Abstract
Medieval Icelanders defined their ideas about language, the composition of literature, grammar, and the relationship between Icelandic and Latin in a series of vernacular treatises. One such treatise, the fourteenth-century Fourth Grammatical Treatise, describes the forms and mechanics of writing skaldic poetry. In addition to rhetorical and grammatical information, it provides insight into to the Christian Latin material that was known or available to medieval Icelandic authors. Some of these texts, often neglected by scholars of literature, reflect ideas found in Gregory’s Moralia in Iob, including his explanation of the four stages that sinners pass through as they move from temptation to mortal sin. It also reflects traditional exegesis of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, in which Jesus is said to purify the water. These elucidations provide insight into the freedom, or lack thereof, that Icelandic authors had to translate and adapt Christian Latin terminology and concepts into vernacular texts and tightly structured skaldic verse.
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Notes
All texts and translations of The Fourth Grammatical Treatise are quoted from Clunies Ross and Wellendorf (2014: 36–39). I quote both the poetic text and the version in prose order and then the editors’ translation.
Thus, the exchange between Repentaunce and Envy in Piers Plowman B, ed. Kane and Donaldson (1975): V, lines. 126–128.
‘ʒis! redily’, quod Repentaunce, and radde hym to goode:
‘Sorwe for synnes is sauacion of soules.’
‘I am sory’, quod enuye, ‘I am but selde ooþer’…,
“Yes, readily,” said Repentance, and counseled him towards the good,
“Sorrow for sins is the salvation of souls.”
“I am sorry,” said Envy, “I am seldom not sorry.” (Translation mine.)
Kane and Donaldson (1975: 323).
For discussion see Hill (1971: 217–221).
For a later medieval summary of patristic and medieval Christian commentary on the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John the Baptist, see Rigollot (1865: 216–219).
For a convenient summary of the evidence for the currency of the writings of Gregory the Great and the Moralia in Iob specifically in Iceland, see Jennson et al. (n.d.), Islandia Latina, sub nomine Gregorius I papa.
Given the currency of Gregory’s account of the sequence of sin in a wide range of Christian Latin texts, it possible and some might say probable that the poet found this account of the psychology of sin not directly in the Moralia but in some derivative text. But the ideas at least are Gregorian.
References
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Hill, T.D. The Four Modes of Sin and the Cleansing of the Waters: The Fourth Grammatical Treatise, Chapter 21, Stanzas 48 and 50. Neophilologus 104, 235–243 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-019-09632-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-019-09632-7