Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 13
Medii æv i liturgica regni Danici litteratura non quidem
divitiis abundat, sed taraen tum devotionis tum historiæ
fons est, ex quo thesauri multi adhuc ignoti ejfodiantur.
Petrus Damianus Steidl C.Ss.R. 1908
1. General introduction
During his sojourn in Germany, which lasted from the summer of 1694
to the late autumn of 1696, Åmi Magnusson published an edition of the
Older Zealand Chronicle from a now lost Danish codex.1 This chronicle
has an entry under the year 1130 (1131 by modern reckoning) about the
murder of Duke Knud Eriksen, called Knud Lavard, by his cousin and
rival Magnus Nielsen, an event that was to have far-reaching political
and ecclesiastical consequences in twelfth-century Denmark. It trig-
gered off the civil wars that eventually brought Knud Lavard’s son
Valdemar the Great to the throne, and contributed in the long term to the
stabilisation of relations between church and State symbolised by Pope
Alexander IIFs canonisation of Knud Lavard in 1169.2 In the summer of
the following year the duke’s mortal remains were translated to the high
1 Incerti Auctoris [...] Chronica Danorum, et præcipue Sialandiæ [...]. Ex veteri Mem-
brana eruit, primusque edidit Amas Magnæus, Leipzig 1695. Arni Magnusson’s edition is
the best extant witness to the text of this chronicle, the medieval codex having been de-
stroyed in the Copenhagen fire of 1728. He had worked on it in his youthful capacity of
amanuensis to Thomas Bartholin II (1659-1690), who awakened his Icelandic protégé’s
longer-term interest in medieval Danica. Cf. Ivan Boserup, “En fransk-dansk brevsamling
- og nogle danske diplomatarier. Historiske og litterære overvejelser i tilknytning til abbed
Vilhelms breve,” in: Erik Petersen (ed.), Levende ord & lysende billeder. Den middel-
alderlige bogkultur i Danmark. Essays, [Copenhagen and Århus] 1999, 78-95, esp.
78-81. Further on Årni’s edition of the Older Zealand Chronicle see M. Cl. Gertz (ed.),
Scriptores minores historiæ Danicce medii ævi (1917-22), reprint Copenhagen 1970
[SMHD], II 1-74, no. vi, here 2-4, and [Finnur Jonsson], Åmi Magnussons levned og
skrifter, Copenhagen 1930,1:1 29.
2 The canonisation buil was issued at Benevento on November 8, 1169. The standard cri-
tical edition is in Diplomatarium Danicum [DD] I. række 2. bind, 1053-1169, ed. Lauritz
Weibull and Niels Skyum-Nielsen, Copenhagen 1963, 346-48, no. 190.