The purpose of this article is to discuss the litirgical use of saints' legends in saints' offices as a particular way of producing "sacred history," focusing on the way such texts were integrated into the Nocturns (of Matins) in a saint's office. In this context, I am primarily concerned not with the saints' legends as such but rather with the mechanisms involved in the liturgical appropriation of a saint's narrative, which, of course, is related to the way a saint's legend would often be composed: as a text designed to be read in a saint's office.
I give an example of hos the procedure of inscribing a saint into the universal liturgical celebration of God's sacred history with humans functioned in practice by way of a brief discussion of one section from the Office of Saint Cnut lavard, a Danish princely saint who was killed in 1131 and was canonised in 1169 by Pope Alexander III.