Note 294 — XLV CONCERNING THE MODERATION WHICH A KING MUST OBSERVE IN HIS JUDICIAL SENTENCES AND PENALTIES, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN FROM THE STORY OF GOD’S JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF ADAM AND EVE, IN WHICH CASE TRUTH AND JUSTICE WERE ASSOCIATED WITH PEACE AND MERCY

The compiler of Stjórn, an Old Norse paraphrase of the larger part of the Old Testament, following Petrus Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, attributes to Bede the statement that the serpent in those days bore the face of a maiden (p. 34). The author of the King’s Mirror cannot have used Stjórn, as it seems to be a production of the fourteenth century, nor is there any evidence that he knew the Historia Scholastica.