Pious Fictions and Pseudo-Saints in the Late Middle Ages

Selected Legends from an Icelandic Legendary

Pages: xii + 282 p.
Size:152 x 229 mm

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2023

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ISBN: 978-0-88844-311-3
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Subject(s)

BIO

Marianne Kalinke is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is an authority on cultural and literary relations between Scandinavia and the continent in the medieval and early modern period. Her study of the transmission of the Arthurian legend to Norway and Iceland, King Arthur, North-by-Northwest (1981), reconsidered the impact of continental romance on the development of indigenous Icelandic saga genres, while Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland (1990) revised the received classification of Icelandic literary genres. The Book of Reykjahólar: The Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries (1996) considered the role of Iceland in preserving German hagiographic texts that have otherwise been lost. Most recently, Stories Set Forth with Fair Words: The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland (2017) focuses on the origin and development of the earliest translated and indigenous romances in Iceland.

Kirsten Wolf is Professor and Torger Thompson Chair in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches Old Norse-Icelandic language and literature and Scandinavian linguistics. She has written extensively on hagiography, color, non-verbal communication and has edited several Old Norse-Icelandic texts, including Gyðinga saga and the legends of Saints Anne, Barbara, and Dorothy. Her most recent single-authored book is The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose (2013). Her book, The Priest’s Eye: AM 672 4to in The Arnamagnaean Collection, is forthcoming in Manuscripta Nordica: Early Nordic Manuscripts in Digital Facsimile.

Summary

This volume provides English translations of selected legends from a remarkable sixteenth-century Icelandic collection known as the Reykjahólabók. The Middle Low German originals it translates are no longer extant, apocryphal wholly or in part, and wondrous strange. The eight legends translated here detail the adventures of St Oswald and his quest for a bride by a garrulous raven; Henry and Cunegund, and her accusation of infidelity and trial by ordeal; John Chrysostom, the Golden-mouthed, and his hairy-anchorite tale; Jerome and an injured lion, who herds asses for the monastery; Christopher, the giant Reprobus, who bears the Christ child across deep waters; George, the Dragon-slayer, who saves a princess from the devouring monster; the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, who escape persecution by Emperor Decius through centuries-long slumber; and Gregorius, the Good Sinner, in a tale of double incest. In fictionalizing the lives of established saints, and in the creation of fictitious saints, these legends represent the concluding chapter of medieval hagiography. The volume also includes a wide-ranging introduction that surveys the historical and literary contexts for the translation of Catholic saints’ lives on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in Iceland, as well as normalized editions of the legends accessible to readers of contemporary Icelandic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Preface

INTRODUCTION
Reykjahólabók, the Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries

Eight Legends from Reykjahólabók

The Legend of St Oswald
The Legend of Saints Henry and Cunegund
The Legend of St John Chrysostom, the Golden Mouthed
The Legend of St Jerome and the Lion
The Legend of St Christopher, the Christ Bearer
The Legend of St George, the Dragon Slayer
The Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
The Legend of Gregorius, the Good Sinner

APPENDIX
Normalized Texts of the Eight Legends

Ósvalds saga
Hendreks saga og Kúnígúndísar
Jóns saga gullmunns
Jerónímuss saga
Kristófórs saga
Georgíuss saga
Sjö sofanda saga
Saga Gregóríuss hins góða syndara

Bibliography

Index