Necrologium Lundense

It is preserved in a late medieval binding and the text is partially adorned with decorated initials, including one which displays influences from Viking art.

Necrologium Lundense was written in Latin to serve the canons of Lund Cathedral in their daily life as a so-called capitulary book.

It may have been written by Hermann of Schleswig, a deposed bishop who ended his days as a canon, and possibly scribe, at Lund Cathedral.

[5] The customary rules from the Necrologium Lundense are the only preserved statutes for a religious community from the Early Middle Ages in Scandinavia.

[7] It also contains lists of kings, bishops and monasteries and religious communities which were connected to Lund, and has served as an important source for historians, etymologists and philologists.

The cathedral had been under construction since before the consecration of the crypt in 1123, but in 1145 the chancel was inaugurated and from then on the canons could start using it instead of the chapter house for their recitals.

This coincided with a shift in liturgical practice, which meant that instead of the capitulary book, a new martyrology (Liber daticus vetustior) was used for their daily readings.

[1] It is bound in a later, probably 15th-century, medieval brown goatskin binding, decorated with blind tooling, partially preserved metal reinforcements at the corners and a clasp to keep the book tightly shut when closed (originally there were two).