Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 45
Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
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4. Other printed books
Late medieval testimony to the liturgy of St Knud Lavard appears in the
missals and breviaries that were printed in the half century immediately
prior to the Reformation.55 Much of this testimony was already known to
Langebek, whose collection was revised and added to by Gertz.56 A com-
plete re-collation of all the original printed material consulted by these
two earlier scholars has not been possible within the limits of the present
study, but I have examined reproductions of pre-Reformation books that
were not known to or at any rate not fully utilised by them, paying special
attention to the liturgical texts that Gertz dismissed as ‘dead weight’.57
4.1. Missals
The oldest extant printed missal for a Danish diocese is the fragmentari-
ly preserved Missale Ottoniense printed at Liibeck in 1483 (LN 183).
The surviving material as represented on the film seen by me at the
Royal Library in Copenhagen would not seem to contain any text rele-
vant to this investigation.
4.1.1. Hard on the heels of the Odense missal follows the so-called
Missale Hafniense vetus (LN 178a), printed at Mainz ca. 1484 and prin-
cipally attested by the parchment fragments now in Helsinki, Finland.58
Here f. 13 has the Sanctorale from the feast of St Matthew the Apostle
(February 24) to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (March
25), and conjunct with this leaf is f. 14, which has the Sanctorale from
Abbot Vilhelm of Æbelholt (June 16) to the vigil of St John the Baptist
55 Pre-Reformation Danish printed books are identified by their numbers in Lauritz
Nielsen, Dansk Bibliografi 1482-1600, second edition with supplement by Erik Dal,
Copenhagen 1996 [LN].
56 See n. 11 above and Gertz’s remarks in VSD 180-81.
57 The orthography of the sources quoted has been normalised to some extent in the fol-
lowing paragraphs. Variant readings from the lessons of Matins are not recorded here, but
have been relegated for practical reasons to Appendix I.
58 Cf. Toivo Haapanen, “Missale Hafniense vetus. Ett hittilis okandt danskt missale tryckt
i Mainz af Peter Schoffer omkring år 1484,” in: Nordisk tidskrift for bok- och biblioteks-
vasen 9, 1922, 29-37; V. Madsen, “Fragment af Missale Hafniense vetus i København,”
ibid. 38.