Old Norwegian Homily Book

The manuscript was written around 1200, contemporary with the other principal collection of sermons, the Old Icelandic Homily Book; together they represent some of the earliest Old West Norse prose.

Two of these texts, the 'Stave-church Homily' and a St. Michael’s Day sermon, are also found in one of the oldest Icelandic manuscript fragments, AM 237a fol., which was written around 1150.

[1] The latest publication on the Norwegian homily book, however, argues that it belongs to a group of Old Norwegian and Latin books which were presumably not intended for a Benedictine community, and that it most likely was written in the town of Bergen itself, either at Jónskirkja or the Cathedral Chapter.

[2] The core of the Old Norwegian Homily Book is a series of homilies ordered according to the church year, but it also contains material which is not homiletic in character, such as a complete translation of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis, as well as commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer and the service of the mass.

[3] Its style is simple, and similar to that of the Íslendingasögur, unlike later religious prose which makes use of Latinate syntax and vocabulary.