Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 83

Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
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Erik Plovpenning in 1520, when he had a versified inscription placed
over the new grave in the monastic church at Ringsted.118 In that case the
attribution common to 1045 and 1129 must go back to Bartholin and be
put down to his misinterpretation of the boundary between two conse-
cutive items in his source.119
Pre-Reformation devotion to St Knud Lavard is also expressed in ver-
nacular prayers. Two such prayers have been preserved in the late me-
dieval compilation on which Karl Martin Nielsen conferred the title
‘Mirror of Wisdom’. The text is extant in two Amamagnæan manu-
scripts, AM 782 4to and AM 784 4to (KålKatAM II 201-02, nos. 1915
and 1917 respectively); 784 has the informative colophon completum
est opusculum hoc per me Ioannen (!) Ioannis hipododasculum (!)
Foburghensem, with the date 1523 (f. 338v). One of the prayers is for
the Passion feast and illustrates strikingly how the identities of the
treacherous Magnus and his father King Niels have been merged in the
popular consciousness (text here after 782, f. 71r-v):
O thw verdige herræ Sancte Knwd, en kong søn aff Danmarck, thyn
broder bleff kong i Danmarck, oc thw bleff hertwg, [...] ther fore ftck
thyn broder stort had thil deg som vor kong i Danmarck oc lod ynckelige
forrade teg och slo teg y hiel for vthen all skyld och brøde vden for Rin-
sted y en skaaw, etc.120
Though the other prayer is to be said at the Translation, as is stated in the
title En bøn aff Sancte Knwt hertwg som kommer anden medsommers
daw, it in faet highlights the duke’s passion and saintly example in his
lifetime (782, f. 202r-v):
118 For Lage Urne’s monumental and poetical interests see J. Oskar Andersen in: Dansk
biografisk Leksikon 24, Copenhagen 1943, 546-52, here 549.
119 In GKS 1129 fol. the liturgical stanza O dux et martyr Dacie is immediately followed
(at the top of f. [1 l]r) by the versicle Corona aurea super caput ejus and the collect Deus
qvi beatum Canutum. The text of the latter is the same as the collect provided for St Knud
the King in several of the printed liturgical sources including O’s OJficium Votivum (see
Steidl, OJficium et Missa [n. 60], 1 *, etc.), with insignificant variants except for the substi-
tution of the title ducem for regem. Since the versicle is also that of O’s votive office (cf.
Steidl 7*), what we must have here is a perfunetory alteration of the commemoration of
Knud the King for use on feasts of his namesake. Bartholin would of course not have
known that the text in his exemplar was a mere liturgical contrafactum.
120 Karl Martin Nielsen (ed.), Middelalderens danske bønnebøger, Copenhagen 1945-82,
III240-41, no. 611, here 241,1-2 and 6-8.