Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/148

130 was also heard from the pulpit, legends and prayer-books were translated, and in several convents attempts were made at translating the Bible. An old fragment from the time of Christian I embraces the first eight books of the old Testament, according to the Vulgata, and there are translations of the psalms of David dating from the same time. Also the well known work found in every European country, the half theological popular book called "Lucidarius," appeared in the Danish language.

In this period occur the first efforts in religious poetry in the Danish tongue, the forerunners of the psalms of the reformation period. The hymns in honor of the Virgin Mary are a peculiar product of these efforts. In their religious-erotic sentimentality they give the impression of being love songs rather than hymns for edification. The rhymed poems of Michael, priest of St. Alban's church in Odense, are the only ones whose value rises above being merely of use to the historians of civilization and literature. Priest Michael wrote them in 1496, at the request of Queen Christine, the wife of King Johan. After his death in 1515, they were published, and they consist of three songs, one of the rosary of the Virgin Mary, one of the creation, and one of human life. The first and longest is a free, and in its form, perfectly independent poetical extract from a Latin work of the Dominican monk, Alanus de Rupe (Alain de Roch), who lived in the fifteenth century, and who was very zealous in spreading the worship of the Virgin Mary, by means of the rosary and of the prayers therewith connected. Both the other poems are also free adaptations of Latin originals. But all his works are marked by a deep, tender, not only religious, but also poetical sentiment—by a taste strikingly delicate for his time in the choice of words, and by a generally good style. In all these particulars he not only surpasses his contemporaries, but it was long before there appeared another Danish poet who could boast the same command of language. In conse-