for the first time, and for good, attached to Saxo's name.
Such a title, in the Middle Ages, usually implied that its owner was
a churchman, and Saxo's whole tone is devout, though not conspicuously
professional.

But a number of Saxos present themselves in the same surroundings with
whom he has been from time to time identified. All he tells us himself
is, that Absalon, Archbishop of Lund from 1179 to 1201, pressed him, who
was "the least of his companions, since all the rest refused the task",
to write the history of Denmark, so that it might record its glories
like other nations. Absalon was previously, and also after his
promotion, Bishop of Roskild, and this is the first circumstance giving
colour to the theory--which lacks real evidence--that Saxo the historian
was the same as a certain Saxo, Provost of the Chapter of Roskild,
whose death is chronicled in a contemporary hand without any mark of
distinction. It is unlikely that so eminent a man would be thus barely
named; and the appended eulogy and verses identifying the Provost and
the historian are of later date. Moreover, the Provost Saxo went on
a mission to Paris in 1165, and was thus much too old for the theory.
Nevertheless, the good Bishop of Roskild, Lave Urne, took this identity
for granted in the first edition, and fostered the assumption. Saxo was
a cleric; and could such a man be of less than canonical rank? He was
(it was assumed) a Zealander; he was known to be a friend of Absalon,
Bishop of Roskild. What more natural than that he should have been the
Provost Saxo? Accordingly this latter worthy had an inscription in gold
letters, written by Lave Urne himself, affixed to the wall opposite his
tomb.

Even less evidence exists for identifying our Saxo with the scribe of
that name--a comparative menial--who is named in the will of Bishop
Absalon; and hardly more warranted is the theory that he was a member,
perhaps a subdeacon, of the monastery of St. Laurence, whose secular
canons formed part of the Chapter of Lund. It is true that Sweyn
Aageson, Saxo's senior by about twenty years, speaks (writing about
1185) of Saxo as his "contubernalis". Sweyn Aageson is known to have had
strong family connections with the monastery of St. Laurence; but there
is only a tolerably strong probability that he, and therefore that Saxo,
was actually a member of it. ("Contubernalis" may only imply comradeship
in military service.) Equally doubtful is the consequence tha