Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 17

Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
7
None of these previous editions of the liturgy of St Knud Lavard is
satisfactory or even complete. Waitz’s first attempt left out (1) all but a
few words of the homiletic lessons at Matins of both feasts, and (2) all
but the last of the responds in the third nocturn of Matins of the Passion
feast. Usinger made good the second of these omissions but depended
heavily on Waitz for the remainder of the text. Though a declared ambi-
tion of his edition was “einen Beitrag fur die Geschichte des Gottesdien-
stes, besonders im danischen Reich, [...] zu geben” (Usinger 33), he
failed to grasp the faet that the medieval manuscript presents a monastic
as opposed to a secular liturgy, and committed the grave errors of pla-
cing the boundary between Matins and Lauds of the Passion feast in the
wrong place, and of interpreting the trope to the last respond of the for-
mer as a Mass chant (ibid. 54 and n. 2). His only significant advance on
Waitz consisted in the identification of scriptural references in the text.
Here we may discem the helping hånd of the local Catholic priest, p.
Sommer, whom Usinger thanks for what seems in other respects to have
been rather inadequate specialist advice (ibid. 21 n. 1).
As for Waitz’s second edition, it offers a few improved readings but
leaves out (1) the psalm antiphons and versicles of the first and second
noctums as well as the antiphona ad cantica and Gospel incipit of the
third nocturn of Matins of the Passion feast; (2) everything from the final
Gospel of the latter to the Magnificat at Second Vespers of the same feast;
(3) everything prior to the first lesson at Matins of the Translation feast;
and (4) the Gospel incipit of the third nocturn of Matins of that feast.
These extensive cuts were made by Waitz himself (cf. Waitz2 9 and n. 1),
while his posthumous editor, O. Holder-Egger, limited himself to a
couple of his own conjectures in the notes.15 It can be said in favour of
Waitz and Usinger that they respected the order in which the material oc-
curs in the manuscript - or, as the former wrote in his preface to the editio
princeps: “Bei der Ausgabe håbe ich [...] die Ordnung des Codex nicht
verlassen, das Ganze, wie es in diesem jetzt vorliegt, nicht in seine einzel-
nen Theile auflosen wollen” (Waitz1 20). Gertz in his subsequent volume
did just that, printing the lessons of the first and second noctums of Matins
15 It is unclear whether Waitz or Holder-Egger was responsible for the borrowings from
Usinger in Waitz2, extending even to the incorrect sign of abbreviation printed there at
17,29; that sign is unthinkingly derived from Usinger’s false boundary mark between
Matins and Lauds of the Passion, cf. Usinger loc. cit.