Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Síða 80
66
Michael Chesnutt
This imagery recurs in the hymn Gaudet mater ecclesia (§§ 1:4, 3:3,
8:4), while in st. 4i of the sequence and in one of the four Magnificat an-
tiphons at Second Vespers of the Passion (§ 8:5:1:2) the saint is called
Cristi miles-, the latter is a favourite metaphor, employed also in the long
respond at First Vespers of the Passion (§ 1:3) and in the collect at Se-
cond Vespers of that feast (§ 8:6). The Mass sequences are accordingly
related with the poetry of the Office through their choice of imagery, but
other intertextual links are with the prose lessons from Scripture. In st.
32 of the second sequence the martyrs are said to be supra petram soli-
dati, paraphrasing the chapter at Second Vespers of the Translation (§
16:2); in st. 42 the words stola prima est indutus, here applied to the mar-
tyred duke in Paradise, echo the chapter at Second Vespers of the Pas-
sion (§ 8:2), and that passage in turn supplies the text of the short re-
spond prescribed for Lauds of the Passion and Second Vespers of the
Translation (§§ 3:2, 16:3). Lastly, it may be noted that the couplet unde
granum grana centum / moriendo protulit in the Benedictus antiphon at
Lauds (§ 3:4) seems to be inspired by the Passion homily on Jo.
12:24-25, which speaks of the hundredfold increase of the pure grain of
faith (cf. K 513-14).
Were it not for the echoes of the Translation narrative in the se-
quences, one might have thought that the poetic material about St Knud
Lavard was composed in complete ignorance of that narrative. Certainly
his life and postulated martyrdom are now wholly in the foreground.
Only a few years after the duke’s death in 1131, Robert of Ely had star-
ted the propaganda campaign that eventually led to his canonisation.
The dossier presented to the Pope by Valdemar the Great’s emissaries in
1169 may not have been sufficiently convincing to eam Knud Lavard
the official title of martyr (cf. p. 4 above and K 789-91), but the ruling
establishment in Denmark were undaunted by this technicality. The Vita
altera was in faet the first shot fired in a battie for the hearts and minds
of the clergy, and its incorporation into a standardised secular liturgy
may be seen as an administrative device to ensure acceptance of the
saint’s martyr status in the Danish dioceses. Only from Jutland, where
there is no Mass Proper of the Passion in Missale Viburgense and no Of-
fice of that feast in the Århus breviary, do we have signs that the strate-
gy did not wholly succeed. In elaborating the secular model - and pro-
viding a historia that met the most up-to-date requirements of liturgical