Adonias saga

Kalinke and Mitchell summarise the saga thus:

The crux of the tale is the prophecy that the offspring born to the king and queen of Syria will rule the kingdom after the king's death. An evil duke tries to secure the royal throne for his own progeny and turn the prophecy of royal succession to his own advantage. The king is abducted and secreted in the bed of the duke's daughter, while the duke sleeps with the queen. As prophesied, offspring are born to both king and queen. When the king reveals that he knows about the deception practiced on him, he is attacked by the duke and killed. The queen's son, Constancius, ascends the throne. The greater part of the romance relates the attempts of Adonias, the king's son, to gain the

throne of Syria. The romance is characterized by extensive battle accounts.Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, Bibliography of Old Norse–Icelandic Romances, Islandica, 44 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 18.

In the assessment of Otto J. Zitzelsberger, ‘Adonias saga, which runs to seventy-one chapters, is unnecessarily prolonged by its unrelenting account of large-scale military preparations and actions as well as duels and other single encounters. It is also overloaded with stock banquets, hunting scenes, and hyperbole associated with the genre to which it belongs'.Otto J. Zitzelsberger, 'Adonias saga', in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 2.

The saga is preserved in dozens of manuscripts from various periods, attesting to its popularity, with the oldest being vellum books from the 15th century. The saga itself is believed to have been written in the latter part of the 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century. The text appears complete, but the prologue is preserved in only one of the manuscripts, AM 593 a 4to, which is thought to have been written in the latter part of the 15th century. Kalinke and Mitchell identified the following early manuscripts of the saga:Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, Bibliography of Old Norse–Icelandic Romances, Islandica, 44 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. .

• Arnamagnæean Institute, Copenhagen: AM 567,4° (vellum fragment), I (15th c), 4 leaves; VI, α (15th c), 2 leaves; VI, β (ca. 1400), 1 leaf
• AM 570a, 4° (late 15th c), vellum, defective
• AM 579, 4° (15th c), vellum, defective
• AM 593a, 4° (15th c), vellum
• AM 118a, 8° (17th c)
• Royal Library, Copenhagen: NKS 1265, fol., II, c (15th c), vellum, 1 leaf
• Royal Library, Stockholm: Perg. fol. nr 7 (late 15th c), defective
• Papp. 4:o nr 6 (late 17th c)
• Papp. 4:o nr 19 (late 17th c )
• Papp. fol. nr 48 (1690), defective

Although the prologue appears only in the manuscript AM 593 a 4to, Sverrir Tómasson has argued that it accompanied the saga from its inception and was written by the saga's author. The prologue narrates two ancient animal fables, and these animals also characterize the two main figures in the saga, Duke Constancius and his son Albanus. A similar prosaic rhyme appears in the fables of the prologue and in the concluding words of the saga. Due to transcription errors of Latin scribal verses in the prologue, which do not appear in the translation of those verses, it is clear that the prologue in AM 593 a 4to originates from an older vellum book. Thus, there were at least two manuscripts with the prologue. To explain why the prologue was omitted from most transcripts of the saga, Sverrir suggests that it contains criticism of the greed and arrogance of the ruling class, but copies of the saga were made precisely for members of that class, who therefore only wanted the saga and not the criticism.Sverrir Tómasson, "The fræðisaga of Adonias", Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, ed. by John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth and Gerd Wolfgang Weber, The VIking Collection, 3 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1986), 390–93 {{ISBN|8774926071}}.{{Reference page|pages=135–36}}

The prologue was first published separately in print in 1960, with the argument that it was not connected to the saga itself. The primary reason for its publication was that the prologue contained Icelandic translations of two Aesopic fables. The first tells of a crow in a tree with a piece of cheese in its beak, which a fox deceives with praise to make it sing, thus dropping the cheese for the fox to take. The second is about a wolf who unjustly attacks a lamb for muddying the water in the stream from which they both drink, even though the lamb drinks downstream from the wolf; when the lamb asserts its rights, the wolf abuses its power and devours it.

The editor of the prologue, Ole Widding, categorizes the two fables according to narrative motifs, referencing a large list published by the folklorist Stith Thompson in the mid-last century, which contains a detailed description of narrative motifs from various parts of the world. Neither Widding nor Sverrir Tómasson point to specific ancient or medieval texts containing these fables that could have served as a source for the animal fables in the prologue of Adonias saga. Similar stories to those discussed here are found in Ancient Greek in Karl Halm's collection of Aesopic fables, Fabulae Aesopicae Collectae (Leipzig 1889), and in Latin fables taken from the sermons of the French canon Jacques de Vitry (died 1240), published by Thomas Crane in The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry (London 1890). The first text is unequivocally ruled out as a direct source due to a lack of books and limited knowledge of Greek among Icelandic clerics in the Middle Ages, but in the canon's sermons, the stories are interwoven into a sermon framework that does not match anything in the prologue of Adonias saga.

The author of Adonias saga himself refers to the multilingual nature of the collected material: "Many ancient and learned and talented people have sought in many ways to gather art and knowledge for the memory and amusement of future generations, and many of them - those who were skilled in many languages traveled around the world out of curiosity to learn about the greatest things that happened in every land, and according to their stories each of them translated those wisdom stories into their language, and others wrote in Latin and added many more words to them than they had before, and many showed their rhetorical ability there." It is clear from the author's words that he refers to Latin and seems to expect that the greatest rhetorical skill or style would be found in Latin writings. This is consistent with what we know about books in Iceland at the time Adonias saga was written. He also uses Latin names for the fables, "fabulas" and "fabula," in his parables. It is therefore not unreasonable to think that the same unknown Icelandic priest knew the two fables in Latin.

Remains of Icelandic Latin reading texts of a type similar to the younger group of Liber Catonianus are preserved in two 13th-century vellum fragments, Þjms frag 103 and Þjms frag 104. This was recently pointed out by a Norwegian scholar, Áslaug Amundsen, who specialized in deciphering Latin fragments from Scandinavian countries. The fragments in question are two bifolia that were identified as belonging to the same vellum book. Þjms frag 104 contains complementary phrases from the fourth book of Disticha Catonis, while Þjms frag 103 contains text from Aesopic fables. Fables 9-11 and 19-20 in this collection are complete, and fragments of fables 8, 12, 18, and 21 are also preserved. Unfortunately, fables 2 and 15, those used in Adonias saga, have not been preserved. However, there is no need to doubt that they were in the same book, even though the pages on which they were written are now lost. It can be assumed, based on a comparison with the full text of the fables in printed editions, that it covered 16 pages or 32 sides in this manuscript when complete. The book contained two of the works belonging to Liber Catonianus, and it might have contained additional poems, perhaps even eight, so the booklet could have been called Octo au(c)tores. However, we only know for certain that this book contained Disticha Catonis and Fabulae Esopicae.

Little is known about the origin of Þjms frag 103 and Þjms frag 104, and no one has bothered to document from which books these fragments came. However, both fragments were certainly preserved in Iceland and written there, most likely in one of the Benedictine monasteries in northern Iceland, as can be seen from the way the last letter or sign in each line of the poems is treated. The same method for writing Latin poems is common in many other Icelandic manuscripts, although it is very rare in Western manuscripts. Here lies a possible source for the author of Adonias saga, and there is no need to look for it outside of Iceland. Of course, the author did not have to use this particular manuscript, as it can be assumed that other Icelandic textbooks with the same content existed. But nevertheless, he might have known this particular manuscript, for example, if he studied in the same northern Icelandic monastery that owned the manuscript.

If we examine how these fables are told in Icelandic in Adonias saga and compare it to the Latin text, it seems most likely that it is a retelling from memory. Most of the details appearing in the Icelandic story are also found in the Latin version, and in addition, there are several shared stylistic features.

The style of the Icelandic fable is what is called "florid style" (Danish: florissant stil), which has been much discussed in articles by scholars in the 20th century, especially those who pointed out that this style does not necessarily indicate a translation from Latin, but that such compositions might have been originally written in Norse. However, it seems clear that the Icelandic florid style draws inspiration from the Latin style, as can be seen in this rhymed fable. Similar to Icelandic, Latin also uses alliteration and rhymes.

• Agnete Loth (ed.), Late Medieval Icelandic Romances, Editiones Arnamagæanae, series B, 20–24, 5 vols Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962–65), III 66-230. [The principal scholarly edition, including an English paraphrase in the footnotes, based on AM 593 a 4to.]

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