3 - Types and Shadows: The Old Testament in Homilies and Saints’ Lives

Summary

There was no complete translation of the Old Testament into Icelandic before Guðbrandur Þorláksson’s Biblia, which was printed in Hólar and published in 1584. However, a range of Old Testament material was available in the vernacular from the second half of the twelfth century on. The Old Norse- Icelandic homilies frequently cite verses from the Old Testament, especially those based on Gregory the Great’s XL Homilies on the Gospels, which contained nearly 300 quotations from the Old Testament. Although many of the citations found in homilies consist of single verses taken out of context from the Psalms or Prophets, there is also some Old Testament history, including the sacrifice of Isaac and two retellings of chapters 1–2 of Job. Fragments from two allegorical commentaries on the Psalms survive in AM 655 XXIII 4to (c. 1225–49) and AM 696 XXIV 4to (c. 1200–24), covering parts of Psalms 50, 31 and 37. Old Testament exegesis also plays an important part in the lives of biblical saints like the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist, in whose lives the ‘types and shadows’ of Old Testament history can be seen to be fulfilled. The later and more scholarly lives, in particular, are rich in biblical quotation: Kirby has counted over 100 biblical quotations or allusions in Pétrs saga I, Jóns saga baptista II and Tveggja postula saga Jóns ok Jakobs, although the majority are from the New Testament. The later lives draw copiously on Comestor’s Historia scholastica and Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale, grounding the biblical narrative in historiographical detail and paying close attention to chronology as well as to secular history. The Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá (‘The King’s Mirror’) from c. 1240–63 provides a range of entertaining and instructive narratives from Genesis and from the four books of Kings (1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings). Finally, universal histories like Veraldar saga (c. 1155–90) integrate Old Testament history into a wider history of the world from the Creation to the sixth age. In this chapter, my focus is on Old Testament exegesis as it appears in homilies and saints’ lives. I argue that, although we might expect allegorical interpretations to dominate, this is not always the case. Alongside traditional Gregorian exegesis – often executed with great skill and imagination – we also find some short historical narratives that show aspects of ‘saga style’.