THE KING'S MIRROR 9 



found.* It is likely, therefore, that the author had 

 access to such books only as were in his own posses- 

 sion. But he came to his task with a well-stocked mind, 

 with a vast fund of information gathered by travel and 

 from the experiences of an active life; and thus he drew 

 largely from materials that had become the permanent 

 possession of his memory. This fact, if it be a fact, will 

 also help to explain why so many inaccuracies have crept 

 into his quoted passages ; in but very few instances does 

 he give the correct wording of a citation. 



There can be no doubt that the author had a copy of 

 the Vulgate before him; at least one Biblical passage is 

 correctly given, and it is quoted in its Latin form.f It 

 has also been discovered that he had access to an Old 

 Norse paraphrase of a part of the Old Testament, the 

 books of Samuel and of the Kings, t It is likely that he 

 was also acquainted with some of the works of Saint 

 Augustine, and perhaps with the writings of certain 

 other medieval authorities. Among these it seems safe 

 to include the Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of tales 

 and ethical observations by Petrus Alf onsus, a converted 

 Jew who wrote in the first half of the twelfth century. 

 The Disciplina is a somewhat fantastic production 

 wholly unlike the sober pages of the Speculum Regale; 

 nevertheless, the two works appear to show certain 



* There must have been important collections of manuscripts at Nidaros 

 (Trondhjern), where there was a cathedral and several monastic institu- 

 tions. The King's Mirror was probably composed in Namdalen, about one 

 hundred miles northeast of Nidaros. See below, pp. 50-60. 

 f See below, p. 237. 



J Storm, " Om Tidsforholdet mellem Kongespeilet og Stjorn saint Barlaams 

 Saga " : Arkivfar nordisk Filologi, III, 83-88. 



