The Old Norwegian Homily Book (AM 619 4to) is one of two main collections of

Old West Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

sermon A sermon is a religious discourse or oration by a preacher, usually a member of clergy. Sermons address a scriptural, theological, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law, or behavior within both past and present contexts. ...

s. The manuscript was written around 1200, contemporary with the other principal collection of sermons, the

Old Icelandic Homily Book The Old Icelandic Homily Book (Stock. Perg. 4to no. 15), also known as the Stockholm Homily Book, is one of two main collections of Old West Norse sermons; the other being the Old Norwegian Homily Book (AM 619 4to), with which it shares eleven text ...

; together they represent some of the earliest Old West Norse prose. The two homily books have 11 texts in common, all of which are based on earlier exemplars. Two of these texts, the 'Stave-church Homily' and a St. Michael’s Day sermon, are also found in one of the oldest Icelandic manuscript fragments, AM 237a fol., which was written around 1150.McDougall, David (1993) "Homilies (West Norse)" in ''Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia'' ed. Pulsiano, Phillip and Wolf, Kirsten, pp. 290-2 Linguistic features suggest that the manuscript was written in Western

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. The

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...

of Sancti Albani at Selja and Munkalíf in

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...

, and the

Augustinian Augustinian may refer to: *Augustinians, members of religious orders following the Rule of St Augustine *Augustinianism, the teachings of Augustine of Hippo and his intellectual heirs *Someone who follows Augustine of Hippo * Canons Regular of Sain ...

house of Jónskirkja, also in Bergen, have been proposed as possible candidates for producing the manuscript. The latest publication on the Norwegian homily book, however, argues that it belongs to a group of Old Norwegian and Latin books which were presumably not intended for a Benedictine community, and that it most likely was written in the town of Bergen itself, either at Jónskirkja or the Cathedral Chapter.Haugen, Odd Einar, and Ommundsen, Åslaug, eds. (2010) ''Vår eldste bok. Skrift, miljø og biletbruk i den norske homilieboka.'' Bibliotheca Nordica, vol. 3. Oslo: Novus. {{ISBN, 978-82-7099-589-9 The core of the Old Norwegian Homily Book is a series of homilies ordered according to the church year, but it also contains material which is not homiletic in character, such as a complete translation of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis, as well as commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer and the service of the mass. For this reason, it is better considered a homiletic hand-book rather than a

homiliary A homiliarium or homiliary is a collection of homilies, or familiar explanations of the Gospels. History Late Antiquity From a very early time the homilies of the Fathers were in high esteem, and were read in connection with the recitation of ...

. Further, despite its name, the ‘homilies’ it contains are closer in character to the definition of sermons.Óskarsdóttir, Svanhildur (2007) "Prose of Christian Instruction" in McTurk, Rory, ed. ''A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture'' Oxford: Blackwell Publishing pp. 338-53 Its style is simple, and similar to that of the

Íslendingasögur The sagas of Icelanders ( is, Íslendingasögur, ), also known as family sagas, are one genre of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early e ...

, unlike later religious prose which makes use of Latinate syntax and vocabulary.

References

External links

Facsimile of Indrebø's 1931 edition
Old Norse literature Old Norwegian manuscripts

See also

References

External links