Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Qupperneq 24
10
Michael Chesnutt
2.1. Kiel, University Central Library S. H. 8 A (K)
This is a medieval parchment codex in octavo format, now consisting of
65 leaves and enclosed in a nineteenth-century binding of dark leather.
The title In passione sancti Kanuti (presumably derived from the rubric
on f. Ir of the codex itself) is impressed on the spine but is now almost
illegible. Nothing is known of the volume’s history until it was bought at
an auction in Leipzig in the 1820s by Baron Carl von Richthofen of
Leszczyn in Upper Silesia, in whose library it was noticed some thirty
years later by Potthast, who sent it to his colleague Waitz for further in-
vestigation. After the death of the baron in 1874 the codex was acquired
by the library of Kiel University for its collection of materials relating to
Schleswig-Holstein (cf. Waitz1 5, Usinger 18). A facsimile of the whole
volume was published in Denmark in 1962.20
2.1.1. Physical makeup. The surviving leaves of K are distributed in
eight quires of which the first, third, and fourth are of 10 leaves each (ff.
1-10, 19-28, and 29-38 respectively), while the second, fifth, and sixth
are of eight leaves each (ff. 11-18, 39-46,47-54). The seventh quire has
eight leaves (ff. 55-62) to which a loose leaf (f. 63) has been pasted; the
final quire is a bifolium (ff. 64-65). There being a textual lacuna imme-
diately after, but not before, f. 63 (see section 2.1.2, art. 2), that leaf can
be assumed to have been the first of an original eighth quire. Since the
existing ff. 64-65 contain a text that is complete in itself, they might in
principle have been the middle pair of leaves in this eighth quire; but the
lower half of f. 65v following the conclusion of the text has been left
empty, and it is therefore more plausible that a bifolium consisting of f.
63 plus a missing *f. 63bis made up the eighth, and the undamaged bi-
folium ff. 64-65 a ninth, quire.
K is in notebook format, measuring a mere 13.8 x 9.6 cm. Samples of
the original codex are reproduced in Plates 1-3 between pp. 8 and 9
above. Apart from ff. 2, 15, and 52, where pre-existing holes have been
avoided by the scribe, the parchment is of good quality, light in colour,
20 Codices scriptorum rerum Danicarum [...]. Primam partem [...] edidit Erik Kroman,
Copenhagen 1962 [CSRD]. Almost all of my work on the present edition has been based
on this facsimile, which unfortunately is not of the highest technical quality and does not
reproduce the colours of the original.