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 await the death of his brother Harold, who had usurped it, in order to reign in his turn (1080). He proved to be an energetic and capable sovereign in the defense and expansion of his domains. He favored the work of the Church and the emergence of Christian institutions with singular zeal, conceiving his power as the sword of divine justice. But his policy of authority and support for the Church provoked serious discontent; and, returning from the expedition against England undertaken against the Normans in 1085 and unsuccessful because of 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 the rebellion at Odense, in the church of St. Alban, together with his brother and others, on 10 July 1086.
After Paschal II had 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 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.