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

Old West Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was 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 ...

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 context ...

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 A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ...

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 countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

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 m ...

of Sancti Albani at Selja and Munkalíf in

Bergen Bergen (, ) is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, second-largest city in Norway after the capital Oslo. By May 20 ...

, and the Augustinian 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 The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manus ...

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 (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic Saga, sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and earl ...

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

References

External links

Facsimile of Indrebø's 1931 edition
Old Norse literature Manuscripts in Old Norwegian

See also

References

External links