CANUTE IV, the Saint, martyr, king of DENMARK. Born ca. 1040. At 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 he could reign in his turn (1080). He proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign in the defense and expansion of his domains. He promoted with singular zeal the work of the Church and the rise of Christian institutions, conceiving his power as the sword of divine justice. But his authoritarian and pro-clerical policy provoked great discontent; and upon his return from the expedition of 1085 against England, undertaken against the Normans and frustrated by the treachery of his brother Olaf, he found his people in rebellion, due to the harshness of the tithe collectors; and falling victim to the rebellion at Odense, in the church of St. Alban, together with his brother and others, on 10 July 1086.
Having been authorized by Paschal II to elevate his body, which occurred in 1101, his cult spread in the North and he was considered the 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 January, both in the Roman Missal, where it was introduced in 1670 by Clement X at the request of the Danish colony in Rome, and in the Roman Martyrology, is due to a confusion of C. with the homonymous martyr, Canute Laward, duke of Schleswig.