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Saga-Book of the Viking Society
ADORATIO CRUCIS. By LILLI GJERLOW. Norwegian Universities
Press, 1961. In pp.
In a spaciously printed book Dr Gjerlow considers mutilated
pages of medieval manuscripts, relicts of Reformation binders'
scissors, most of which are now deposited in Riksarkivet, Oslo.
Her general conclusions are not unexpected, that English servicebooks
were taken to Norway in the twelfth century, and that the
Decreta Lanfranci, together with continental books, was used in
the compilation of the Nidaros Ordinary. But the painstaking
process of identification of the fragments collates and adds much
factual information for students of medieval Christian thought.
Some of the fragments indicate influences bearing solely on the
Norwegian church. One group (designated Mi 12 in Ch. III) is
an early English missal fragment, containing instructions for the
Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, which repeat phrases
from the Decreta Lanfranci as well as from the Regularis Concordia.
Three mutilated leaves, discussed in Ch. IV, attest the existence
of the Decreta Lanfranci in a vernacular translation which may be
linked with the name of Archbishop 0ystein Erlendsson of Nidaros
who was in England A.D. 1180-83. This translation obviously
incites Dr Gjerlow to compare the Decreta with the Nidaros
Ordinary for the Good Friday service and to demonstrate influence
from the English book (Ch. V). But the lengthy discussion,
in Chs. I and II, of the twelve leaves designated Mi I is illuminating
particularly to an Anglo-Saxonist. Mi I is one of the earliest
extant English missals, related to the school of script created by
A!:thelwold of Winchester and dated c. A.D. lOOO. Its most
notable feature is a series of three prayers prescribed by the
Regularis Concordia for the Veneration of the Cross on Good
Friday. These prayers, in exactly the Concordia form (as
opposed to the form in earlier collections of prayers such as The
Book of Cerne) and extant in a service-book of the Winchester
school, allow Dr Gjerlew to suggest that Mi I represents a form of
sacrarnentary which was available to the instigators of the
Regularis Concordia. The investigation proceeds further to find
a continental witness for the novel use of the three prayers, and a
clue is offered by the inclusion of the Concordia form of the
prayers in a twelfth-century Brussels missal (printed in Appendix
I), compiled for the parish church of St Nicholas at Ghent.
Monks of St Peter's at Ghent offered advice for the Regularis
Concordia and Dunstan was in exile in that city, A.D. 955-57, so
St Peter's may well have been the monastery from which the
prayers went to the Brussels Missal and to the Hegularis Concordia.