Anon Andr 4^VII

*Ostía Jésú Kristi
ágætast fekk sæti;
Andréam sier til yndis
almáttigr guð valdi
— mítis má hann því heita
meginpostulinn kostum
prýddr — og giftu gæddi;
guðs er hann kross á þandur.

{*Ostía Jésú Kristi} fekk ágætast sæti; almáttigr guð valdi Andréam sier til yndis og gæddi giftu; hann má því heita mítis, meginpostulinn prýddr kostum; hann er þandur á guðs kross.

{The martyr of Jesus Christ} [= Andrew] obtained a most excellent place; almighty God chose Andrew for his delight and endowed him with grace; he may therefore be called gentle, the chief Apostle adorned with virtues; he is stretched onto God’s cross.

Mss: 194 8°(36v), 669cˣ(1v)

Readings: [1] *Ostía: Hostia 194 8°, 669cˣ    [3] til yndis: so 669cˣ, ‘t[...] ynd[...]s’ 194 8°    [8] kross á þandur: ‘[...]o[...]s [...]nde’ 194 8°, ‘kross so᷎mande’ corrected from ‘floṛẹss þ̣ạnde’ above line 669cˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 509, Skj BII, 558-9, Skald II, 306, NN §§2296, 2886; Konráð Gíslason 1860, 558.

Notes: [1] ostía ‘martyr’: Ms. Hostia = Lat. hostia ‘sacrifice’, here martyr, see Blaise 1954: hostia, 1; Souter 1949: Hostia: -æ ‘martyrs’, regularly emended (Skj B; Skald) to preserve alliteration. — [5] mítis ‘gentle’: The Lat. epithet may recall the hymn for the feast of S. Andrew (30 Nov.): Andrea pie, sanctorum mitissime ‘Pious Andrew, most gentle of saints’ (see AH 51, 121, no. 107; AH 2, 71, no. 90; cf. Ordo Nidr. 295/14; CH, 83; DH, 106), a conventional description of Andrew in later hymns to the Apostle; cf. Mone 1853-5, III, 96, no. 695/5-7. — [7] og gæddi giftu ‘and endowed him with grace’: Kock (NN §2886) correctly interprets gæddi as 3rd pers. pret. sg. of gœða, paralleling almáttigr guð valdi, but divided from its subject by an intercalary cl.: mítis ... kostum prýddr ‘gentle ... adorned with virtues’. Finnur Jónsson, Skj B, attempts to read gæddi as a participial adj., in apposition with prýddr: meginpostulinn kostum prýddr ... ok giptu gæddi ‘the chief Apostle adorned with virtues ... and endowed with grace’, but without proposing the emendation of gæddi to gæddr that such a reading would require. — [8] hann er þandur á guðs kross ‘he is stretched onto God’s cross’: The second half of l. 8 has been the subject of speculation, beginning with Árni Magnússon (ÁM). To provide the expected aðalhending in the line, Kock (NN §2296) proposes emendation to góðs er hann mannflokks ljóði ‘he is the leader of the good congregation’. 194 8° is unclear at this point, but such a drastic emendation is not supported by what can be read with any certainty: ‘gvds ær hann | […]o[…]s […]nde’. The first letter of each of the last two words in the st. appears to be written with a tall ascender. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) would read the l.: Guðs er hann flos ljómandi ‘He is the shining flos [‘flower’] of God', a reading based in part on ÁM's first attempt (in 669cˣ, 1v) at reading the penultimate word in the l., which he first transcribed as floress, then altered with expunction marks to floss, before finally crossing this tentative reading out altogether. In any case, hann … ljómandi hardly supplies the appropriate aðalhending, and there is no evidence that Guðs ... flos is supported by any Lat. tradition referring to Andrew as a ‘flower of God’ (flos Dei / Domini). In a superscript addition to his transcript in 669cˣ, 1v, ÁM finally interprets the last l.: guds ær hann kross so᷎mande (cf. Kålund 1888-1894, II, 83). Although it has received the least attention, and still does not supply the expected aðalhending, ÁM’s interpretation is in other respects a less problematic reading of this fragmentary l. His reading could mean either ‘He honours the Cross of God’, or ‘He is fitting for, worthy of God’s Cross’. If the latter interpretation is followed, then kross sœmande may be intended as an elaboration of Lat. dignus, an epithet regularly applied to Andrew, as in the antiphon: Andreas Christi famulus, dignus Deo apostolus ‘Andrew servant of Christ, Apostle worthy of God’ (CAO III, 47 no. 1396; cf. Ordo Nidr. 296/14). Description of Andrew as if cruce dignus ‘suitable for, fit for, worthy of the cross’ might be intended to recall Matt. X.38: et qui non accipit crucem suam et sequitur me non est me dignus ‘And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me’. If either of the emendations proposed by Kock or Finnur Jónsson were accepted, this would be the only one of the surviving sts which does not contain the word kross. Since we might expect the poet to play on repeated reference to the saint’s best known attribute, S. Andrew’s cross, this may add another reason for preferring a reading which includes this word. It is interesting that before electing to interpret the last word of the st. as ‘so᷎mande’, ÁM seems to have first attempted to read the word as a form of þenja ‘to stretch’, writing þande before adding expunction marks under ‘þa’. This suggests another interpretation. The original text may have read guðs er hann kross á þandr ‘he is stretched onto God’s cross’, with disyllabic articulation of the last word in the line, and the form þandr may have been subsequently miscopied as þande, although all that remains of this mistranscription in the only surviving ms. are the final letters ‘...nde’ . For miscopying of final <r>-rotunda as <i>, cf., for example, Anon Pét 23/7: ms. ‘sendi’, emended to sendur. If a form of þenja is retained here, the l. would recall the description in the Passio Sancti Andreae apostoli 10 (Bonnet 1898, 23/9-24/1: ut ligatis pedibus et manibus quasi in eculeo tenderetur ‘that with his feet and hands bound he should be stretched as if on a rack’; cf. Andr²A, 379/1-3: at þeir skylldi binda hendr hans ok fætr ꜳ krossinum ok þenia hann ut sva sem i stagli ‘that they should bind his hands and feet on the cross, and stretch him out as if on a rack’ (see Note to st. 2/2 above; and cf., for example, description of the passion of S. Vincent, Vinc 322.13-14: hann var upphafdr ok þandr i stagli ‘he was raised up and stretched on a rack’). This suggested emendation of the final word in the l. to þandr = þandur is nevertheless problematic, since none of the other ll. in the poem shows desyllabification of final -r as -ur (cf. 1/3: fýstr, 1/6: æstr, 2/3: festr, 3/4: aldr, 4/4: almáttigr, 4/7: prýddr), and such an emendation would still leave the l. without an acceptable form of aðalhending.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. AH = Dreves, G. M., C. Blume and H. M. Bannister, eds. 1886-1922. Analecta hymnica medii aeui. 55 vols. Leipzig: Reisland. Rpt. 1961. New York: Johnson.
6. Blaise, Albert. 1954. Dictionnaire Latin-Français des Auteurs Chrétiens. Revu spécialement pour le vocabulaire théologique par Henri Chirat. Turnhout: Brepols.
7. CAO = Hesbert, Renato-Joanne, ed. 1963-79. Corpus antiphonalium officii. 6 vols. Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, series maior, Fontes 7-12. Rome: Casa Editrice Herder.
8. CH = Wieland, Gernot R., ed. 1982. The Canterbury Hymnal. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 12. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
9. DH = Milfull, Inge B. 1996. The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church: A study and edition of the ‘Durham Hymnal’. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Souter, Alexander. 1949. A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. Oxford: Clarendon.
11. Ordo Nidr = Gjerløw, Lilli, ed. 1968. Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae (Orðubók). Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt. Den rettshistoriske kommisjon. Libri liturgici provinciae Nidrosiensis medii aevi II. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
12. Mone, Franz Joseph, ed. 1853-5. Hymni latini medii aevi. 3 vols. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.
13. Internal references
14. David McDougall (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Pétrsdrápa 23’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 815-16.