Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 44
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Michael Chesnutt
the first lesson, repeating its details about the arrangements made by
King Erik when he set out on pilgrimage. It continues with a rapid sur-
vey of everything that happened up to the night before the duke’s mur-
der, at times reducing a whole lesson in the Vita to one or two sentences
(ibid. 31,9-32,17), and concludes with a fuller account of the fateful
meeting in the forest near Haraldsted (32,17-33,13). The variant read-
ings of the second passage are fully recorded in Appendix I below, and a
few characteristic readings from the first passage are included in the
notes to the main text. The following instances call for special comment
(KJ CS = here SMHD II 32,8-18):
316 cum cognata sua Cecilia] apud Ceciliam sororem suam
321-22 Suggeritur a suis arma summere, quibus ille dixit. Absit] At
cum illi (ipsi Stockholm K 3) dicerent turpe esse, quod dux
[...] sine gladio incederet, egre gladium accepit
346 consciencia pura et mente fideli] conscientia bona et fide non
ficta
The first of these variants is scarcely - as Gertz speculated in VSD 214,[4]
- a case of scribal corruption (sororem by mistake for *sobrinam), but
must rather be put down to the chronicler’s belief in his personal, albeit
historically inaccurate, knowledge. The second variant shows the influ-
ence of Saxo, whom the chronicler more than once quotes directly, and
who relates that the duke [m]onitore vem, ne ferrum omitteret, insistente,
ægre gladium sumpsit (SaxoOR 354,39). The third variant is a literal quo-
tation of a verse from one of the Pauline epistles that the original author
probably had in mind when he wrote (see note to the text).
The Older Zealand Chronicle was in other words edited by a man of
critical disposition who was not afraid to tamper with his text of the Vita
altera.54 He knew other historical and pseudo-historical traditions, not
only about the duke’s family but also about the Ringsted solemnities of
1170; these he describes with reference to Saxo and dates correctly, in
contrast to K and the much later breviary from Roskilde, which mention
the wrong month (cf. SMHD II 41,4-14 and edition line 791 and note).
Actually there is no evidence at all that he had read the liturgical narra-
tive for the Translation feast.
54 His gifts did not, however, extend to a developed sense of literary structure: Ellen Jør-
gensen (as n. 50 above, 11) not unfairly calls the chronicle “et underligt Flikværk.”