Codex AM 619 quarto is George T. Flom’s scholarly presentation of the Old Norwegian manuscript known as the Old Norwegian Homily Book (Gammelnorsk homiliebok). The volume is not a treatise written by Alcuin; Alcuin’s name is attached because the codex itself contains his De virtutibus et vitiis, a moral treatise on virtues and vices. Flom’s book is concerned with the manuscript as a homiletic collection: its Old Norse sermons, the text known as The Miracles of Saint Olaf, and the Old Norse version of Alcuin’s treatise. It makes the codex available through facsimiles and supporting philological discussion, and it includes a bibliography of relevant scholarship.
Its focus is on the manuscript’s language and textual contents rather than on a biographical narrative. The work therefore belongs to Old Norse philology and manuscript studies: it treats AM 619 quarto as a witness to Old Norwegian religious prose and to the transmission of Alcuin’s moral text in the North.
The volume’s deeper interest lies in the kind of religious book AM 619 quarto represents: a vernacular compilation in which sermons, moral instruction, and hagiographic material sit together. Its themes are therefore pastoral and doctrinal rather than speculative: the homilies address Christian teaching and moral conduct, while Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis supplies a focused treatment of virtues and vices. The presence of The Miracles of Saint Olaf extends the collection toward saintly devotion and the cult of Olaf, showing how homiletic, moral, and hagiographic concerns could be gathered into one Old Norse religious codex.
For Old Norse philology, the book is significant as a witness to Old Norwegian religious prose and to the adaptation of Latin Christian works into Norse. It documents translation and compilation practices: Latin models are not simply reproduced but transmitted within a vernacular homiletic context. For manuscript studies, it presents AM 619 quarto as a coherent collection whose value lies in the combination of its texts, not only in the individual pieces. For the history of Alcuin’s reception in the North, it shows De virtutibus et vitiis circulating alongside sermons and devotional narrative, as part of a practical religious book. Flom’s presentation thus makes the codex useful for studying Old Norse sermon literature, moral teaching, hagiography, and the textual transmission of Latin Christian learning in medieval Norway.
