Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 85

Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
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the citizenry of Ringsted;125 the possibility seems not to have been con-
sidered that it was at least originally intended for performance by the
young men of the town’s Latin school. Unfortunately the text has not
survived intact. It occupies ff. 48-77 in Thott 1409 4to, with one leaf ob-
viously wanting after f. 54, and the present ff. 56-57 have been incor-
rectly placed after, instead of directly in front of, f. 55;126 from the posi-
tion of the binding threads it would seem that the missing f. *54bis was
conjunct with f. 55. The approximately 40 lines of verse that have been
lost cannot be reconstructed even in broad outline, as the play script at
this point greatly expands the historical narrative of the oppressive re-
gency of Harald Kesja,127 breaking off during a fictional confrontation
between Harald and Skjalm Hvide, the leader of the Danish nobility and
Knud Lavard’s foster-father (lines 284-96). On the other hånd, Birket
Smith marshalled indisputable evidence that the bulk of the plot was
borrowed from a full text of the Vita (not the truncated lessons in the
breviaries), even to the extent of finding linguistic echoes of the liturgi-
cal text in the Latin stage directions of the play script.128 He also demon-
strated the Catholic ideology of the play and argued, perhaps less com-
pellingly, that it postdated the Danish Reformation of 1536.129 However
that may be, Ludus de S. Canuto duce suggests that the liturgy of Knud
Lavard remained in use at Ringsted until the early sixteenth century. The
legend of the saint may have been kept alive there for several more
decades through the medium of the dramatic paraphrase in Danish.
A little younger than Villum Rasmussen’s text of the Ringsted play is
Copenhagen, Royal Library GKS 2397 4to, an important ballad collec-
125 See Helge Toldberg, “Ludus de Sancto Canuto duce,” in: Kulturhistorisk leksikon for
nordisk middelalder 10, Copenhagen, etc. 1965, 713-14, and most recently Pil Dahlerup,
Dansk litteratur. Middelalder, Copenhagen 1998,1 403-10, here 405-06 (with further re-
ferences).
126 The binding mistake was only noticed by Birket Smith after his edition had been set up
in type, cf. LSK [61].
127 Cf. SaxoOR 340,21-27 and the mention of Harald’s sexual improprieties ibid.
358,31-35; at K 120 the regency of Harald is bypassed in euphemistic silence - or mere
ignorance. Toldberg (n. 125 above) quotes Hans Brix for the idea that the portrait of Ha-
rald Kesja is an oblique expression of public animosity towards King Christian II, and as
such not part of the original play. The latter proposal does not seem to me to harmonise
with the stylistic uniformity of the text.
128 See LSK xxvi-xxxi (introduction); 30 n. 11, 32 n. 12, 51 n. 22, 52 n. 25 (text).
129 LSK introduction xxxv-xxxvm. According to Toldberg the language indicates a date
of composition not earlier than the tum of the fifteenth century. If there is indeed an allu-
sion to the reign of Christian II (cf. n. 127), a date around 1520 would be plausible.