The Ten Commandments in Old Frisian: Their Form and Content

Abstract

This study discusses the relationship amongst the five surviving versions of the Ten Commandments in Old Frisian, which are collectively preserved in eight manuscripts and in one incunable. These versions do not follow the Vulgate text verbatim, but rather include interferences from other texts. As the author intends to show, the compiler of the version of the Ten Commandments in the First Rüstring Manuscript aimed to produce a comprehensive list of precepts by including the Great Commandment, and had a source close to Honorius’s De decem plagis Aegypti spiritualiter at their disposal. The text in Haet is Riocht? may have influenced the vernacular rendition of the Mosaic Law preserved in Codex Aysma. Lastly, the versions preserved in the First and Second Hunsingo Manuscripts and one of the two versions attested by Codex Unia seem to be independent translations of a single Latin text, which survives in Unia.