Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 38

24
Michael Chesnutt
other hånd, not the Gesta proper but the fourteenth-century Compendi-
um Saxonis may have influenced BKB in the famous anecdote about the
messenger’s song of waming:
K 329-30
bkB
Gesta
Compendium
ordinem cuiusdam parricidij cantando ter reiterauit
cancionem quandam de quodam parricidio tune notissimo
compositam pluries cantauit (VSD 448,25-26)
Igitur speciosissimi carminis contextu notissimam [...] per-
fidiam de industria memorare adorsus (SaxoOR 355,5-6)
Dictus igitur Saxo cantare cepit tune notissimam hystoriam
(SMHD I 398,19-20)
Compendium Saxonis has apparently also left its fingerprint on the de-
scription of how the duke was killed:
K 375-76
bke
Gesta
Compendium
ab aure sinistra in dextrum oculum caput findit
capud reuerendi ducis ab aure sinistra vsque ad oculum dex-
trum diuisit (VSD 449,1-2)
eum Magnus capitis media diffissum exanimat (SaxoOR
355,32-33)
Magnus caput eius diuidens ipsum exanimauit (SMHD I
399,11-12)
A reading in BKB that I consider to be definitely secondary is the
characterisation of King Niels: qui parum regno vtilisfuit. Nam auua-
rus et instabilis animo fuit (VSD 446,18—447,1; cf. K 121-22). The
king’s avarice may have been suggested to the writer by Saxo’s detail
that he cheated his sister’s son of his rightful inheritance (SaxoOR
343,3-4, Compendium SMHD I 393,1-3). The reading propter defe-
ctum ducis (VSD 447,3) is evidently a corruption of K 139 pro defeetu
iuris, influenced by the awareness that Knud Lavard’s treacherous pre-
decessor as duke of Schleswig was disgraced, but did not die, before
the dukedom became vacant (SaxoOR 344,38-345,3, Compendium
SMHD I 393,27-394,1; cf. K 137). The clause ab omnibus venera-
biliter est receptus (VSD 448,1) is an abbreviation of a sentence imper-
fectly transmitted in K due to haplography but found intact in the Århus
breviary; the adverbial form reuerenter in the latter (beside K 259
reu(er)endus, see note to the text) may explain venerabiliter in BKB. Fi-
nally, the participial construction at VSD 448,28 nichil super cor po-