Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 81
Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
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poetics - the Benedictine custodians of the cult centre played their dis-
tinctive part in a vital, albeit uncanonical, process that can be said to cul-
minate in the copying of K shortly before 1300. The subsequent interpo-
lation of excerpts from the Ringsted historia into the uses of Roskilde
and Odense enriched the secular liturgy of the saint with texts and chant
from the monastic tradition.
6. The legend of Knud Lavard from the
end of the middle ages to the eighteenth century
All of the printed liturgical books from the late middle ages transmit the
Vita altera in more or less attenuated form, but there is some evidence
that fuller texts remained in circulation until the early sixteenth century.
Thus the Low German Passionale printed at Liibeck before 1500 has
what might have been taken to be an abstract of the lessons in the local
Schleswig breviary, were it not for its inclusion of material that is found
in K but not in S.115 An analogous case is the Historia S. Canuti ducis et
martyris, a copy of which has already been noted in Stephanius’s Infulæ
Cimbricæ (pp. 25-26 above); this text cannot be older than the early six-
teenth century, for it refers directly to the posthumously published work
of the Hamburg historian Albert Krantz, who died in 1517 (cf. SaxoOR
xv). According to Gertz the Historia is a compilation, both direct and in-
direct, from the Gesta Danorum supplemented by Krantz, with a few de-
tails (“enkelte Notitser”) lifted directly from the Vita.116 The verification
of these relationships is, however, a task that must be left to students of
early modem Danish historiography.
A Danish contemporary of Krantz who may have taken an interest in
St Knud Lavard was Lage Ume (ca. 1467-1529), the last pre-Reforma-
tion bishop of Roskilde. A little poem in Copenhagen, Royal Library
GKS 1129 fol. may possibly be by him. 1129 is a manuscript from the
early eighteenth century that once belonged to the historian Hans Gram
115 Nor indeed in any of the other printed books; cf. SRDIV 276-77, no. 8, and Gertz VSD
180 n.l.
116 VSD 175-76. The full text is printed from another manuscript in SRD IV 230-56, no.
evn; Gertz cites Ellen Jørgensen for the existence of a third copy in Uppsala.