Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 15

Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
5
Double celebrations of saints were not uncommon in the medieval
church, but the Passion of St Knud Lavard in January was an ecclesias-
tical irregularity - and was apparently still not observed as a matter of
course in Jutland at the end of the medieval period.7
The first biography of Knud Lavard was written by an English Bene-
dictine monk, Robert of Ely, more likely than not at Ringsted and at the
behest of Knud Lavard’s half-brother, King Erik Emune. If the latter in-
deed sponsored this biography it must have been begun within only a few
years of the killing of the duke, for Erik died already in 1137. Robert of
Ely’s work is almost entirely lost but is thought to have comprised three
books treating of the life, death, and miracles of Knud Lavard. Among the
few excerpts that have survived, attention may be drawn here to those oc-
curring at the beginning of the paper manuscript AM 1049 4to, which is a
collection of Danish hagiographical notices copied - wholly or partly
from codices at the University Library in Copenhagen - by Ami Magn-
usson and three or four collaborators (cf. Katalog over den Arnamag-
næanske håndskriftsamling, Copenhagen 1889-94 [KålKatAM], II 305,
no. 2181 ).8 Very little can be deduced from the excerpts about the form of
Robert’s book, other than that it altemated between prose and verse after
the fashion of what may well have been its immediate literary model, the
biography of St Knud the King written in Odense ca. 1120 by another
Englishman, Ailnoth from Canterbury.9
7 For the possibility that the Århus breviary of 1519 reflects primitive Danish usage as de-
scribed in Knytlinga saga, see section 4.2.6 below. - Other Danish saints who had two en-
tries in the calendar are St Knud the King and (locally) St Kjeld: cf. P. D. Steidl C.Ss.R.,
Knud den Hellige. Danmarks Værnehelgen, Copenhagen 1918, 298, and Merete Geert
Andersen, “Har Stephan Arndes trykt et Missale Vibergense?” (n. 62 below) 103-04. Dou-
ble celebrations were also associated with the cults of St Olav in Norway and of St Porlåkr
and St Magnus in Iceland, cf. Lilli Gjerløw (ed.), Liturgica Islandica (Bibliotheca Arna-
magnæana 35-36), Copenhagen 1980, I 51-53, and Robert Abraham Ottosson, Sancti
Thorlaci episcopi Officio rhythmica et Proprium Missæ in AM 241Afolio (Bibliotheca Ar-
namagnæana Supplementum 3), Copenhagen 1959, 68.
8 The last article in this manuscript is transcribed in Chr. Bruun, Den danske Literaturfra
Bogtrykkerkunstens Indførelse i Danmark til 1550, Copenhagen 1870-75,1 77-81. It is a
separate octavo quire, containing Årni Magnusson’s notes on the legend of St George in a
lost Århus print perhaps datable to 1498. These notes were presumably made in connec-
tion with Årni Magnusson’s studies of early Danish printed books, for which see Ami
Magniissons levned og skrifter (n. 1 above), 1:1 138. His autograph catalogue of books
published between 1501 and 1560 is in Copenhagen, Royal Library NKS 275 d 8vo.
9 The surviving extracts from the work of Robert of Ely are discussed and printed in M. Cl. Gertz
(ed.), Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, Copenhagen 1908-12 [VSD], 183-86,234-41. For Ailnoth
see ibid. 42-54,77-136 and Gertz, Knud den Helliges Martyrhistorie (n. 6 above) 83-91.