Canute IV, Saint, Martyr, King of Denmark

CANUTO IV, the Saint, martyr, king of DENMARK. B. c. 1040. On the death of King Sven Estridson, his father, in 1076, he attempted to obtain the crown, but had to wait for the death of his brother Harold, who had usurped it, before reigning in his turn (1080). He proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign in the defense and expansion of his domains. He favored with singular zeal the work of the Church and the rise of Christian institutions, conceiving of his power as the sword of divine justice. But his authoritarian and pro-ecclesiastical policy provoked serious discontent; and on his return from the expedition of 1085 against England, undertaken against the Normans and failed through the treachery of his brother Olaf, he found his people in rebellion, on account of the harshness of the tithe collectors; and he fell victim to that rebellion, at Odense, in the church of St. Alban, together with his brother and others, on 10 July 1086.

After Paschal II authorized the elevation of his body, which took place in 1101, his cult spread throughout the North and he was regarded as patron of Denmark. In the Middle Ages his feast was celebrated on 10 July, the anniversary of his death. The present date of his feast, 19 Jan., both in the Roman Missal, where it was introduced in 1670 by Clement X, at the request of the Danish colony of Rome, and in the Roman Martyrology, is due to a confusion of C. with the homonymous martyr Canute Laward, duke of Schleswig.

Pier Fausto Palumbo