Preliminary observations on fragments of twelfth-century Bibles in and

Michael Gullick

Relatively little attention has been paid to the ‘non-liturgical’ fragments in the fragment collections in Norway and Sweden, with the notable exception of the Norwegian vernacular material. Although the non-liturgical material forms a small part of the fragment collections in both countries, it deserves to be better known for several reasons. The books are interesting for what texts they contain, and the kinds of books represented by the material are much more likely to have belonged to the collections of cathedrals and monasteries rather than parish churches. While some books may have been imported from abroad, others may have been written locally, and therefore their scribal evidence is of interest beyond the borders of Scandanavia. Understanding the material requires making systematic searches to determine the number of fragments identifi able from the same book, and deciding (or trying to) whether these books were locally made or not. In the case of locally made books, there is always the possibility that a scribe found in one book can be identifi ed in another, whether a non-liturgical book or not. Many liturgical fragments in Norway from the same books have been grouped together by Lilli Gjerløw, and many in Stockholm have also been grouped together in the MPO database, but more of this work remains to be done. A number of the scribes who worked in more than one book have also been identifi ed by earlier scholars, and in recent years more have been identifi ed (some of these are the subjects of papers at the present conference), and there is no doubt that more scribes remain to be identifi ed. There are the remains of a number of large Romanesque Bibles in and Stockholm, and these will be presented with preliminary observations on their scribal interest. (None of those in Oslo have received any attention at all, but some of those in Stockholm have been recently discussed in print by me in J. Brunius, ed., Medieval Book Fragments in Sweden.) They have a particular importance, for by about 1200 many ecclesiastical institutions owned such Bibles, and they were usually written and decorated with care. The following pages show some of those that will be discussed.

Norwegian Bi 1 Lat. fragm. 44, 1-2 Bi 1 Lat. fragm. 69, 1-7 Ill. 1-2 Bi 1 Vardøhus 1602 Lat. fragm. 365, 1-2 Bi 1 Lat fragm. 855, 1-2 Bi 1 , Raasteds kat Danish Bible 7 (= No Bi 1)

Norwegian Bi 3 Lat. fragm. 68, 1 Bi 3 Ra Jnr 843/1895

Norwegian Bi 4 Lat. fragm. 916, 1-2 Bi 4 Fosen 1618

Norwegian Bi 5 NRA, dipl. München perg. 4299-4300 Bi 5 Olav Engelbrektson,

Norway, Unregistered Bible Lat. fragm. 63, 1-5 - Lister len 1627, -28, -29

1 Ill 1-2: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 69 2 Ill 3: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 68

3 Ill. 4: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 916, 1-2.

4 Ill. 5-6: Copenhagen, Royal Library, fragm. 1980

5 Ill. 7-8 (see also next page): Oslo, NRA, dipl. München perg. 4299-4300. Two account books belonging to the last archbishop of Nidaros, , were bound in leaves from a twelfth-century Bible.

6 7 Ill 9: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 63

8 Ill 10: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 63, detail, in approximately 1:1

9 Ill 11: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 63

10 Ill 12: Oslo, NRA, Lat. fragm. 63, detail, in approximately 1:1

11 12 Ill. 13 (“pl. 20”) - 14 (“pl. 21-23”): Plates from J. Brunius, Medieval book fragments (Stockholm 2005), showing Bible fragments in the Swedish National Archives (Rik- sarkivet) in Stockholm.

13 14 Ill. 15-16: Linköping Stifts- og Landsbibliotek.

15 Ill. 17: Stockholm, SRA, Fr. 30851

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