Saint Knut, King of Denmark

♥ Hellig Knut -- Holy Canute -- once King, now patron saint of Denmark.   Well, this is so in whole or in part depending on whose opinion you accept.   It is a truism that history is written by the victors, and the story of Saint Knut is illustrative of this fact.   It is also true that the span of history allows for more than one victor.  As a result the history told of him within the Catholic Encyclopedia differs greatly from that related within the official history of Denmark. ♥ Knut IV of Denmark, or II of England -- variously spelled Knut, Knud, Kanut, Cnut or Canute depending on the source -- was one of fifteen illegitimate sons of King Sweyn III (the Great) Estriðsøn, who was himself the nephew of Canute the Great, King of Denmark and England.   Knut was born circa 1040, and in the opinion of the jarls and the huscarls, he was the preferred successor to Sweyn III when the old king died in 1074.   Knut was strong, dynamic and mercurial, and he favoured a new Danish invasion of England in order to press his claim to the throne there.   Much to the contrary, the great majority of the carls (free farmers) were tired of warfare and preferred Knut's half-brother Harald as successor. At the Isøreting in the Spring of 1075 Harald was duly elected King of the Danes, only to die six short years later and to be remembered ignominiously as Harald the Slothful. ♥ With Harald gone, Knut was raised to kingship.   So Knut came to the throne in 1080, and immediately came into conflict with the carls, especially those in northern Jutland.   As well as being the favourite of the nobility, King Knut was a great supporter of the Catholic Church, whose reciprocal support he needed to hope to regain England from the usurper Duke William of Normandy.   Knut was generous to the church, granted it large estates, established many churches and monasteries, and raised the bishops in status to make them equals of the jarls.   He gave his own crown to the treasury of the church at Roskilde.   Knut waged war on the more barbarous peoples around the shores of the Baltic Sea and succeeded by force of arms in bringing both Courland and Livonia into the Christian faith.   At the same time he proceeded with plans for the invasion of England. Unfortunately he did all of these things by instituting unpopular taxes -- such as the njesgeld, Denmark's first personal income tax.   He also imposed the tithe for the compulsory support of the church and breached various ancient laws concerning land tenure and the administration of justice. ♥ The new invasion of England turned out poorly, with the Saxon-Danish revolt against Duke William being crushed in 1085 before King Knut's fleet of some two hundred ships could do little more than raid York.   This defeat lost Knut the support of many of the jarls and helped to touch off a revolt in northern Jutland while he was resident in his castle at Aggersborg.   The King fled for his life from Jutland to Odense, where he took refuge in the church of St Alban.   Pursued there by the Jutland rebels, King Knut was killed by a spear thrown through one of the church windows.   By tradition, Knut was said to have been struck down while at prayer before the high altar.   Seventeen of his supporters were subsequently massacred within St Alban's;   the sole survivor of Knut's faithful retinue was his brother Erik, who fled into exile. ♥ Knut was followed to the throne by his brother Oluf, known to history as Oluf Hunger, for his reign was marked by poor harvests and famine throughout Denmark -- a famine interpreted by the church as the punishment of God for the regicide.   When Oluf died in 1095, and Erik returned from exile to ascend the throne, the famine ended and Knut was hailed as a martyr.   The new king, known as Erik Ejegod (the Kind-Hearted), was on good terms with Rome and pressed his case both for the canonization of his martyred brother, and for the independence of the Danish Church from German sentiment and imperial domination.   At a stroke in 1101, the new Pope, Paschal II, both sanctioned Knut's canonization and agreed to the creation of a Danish national church with a new archbishopric at Lund. ♥ So King Knut became the patron saint of Denmark, but he was neither universally admitted nor loved, especially in Jutland, north of the Limfjord, from whence came his bane, and where to this day kanut remains as a term of abuse.   The Roman church celebrates St Knut's day on January 19th, and in Madrid each year thousands of devout followers of San Canuto revel in the streets, because in Spanish canuto is the common term for a marijuana cigarette. More conventionally, in Sweden and Finland, St Knut's Day is marked on January 13th, owing to the King's decree that Christmas should be celebrated for a period of twenty days ending on January 13th.   By tradition in Sweden and Finland that is the day on which Christmas trees are taken down. The day is seldom if ever marked in Denmark where neither St Knut nor the Roman church have much of a following.♥ ♥ ♥