Of Chronicles and Kings : National Saints and the Emergence of Nation States in the High Middle Ages

The manuscript Kiel, University Library S.H. 8 A. 8o, which contains the earliest copy of the so-called "Roskilde Chronicle" as well as the complete monastic Offices and Masses of the Danish St Knud Lavard (1131), was published in facsimile, together with an edition of the liturgical material, by John Bergsagel in 2010. Comprising, respectively, the first attempt at a history of Denmark and the earliest music that can reasonably be supposed to have been written in Denmark, the publication provided the occasion for an international symposium, held at the Royal Library in Copenhagen in 2012, at which the historical, theological, liturgical and musicological aspects of its contents were discussed in contributions from thirteen invited scholars, which are collected in this volume. Against the background of the emergence of states and the role of the church in the early medieval period, as revealed in the annals of national chronicles and in the creation and cultivation of royal and national saints, the essays treat a variety of subjects including the writing of patriotic history, the crusades, crusaders and crusading elements in the liturgy, kingship and sanctity and the lives, liturgies and cults of British and Scandinavian saints, such as Mildred of Kent, King Oswin of Deira, David of Menevia, Thomas of Canterbury, King Olaf of Norway, King Erik of Sweden, King Knud of Denmark and, of course, Knud Lavard, who is here seen from a number of different points of view.