Note to Anon Lil 83VII
[6] hold og blóð, það er tókt af móður ‘flesh and blood which you took from your mother’: Here, a reference both to the Eucharist, for which hold og blóð is the standard designation in ON (cf. e.g. the homily In cena domini, HómÍsl 1993, 31r-32r), and the Incarnation (likama tk haɴ af hoʟde móþor ſiɴar ‘the body he took from the flesh of his mother’ HómÍsl 1993, 26v). Cf. 30/8 on the Incarnation (hold og bein af hreinum líkam ‘flesh and bone from her pure body’) and 67/8 on the resurrected body of Jesus (blóð, það er tók af móður ‘the blood which he took from his mother’). Lil’s account of the Incarnation says that Christ’s soul was united to ‘Mary’s blood’. The use of the same words to describe creation of the first human (blóð og hold af vatni og moldu ‘blood and flesh from water and earth’ (11/2) draws attention to the typological relationship between Jesus and Adam.
References
- Bibliography
- HómÍsl 1993 = de Leeuw van Weenen, Andrea, ed. 1993. The Icelandic Homily Book: Perg. 15 4° in the Royal Library, Stockholm. Íslensk handrit/Icelandic Manuscripts Series in quarto 3. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi.
- Internal references
- Martin Chase 2007, ‘ Anonymous, Lilja’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 544-677. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1185> (accessed 27 April 2024)