Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 11
FOREWORD
In the year 1519 the Missale Nidro siense was printed in Copenhagen
on the initiative of the Archbishop of Nidaros (now Trondheim) Erik
Valkendorf. This Missal - together with the Breviarium Nidrosiense,
which the said archbishop had printed in Paris in the same year - was
intended for use in all churches throughout the Archbishopric of Nidards,
i. e. Norway proper, and the Norse settlements in the islands to the
west.
Before Missal and Breviary appeared in print, of course, the Norwe-
gian Church (like all other churches) employed hooks written by hånd.
And it is relics of such manuscripts which furnish the main material
for the following treatise.
Less than twenty years after the publication of the printed Missal,
the Church Reformation did away with the Roman Catholic divine wor-
ship, till then practised in Norway and its colonies, and established the
Evangelic-Lutheran Church instead.
Here it will be stated in which way we have been able to acquire
such medieval manuscripts as are mentioned above. First, the strictly
Norwegian ones.
Until about the year 1900 the only liturgical documents belonging to
the church of Norway proper in the Middle Ages, known to be extant,
were copies of the printed Missal and Breviary (reposing in the Uni-
versity Library, Oslo). Remnants of such documents in manuscript no-
body knew about, and scarcely anybody expected such to exist. And no
wonder. The agents who set about to abolish the old faith, and those
who embraced the new one, held it to be a merit in the eyes of God
to destroy all popish books. Thus the whole library and the archives of
the Archbishop were carried out into the open and burned to ashes.
And a similar fate befell the other episcopal residences, and, no doubt,
the monasteries and the more prominent churches and parsonages.
And yet, the annihilation was not complete, as will be evident in due
course. In some churches — especially the lesser ones, situated in the
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