Feast day: January 19
St. Canute IV of Denmark
A king of Denmark who strengthened the Church and the rights of the poor and weak, and was killed by rebels before the altar of a church he had endowed.
Canute IV, often called Canute the Holy, was a king of Denmark in the eleventh century, one of the many sons of Sweyn II. Elected to the throne about 1080, he set himself two great aims: to strengthen the still-young Christian Church in his realm and to assert royal authority over a fiercely independent nobility.
He was a generous benefactor of churches and bishoprics, endowing the cathedral of Lund among others, and he insisted on the payment of tithes and the keeping of Christian law — measures that won him the gratitude of the Church but the resentment of nobles unused to such discipline.
His efforts to enforce these laws, together with the burdens of a planned expedition to England, provoked a revolt. In 1086 Canute was pursued to the island of Funen and killed, with his brother Benedict and seventeen companions, before the altar of the church of St. Alban at Odense, where he had taken refuge in prayer.
Miracles reported at his tomb led to his canonization in 1101 — the first Danish saint. He is honoured as the patron of Denmark.
His own subjects rebelled against his taxes and reforms and cut him down at the altar — and within years the same nation venerated him as a martyr.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/03307a.htm
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