; and Stockholm, Kb, A 3 in the beginning
of the sixteenth. On the Old Swedish translation and its relations to Latin T,
see the discussion in Bullitta, “The Old Swedish Evangelium Nicodemi,” 282–99.
62 Lüneburg, Ratsbücherei, Theol. 2° 83, from the middle of the fifteenth cen-
tury; Lübeck, Stadtbibliothek, theol. germ. fol. 9 and The Hague, Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, 133 E6, from the fourth quarter of the fifteenth century; and
Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, 1848, from the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century. The text is edited as L in Masser, Dat ewangelium
Nicodemi, 30–60.
104 Notes to pages 16–18
63 Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, B. P. L. 61, from the last decade of the
fifteenth century and Linz, Bundesstaatliche Studienbibliothek, 194 (olim 244)
(in Rhenish Franconian dialect, copied from a Dutch antigraph), from the second
quarter of the sixteenth century. See Hoffmann, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in
Dutch,” 346–9.
64 The text is surveyed and edited in Masser and Siller, Das Evangelium Nicodemi,
468–92.
65 See Klausner, “The Gospel of Nicodemus in the Literature of Medieval Wales,”
406–7.
66 A thorough diplomatic transcription of the five manuscripts containing
Niðrstigningar saga is available in Haugen, Stamtre og tekstlandskap, vol. 2,
Tekster og tabellar, 17–59. Modern English and Modern Norwegian translations
of Niðrstigningar saga (AM 645 4to) are available respectively in Roughton,
“AM 645 4to and AM 652/630 4to,” 872–86, and Haugen, “Soga om nedstiginga
i dødsriket,” 250–6. The greatest survey on the vernacular legacy of the Latin
Evangelium Nicodemi in medieval Scandinavia was undertaken by K. Wolf,
“The Influence of the Evangelium Nicodemi.” Preliminary results of the present
research have been discussed in Bullitta, “Crux Christi muscipula fuit diabolo.”
67 This view is also shared by Magnús Már Lárusson, “Um Niðrstigningar sögu,”
161. For details, see the section titled “The Prologue” in chapter 4.
68 Mogk, Geschichte der norwegisch-isländischen Literatur, 890; Seip, Nye studier
i norsk språkhistorie, 81, 135; Bekker-Nielsen, “Nikodemusevangeliet,” cols.
308–9.
69 The second person plural imperative of the verb “láta” (“to let”), “latet er” (“you
let”) was misread with “later er,” a form that developed in Norway during the Old
Norse period. On the subject, see Mork, “Morphological Developments,” 1144.
70 Archaisms are the sporadic use of the enclitic particle “of,” the personal pronoun
appended enclitically to the verb as in “vasc” (“I was”) for “var ek,” and the use
of the grapheme ð, which first arrived in Iceland around 1200 under Norwegian
influence. The use of t [t] for d [ð] in final position as “verit” (“you were”) instead
of the classic “verið” has also been interpreted as a Norwegian morphological
mark and can instead be explained as a hyper-correctivism modelled on the
Icelandic lenition of the final voiceless stops [t] and [k] into the respective voiced
fricatives [ð] and [g], as in “blaðit” > “blaðið” (“leaf”) and “ek” > “eg” (“I”). This
change in Icelandic is already attested from the beginning of the thirteenth century.
See, for instance, Stefán Karlsson, The Icelandic Language, 19. See the discussion
in Haugen, “Soga om nedstiginga i dødsriket,” 92n35.
71 See Magnús Már Lárusson, “Um Niðurstigningarsögu,” 167.
72 Gschwantler, “Christus, Thor und die Midgardsschlange,” 152; Kirby, Bible
Translation in Old Norse, 35.
Notes to pages 18–19 105
73 See Haugen, Stamtre og tekstlandskap, 1:46; K. Wolf, “The Influence of the
Evangelium Nicodemi,” 283; Roughton, “Stylistics and Sources,” 45; and K. Wolf,
The Legends of the Saints, 273.
74 Kirby has demonstrated that the earliest Old Norse translations of the Old Testament,
the Psalter, and a yet undefined gospel harmony, which may well correspond to
Tatian’s Diatessaron, may have already been in existence by 1200. See Kirby,
Bible Translation in Old Norse, 107. An overview of the evolution of the Icelandic
language, surveyed on the basis of the increasingly more systematic and compre-
hensive medieval Icelandic biblical translations, has been recently conducted by
Fabrizio D. Raschellà, “Le traduzioni bibliche.”
75 The diplomatic transcription of the Latin text preserved in Þjóðminjasafn 921
was originally made by Ólafur Halldórsson for Odd Einar Haugen. See Haugen,
Stamtre og tekstlandskap, vol. 2, Tekster og tabellar, 96–100. The history of the
fragment remains unknown to the present.
76 Kim, The Gospel of Nicodemus.
77 Pelle, “Twelfth-Century Sources,” 50n18. In his article, Stephen Pelle uses
Hallgrímur J. Ámundason’s transcription of AM 655 XXVII 4to, available in his
unpublished BA thesis. See Hallgrímur J. Ámundason ed. AM 655 XXVII 4to. The
translation is mentioned neither in the previous studies on Niðrstigningar saga nor
in the new exhaustive catalogue of Old Norse hagiographical literature prepared
by K. Wolf, The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose. A first critical
edition of the text is now available in Bullitta, “The Story of Joseph of Arimathea.”
78 Corresponding to chapters XI.3–XVII.1 of the Evangelium Nicodemi.
79 Different, for instance, is the treatment of Simeon’s presentation of Christ at the
temple. Whereas Niðrstigningar saga translates “templum” (“temple”) with the
word AM 645 52r/8 “kirkio” (“church”) and refers to Simeon with the appellative
AM 645 51v/22 “ens gamla” (“the Old”), alluding to a certain tradition which ad-
dresses him as “Simeon senex” (“Simeon the Elder”), AM 655 XXVII 4to renders
more precisely the first referent with the substantive 9r/18 “musteri” (“monastery,
temple”), and it refers twice to Simeon with the proper appellative 9r/17 and 9v/17
“inn gaufgi” (“the Noble”),
translating the Latin “iustus” (“the Just”) of Luke 2:25.
80 See the discussion in Izydorczyk, “The Evangelium Nicodemi in the Latin Middle
Ages,” 99–100.
81 Besides Copenhagen, DKB, GkS 1335 4to (1ra–20rb), which was produced in
France in the tenth century and transferred to Copenhagen only in 1735, three
more manuscripts of the Latin Evangelium Nicodemi are found in Denmark. These
are Copenhagen, DKB, GkS 1336 4to (ff. 1r–13), possibly written in Bordesholm,
in the Holstein region, around 1400; Copenhagen, DKB, NkS 123 4to (ff. 39r–
47r), written in Ribe in the Jutland region around the year 1454; and Copenhagen,
DKB, Thott. 130 2° (ff. 18v–27r), written in the fifteenth century in an unknown
106 Notes to pages 19–21
scriptorium of northern Germany. All these Latin manuscripts transmit a text of
the Majority type. See Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum latinorum medii aevii, re-
spectively 15–16, 163–5, and 175–6. The only Latin manuscript written in Sweden
is Uppsala, UB, C 219 (16v–17r), a collection of exempla that first belonged to
Carolus Andreae, a priest in Vist (Östergötland), who entered Vadstena Abbey
in 1442 and donated the manuscript to its library. The abridged text Evangelium
Nicodemi might be derived from its summary treatment in the Legenda aurea.
See Andersson-Schmitt, Hallberg, and Hedlund, Mittelalterliche Handschriften
der Universitätsbibliothek Uppsala, 68–9.
82 Stockholm, Kb, A 115. The text is edited in Brøndum-Nielsen, Et gammeldansk
digt; see also K. Wolf, “The Influence of the Evangelium Nicodemi on Norse
Literature,” 280–3.
83 On the Swedish text, see Bullitta, “The Old Swedish Evangelium Nicodemi.”
84 A single Latin manuscript preserving a text of the Majority type is of certain
Norwegian provenance: Oslo, UB, Ms. 8° 2993 (ff. 91rb–93vb), a theological
miscellany datable to the beginning of the fifteenth century. See Izydorczyk,
Manuscripts of Evangelium Nicodemi: A Census, item 216.
85 The last critical edition of the vísur has been prepared by Jón Helgason, who
distinguishes nine different redactions: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I. See Jón
Helgason, Íslenzk miðaldakvæði, 1: 212–38.
86 Ibid., 231.
87 As summarized in K. Wolf, “The Influence of the Evangelium Nicodemi on
Norse Literature,” 274–7. See the section titled “The Capture of Satan on the
Cross” in chapter 5.
88 Finnur Jónsson, ed., Jón Arason religiøse digte, 22–3.
89 See K. Wolf, “Om en ‘tabt’ islandsk oversættelse,” 167–79.
2 The Manuscript Tradition of Niðrstigningar saga
1 For sake of consistency, in the following discussion I refer to the normalized Ice-
landic titles of hagiographical texts employed by the ONP and in K. Wolf, The
Legends of the Saints, rather than to their older Latinate counterparts, even when
these have an established tradition in previous scholarship (as, for instance, Klements
saga for Clemens saga). In the transcriptions of the incipit and explicit of each text,
I follow the same editorial conventions applied to the text of Niðrstigningar saga,
as illustrated in “Editorial Procedure” in the “Texts” section of this book.
2 Respectively, items 7, 5, 4, 8, 2, and 10.
3 Items 3 and 6. See discussion in Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature,
129–31, and Carron, Clemens saga, xiii, xxii. Philip Roughton has surveyed and
Notes to pages 23–8 107
subgrouped the hagiographical texts transmitted in AM 645 4to on the basis of
the presence or absence of supplementary homiletic material. See Roughton,
“Stylistics and Sources.”
4 A Book of Miracles, 13.
5 See Postola sögur, x, and Haugen, “Between Graphonomy and Phonology.”
6 The influence of the insular script in Iceland was mediated by Norwegian scribal
practices and therefore became especially substantial after the establishment of the
diocese of Niðaróss (modern Trondheim) in 1153, to which the sees of Skálholt
and Hólar depended. On the subject, see Haugen, “The Development of the Latin
Script I,” and Stefán Karlsson, “The Development of the Latin Script II.”
7 Kålund, Katalog, 2:51–2.
8 Spehr, Der Ursprung der isländischen Schrift, 174; Hreinn Benediktsson, Early
Icelandic Script, no. xx.
9 Seip, Palæografi B, 43.
10 A Book of Miracles, 9.
11 Ibid., 17.
12 Jarteinabók Þorláks byskups in forna, 135.
13 See the section titled “The Jarteinabœkr Þorláks byskups” in chapter 6.
14 On Guðbrandur Björnsson, see JÁM, 10:274–5, and ÍÆ, 1, 235–6. On Björn
Magnússon, see JÁM, 11:111.
15 The text of the slip is available from Handrit.is, accessed 18 December 2016,
https://handrit.is/is/manuscript/view/en/AM04-0645.
16 AM 645 4to, ff. 51v/21–52v/2.
17 Helgensagaer, ii, and Hreinn Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script, 44–5.
18 Kålund, Katalog, 2:37; Postola Sögur, xxi.
19 Helgensagaer, i.
20 Hreinn Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script, xxxvii.
21 ONP Register, accessed 18 December 2016, http://dataonp.hum.ku.dk/ms/
ms000861.htm.
22 A second recension of the Old Norse Septem dormientes survives in Stockholm,
Kb, Holm. Perg. 3 fol. (ff. 93r–94v), dating from the sixteenth century. The origi-
nal text of AM 623 4to was possibly substantiated here with material from the Low
German Passionael. See Widding, Bekker-Nielsen, and Shook, “The Lives of the
Saints,” 331.
23 DI, vol. 5, 1330– 1476, 289.
24 At the time of the 1703 census, Bishop Björn Þorleifsson was 40; Ari
Guðmundsson was 71. See “Bishop Björn Þorleifsson,” accessed 18 December
2016, http://manntal.is/.
25 AM 645 4to, ff. 53r/6–54r/11 and 55r/16–55v/23.
108 Notes to pages 28–38
26 See the discussion in Van Deusen, “The Old Norse-Icelandic Legend,” 88.
27 Ibid., 83. Carl R. Unger had previously argued that one hand wrote folios 1v–12v
and the second wrote folios 15–29. See MS, xxii.
28 See Stefán Karlsson, Sagas of Icelandic Bishops, 21; Ólafur Halldórsson,
Helgaféllsbækur fornar, 10.
29 Ólafur Halldórsson, Helgaféllsbækur fornar, 41.
30 DI, vol. 2, 1253– 1350, 427.
31 On the church of Garður, see Cormack, The Saints of Iceland, 187.
32 AM 645 4to, ff. 52r/18–53v/14.
33 As shown in the section titled “Agreement between K and E against T and A”
in chapter 4.
34 Kålund, Katalog, 1:200.
35 On the subject, see, most recently, Bullitta, ed. and trans., Páls leizla (forthcoming).
36 On Ólafur Jónsson, see ÍÆ, 4:62.
37 Þorvaldur Sívertsen was sixty-three during the census of 1860. See “Þorvaldur
Sívertsen, ” accessed 18 December 2016, http://manntal.is/.
38 Magnús Jónsson is renowned for having commissioned the compilation of AM 148
8vo, a remarkable miscellany of poetry and prose written between 1676 and1677.
The manuscript has been edited in facsimile by Jón Helgason, ed., Kvæðabók úr
Vigur. See JÁM, 7:67, 147.
39 Magnús Ketilsson was twenty-eight during the census of 1703. Se
e “Magnús
Ketilsson, ” accessed 18 December 2016, http://manntal.is/.
40 Jón Helgason, “Bækur og handrit,” 9.
41 Ibid., 18.
42 On the subject, see Henningham, An Early Latin, 43–9.
43 On the scholarly activity of Hans Hanssen Skonning, see Gyllerup, “Skonning,
Hans Hanssen.” A first synoptic edition of Skonning’s Collegium philosophorum
and the Icelandic translation transmitted as item 11in JS 405 is currently being
prepared by Kirsten Wolf and me.
3 The Manuscript Filiation of Niðrstigningar saga
1 See Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature, 127.
2 In terms of length and weight of the supplementary material they provide to the
original text, the first and second interpolations, surveyed in the sections titled
“The Gates of Paradise” and “Seven-Headed Satan” in chapter 5, represent minor
suggestive details added to the descriptions of the fortress of Paradise and to the
antithetical portrayal of Satan. On the other hand, the third and fourth interpola-
tions (which coincide with Turville-Petre’s “first” and “second” interpolations),
surveyed in chapter 5 as “Christ as Warrior-King” and “The Capture of Satan on
Notes to pages 39–40 109
the Cross,” supplement the original plot with additional events and anecdotes that
allegedly occurred during Christ’s Harrowing of Hell.
3 A (“There were two things before me: there was burning fire to deny any man
entrance to Paradise, and angels to guard it against all the devils and the souls
of the sinful men”).
4 D (“There were two things holding guard and denying the Devil and sinful men
entrance through the gates of Paradise”).
5 E (“I saw burning fire that denied any man entrance, and God’s angels guarded
these gates against both devils and sinful men”).
6 A (“The giant Satan, the Prince of Hell, who sometimes has seven heads and
sometimes three, and is in the shape of a dragon, which is horrible, terrible,
and awful in all respects”).
7 B (“Satan, the Prince of the World, who sometimes has seven heads or three,
in the dreadful shape of a dragon and horrible in all respects”).
8 D (“Satan, Prince of Hell, who sometimes has three heads, and sometimes is in
the shape of a dragon, which is supreme and evil in all respects”).
9 E (“The Prince of Hell and commander of the dead, in the likeness of a dreadful