Canute

ON ST. CANUTE, KING AND MARTYR, AT ODENSE IN FUNEN IN DENMARK. IN THE YEAR 1086.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

St. Canute, King and Martyr, in Denmark.

BHL Number: 1550

THE AUTHOR I. B. S.

§ I. The Saint's lineage, illustrious character, piety, cult, and eulogies in the more recent Calendars and in the Breviary of Schleswig, and most recently in the Roman.

The island of Funen in Denmark, midway between Jutland and Zealand, as conspicuous for the pleasantness of its form and situation, is praised on several other titles too by Johann Isaac Pontanus in the chorographic description subjoined to his history of Danish Affairs, published at Amsterdam in 1631, page 721, Praises of Funen, in which the Saint suffered martyrdom, where he inquires into the origin and founder of Odense (commonly Ottensehe), which it would be of no use to report here: this chiefly pertains to our matter, that in that city, by a crime hitherto unheard of, the glorious protomartyr of Denmark, he of whom we treat, St. Canute the King, formerly called Cnuth or Cnutho, was cruelly slain by his own subjects for the sake of justice, as Ælnoth of Canterbury, the lowest of the ministers of the divine Office, as he calls himself, but the chief and most ancient collector of the Saint's Acts, explained more clearly elsewhere. One thing also properly pertaining here Pontanus rightly noted; namely that present-day Odense is adorned with two churches of elegant structure, of which the one is sacred to Canute, the other to Francis. Whether moreover the church which today is called St. Canute's is that same one in which his sacred body was given its first burial, once dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Alban, he does not explain: in his history, book 5, page 199, plainly asserting that, when in the year 1582 on the XXII day of January the choir, as they call it, of the church of St. Canute was being restored, there was found a copper tomb, overlaid with gold, and skillfully wrought with gems and other precious ornaments, in which was laid up the skeleton of Canute, King and martyr, with an epitaph, from the Danish Calendar of Ole Worm, to be reported entire presently.

[2] whose lineage was long ago explained in the Acts. At Odense therefore the holy King Canute was both crowned with martyrdom and to this day is laid to rest, clearly to be distinguished from another Canute, likewise a Saint, and the nephew of this one by his brother Eric the Good, as Bollandus accurately did on the VII day of January, page 390, explaining the lineage and forefathers of both in such a way that I do not think more should be added here. He who, last of all, published the Life and miracles of St. Canute the martyr, King of Denmark or Denmarch, first in Italian, then in Latin, at Rome in the year 1667 — Father Master Andrew Angelettus, a Roman Carmelite, Provincial of Saxony — used at least 60 pages in quarto to extol the peculiar prerogatives and excellences of the kingdom of Denmark; then the graces and privileges of the peoples of Denmark: then he treats of the notable triumphs and wonderful virtues of Canute the Great, King of Denmark, the grandfather of St. Canute. (He meant to say "great-uncle," inasmuch as his sister was the mother of Sueno, St. Canute's parent, whence he had the surname Estrithson.) Thence he passes to the victories obtained by Duke Sueno, the father of St. Canute, as we said, who was at last raised to the dominion of three kingdoms; whose marriage with his cousin Jutha, at the urging of the Supreme Pontiff, was dissolved. There follow the illustrious deeds of that King Sueno with Bishop William, his penance, death, and the prodigious burial of the Bishop with Sueno. But from what has been said you have the genealogy of St. Canute sufficiently explained.

[3] Nor indeed should this Commentary be enlarged by recounting these things at greater length, Among his brothers he stood out, not only in fortitude, since Ælnoth, in nearly the whole first chapter of the Acts, is occupied with those things which are to be referred more to his father Sueno than to St. Canute. But this must not be passed over, that among the various sons of Sueno, all natural, of whom eleven are named expressly from Meursius in the annotations at number 16, letter f, with his only daughter Syritha; among so numerous, I say, an illegitimate offspring, there stood out far above the others the eighth-born, but in order the second successor of Sueno, our St. Canute, both by his notable piety toward God, mercy toward the poor, zeal of religion, and the other Christian virtues, and by his skill and fortitude in war, which Saxo Grammaticus wonderfully depicts in the eleventh book of his history, in the recension of Stephanius, page 212 in my copy, as one who spent an illustrious youth in Sembian and Estonian trophies, and by new degrees of strength surpassed the foundations of his father's might: which things I would here describe at greater length from him, did I not judge that the elegant narration of his whole life should be subjoined to the Ælnothian Acts, whose beginning is uniquely engaged in commemorating the various triumphs of St. Canute, as will be more manifestly declared below.

[4] The succession of Harald, second-born but first to the paternal kingdom, but most of all by Christian piety. and the things which followed it, and then the excellent examples of St. Canute's virtues, we shall give in their places from the praised Ælnoth and Saxo; here it is enough to have touched briefly on the Saint's lineage, illustrious character, and piety, which rendered him most worthy of the honors of the Saints, his royal blood being shed for Christian justice, as his epitaph just cited teaches, made widely known among the Danish writers and others, and which you have inserted even in the Acts themselves, as they were published by Meursius, in the whole of chapter 29; yet in ours deservedly omitted, since it seems in no way to pertain to the series of events, which will be the subject of our annotations to chapter 5, letter a. It is that brief narration of the martyrdom of St. Canute and the slaughter of his companions, which we said was found in the chest in which his sacred body was laid up, when, for the repairing of the church dedicated to the Saint himself, the chapel in which he had been placed was being altered. I describe the matter from the Danish Calendar of Ole Worm, published at Copenhagen in the year 1643, page 29, from which are to be corrected the things which the praised Pontanus badly excerpted, in the place just cited, substituting for "the VI day before the Ides of July and Friday" "the VII day before the Ides of June." Thus the notable monument reads:

[5] In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1086, in the city of Odense, the glorious King and protomartyr of the Danes Canute, His notable epitaph, and that of his companions, for the zeal of the Christian religion and the works of justice, in the basilica of St. Alban the martyr, translated by him a little before from England into Denmark, after the confession of his offenses, fortified with the Sacrament of the Lord's body, before the altar, his hands stretched out to the ground in the manner of a cross, pierced in the side with a lance on the VI day before the Ides of July and on a Friday, suffering death for Christ, rested in him. There were slain also there with him, namely in his name and by the grace of martyrdom, Benedict and seventeen of his fellow-soldiers, namely Asmund, Blacca, Sonen, Aga, Thurgo, Lord Bernard, Gudmer, Æschill, Tochik, Palai, Ati, Suna, Rostenulo, Radulus, Altoi, Thurgot, Vilgrip Arni; all, as by the grace of God they were companions of the sufferings of martyrdom with their King and Lord, so shall they deservedly be partakers of the consolation and reward with him. There follows another metrical epitaph of nine verses in all, which Meursius exhibited mutilated, but which entire, as it is also here represented by Worm and by Pontanus, you will find in our Acts at number 76.

[6] concerning whose cult, however, nothing certain is had. Concerning the number and names of St. Canute's companions Meursius disputes, in his notes on Ælnoth, page 113, and after him the aforesaid Worm; but of these there is no inquiry here: and although the inscription seems to indicate that they too suffered martyrdom, and so are partakers of the reward with St. Canute, I have not yet found anywhere that they were venerated with the honors of the Saints. However that may be, it is probable that from a tablet of this kind, or from other Danish histories, the more recent Martyrologists received their notices in the additions to Usuard, among whom the older compiler of the Danish codex: In Denmark, in the city of Odense, the birthday of St. Canute, king and martyr. A little more briefly, the Lübeck-Cologne edition: In Denmark, of blessed Canute, king and martyr. Greven with a eulogy: In Denmark, of Canute, king and martyr: who, for love of justice and holy religion, after many persecutions, in the church of St. Alban, protomartyr of the English, praying with outstretched hands, was slain by the impious. These things Molanus copied in his first edition, in others embracing the matter a little more elegantly: In the city of Odense, of St. Canute, king and protomartyr of the Danes, who in the year 1086, in the basilica of St. Alban the martyr, his hands stretched out to the ground in the manner of a cross, praying, suffered death for Christ at the hands of his own servant. There suffered with him Benedict his brother, and seventeen others.

[7] The Saint's memory in the more recent Calendars; The memory of St. Canute is treated also in the Manuscript Florarium of the Saints, very often cited in our Acts, but where the epoch of the martyrdom is wrongly referred to the year 1100. What more? That he also has a place in the Nativities of the Saints of Belgium, because, says the editor, he had as wife Ethla, whom we call Adela, daughter of Robert the Frisian, Count of Flanders, from whom he begot Charles, surnamed the Dane and the Good, Count and Martyr of Flanders. And thus some things are there recounted from the Breviary of Roskilde: In the city of Odense, of St. Canute, King and protomartyr of the Danes, who in the year 1086, for the zeal of the Christian religion, by Blacco, his servant, in the basilica of St. Alban the martyr, before the altar, his hands stretched out to the ground in the manner of a cross, was pierced in the side with a lance, and on a Friday suffered death for Christ. There were slain with him Benedict his brother and seventeen other fellow-soldiers. Moreover the most noble queen Ethla resolved to carry the body with her to her native regions: but the signs shown did not permit this. And these things are from the Office of the church of Roskilde. But the rest of the history may be read in Saxo. Miraeus also mentions St. Canute in the Calendars, but on the VII day of January, on which day too he is recorded in the Roman Martyrology, doubtless from a confusion of days, as Bollandus explained on that day. Moreover the festival was transferred to the XIX of January, on which it is announced in the first place, at least in the Plantin edition of the year 1678, and in the following one of the year 1701.

[8] The Saint's eulogy is extended a little more fully in the Lessons

of the Breviary of Schleswig, cited elsewhere by us, and printed at Paris in the year 1512, Lessons which from it we here subjoin, the proper prayer being premised, which in almost the same words is reported in the Swedish votive Missal, page 52, in this manner: O God, who on this present day didst crown with glorious martyrdom the blessed Canute, king and martyr, unjustly slain by the peoples subject to him; grant, we beseech thee, that we may feel him an intercessor with thee, whom we believe to reign gloriously as victor in the heavens by thy grace. The order of the Lessons is this: Lesson I. Canute, king of the Danes, keen in intellect, comely in appearance, vigorous in arms and in spirit, was fragrant with industry of mind and eloquence of speech. Toward wretched persons he bore a mother's heart: he enlarged divine worship, and afflicted his own flesh with fastings: for on solemn and private fasting days, and also on Fridays, he ate only bread with salt and water, while other royal dishes, which were set before him, were, as was believed, given away. Lesson II. But considering that he had been made King for this, that justice should be cultivated, he began, according to his strength, to root out the depraved customs of the kingdom. And that the people might have a virtuous exercise against sloth, he decreed that a fleet be prepared for subjugating England, which had withdrawn from the dominion of the Danes, and was then occupied by foreigners. And when the ships were being prepared, the autumn season coming on, the people begged the King that, on account of the cultivation of the fields and the occupation of domestic affairs, he would suspend the expedition until the spring season: which the King granted.

[9] Lesson III. All therefore having returned to their own homes, he began to set forth edicts with the threat of punishment, in the Breviary of Schleswig, that the people should pay tithes to the churches, and keep the fasts appointed by the Church. And many other things too which seemed to be established according to God; but the maddened people, accustomed to vices and injuries, conceived hatred against the King on account of the salutary edicts, and began to plot his destruction, at first through secret conventicles; having an incitement through Olav, the King's brother, and certain nobles who adhered to Olav. Lesson IV. There is a most celebrated place nearly in the middle of Jutland, which, on account of its eminence, or on account of the frequency of ancient sacrifices, or on account of the memory of an idol once most renowned there, which was called Wyg, is named Wygbergis (as it were "the high place" or "the mount of war," or "of sacrificing") in the Danish tongue: where, for concluding causes, or for discussing the truth or firmness of the laws, the people, by custom, gathers from all parts of Jutland. The noble Prince went to this place, that he might find refuge there. But when he saw snares prepared there, he hastened toward Funen.

[10] Lesson V. And when he had entered Funen, that people too, containing a compendium of his Life. inflamed by a diabolical spirit, began to conspire for the death of the pious Prince. The malignant people therefore flows together, and is increased from day to day. There was present among them a most crafty traitor, called Pipirco, who approached the King under the pretext of making peace between the people and himself. He is received reverently, and honored at the King's table. But when he had learned the King's intention, returning to the people, the malignant traitor perverted all the King's words, and stirred up their minds to the murder of the pious Prince. Lesson VI. But the King, with some faithful to him, went to the church of St. Alban to hear Vespers. When the people had learned this, they suddenly pursue him; and some tried to break in the doors of the basilica, others to bring up fire. Meanwhile the most devout King fortified himself by confession and the communion of the Lord's body. And when the obstinate people greatly assailed him and his companions with darts and stones through the windows and other openings, the pious King, prostrating himself before the altar in the manner of a cross, commended himself and his own to the Lord. But while he lay thus praying, one, a lance being thrust through the window, pierced his side, and made him a martyr to Christ. The Lessons abridge the Acts of the Saint faithfully enough; but when or by whom they were composed is not clear: a little more ancient are the things which the following paragraph will give.

[11] He is treated of also in the Martyrology Moreover, that the glory of St. Canute was made widely known not only in Denmark or other Northern parts, but also at Rome, the below-praised Father Master Andrew Angelettus will teach, from the celebrated solemnity held in his honor in the year 1641, as at number 35. For the rest, that the veneration begun there long ago gradually grew, appears before all from this, that in all editions of the Roman Martyrology at the Plantin press his name is referred to the VII day of January, which, since it is impeded by the octave of the Epiphany, the festival was transferred, after in the year 1670 the Saint was endowed with a peculiar Office, to the XIX of January; where in the year 1675 he is announced in the first place in this manner: In Denmark, of St. Canute, King and martyr, whose birthday is kept on the VII day before the Ides of January, as you will find hitherto observed in the Martyrology: but in which we are compelled to confess that most probably some confusion has been made between the synonymous Saints under the name of Canute, namely the elder uncle and the nephew by his brother Eric the Good, the latter pertaining to that VII day of January, the former to this X of July, as Bollandus formerly demonstrated, and as we think is manifest from this Commentary.

[12] and in the Roman Breviary. Nor indeed was the commemoration always uniform; for in the first Plantin edition of the year 1586 it is read: In Denmark, of St. Canute, King and martyr, whom, when the raging populace had slain, it was struck by God with pestilence and famine. In the following editions there is only: In Denmark, of St. Canute, King and martyr: in the most recent it is added that the feast was transferred to the XIV day before the Kalends of February. Meanwhile, in whatever way these things be taken or understood, it is openly plain that both in the Martyrology and in the Roman Breviary the memory is kept of that St. Canute of whom here chiefly there is discourse; nor can the decree of the sacred Congregation of Rites, given on the IX day of August 1670, and approved the next day by His Holiness, be applied to the other, younger one, which we transcribe from the Roman document itself: The sacred Congregation of Rites, held on the IX day of August 1670, judged that, if it should seem good to His Holiness, it could be granted that the Office of St. Canute, martyr, King of Denmark, be added in the Roman Breviary, under the semi-double rite ad libitum, with a proper prayer and lessons, approved by the same Congregation on the said day; which it is enough to read, that one may be convinced of the truth of what has been said. Now let the old encomium succeed, of which we had begun to speak.

§ II. A singular eulogy of the Saint, written, as it appears, by someone who was present at the first elevation of the sacred body.

This ancient monument, of the best stamp, the strenuous helper of our Elders, Father Grothusius, once took care to have transcribed, The beginning of the ancient writer. from a very old Manuscript exemplar of the Carthusian house of Cologne, under this title: The Passion of St. Canute, King and martyr. The style, here and there ruder, smacks of the roughness of its age; but this, and whatever fault besides occurs, is easily compensated by the value of its antiquity. Thus the writer begins his discourse: Although throughout the churches of the whole world it befits every Christian people to celebrate the feasts of the Saints, to praise the victories of the Martyrs, and to imitate their life: in individual places also, on account of the familiarity of those dwelling together, and on account of the presence of the holy relics, which have been granted for the comfort of these or those inhabitants: they are, I say, held worthy of a special veneration among their fellow-citizens or peoples, and are honored. Therefore, the Holy Spirit, the Maker of all virtues, inspiring us, now about to treat of the passion of St. Canute, King and Martyr, we admonish and beseech you, who are to hear these things, that with intent heart you consider how great a thing it is with God to love justice and the other virtues, and for the sake of these and the heavenly rewards of souls to despise the life of this world, and, by denying oneself, to follow with the cross the happy footsteps of Christ.

[14] Of royal stock therefore, and beyond the nature or custom of that nation, The Saint, hated for no cause on account of his virtue, Canute, illustriously brought forth in the Christian religion, and among the very flowers of boyhood handed over to tutors, inasmuch as he was to be trained for the helm of this kingdom; it is incredible to say how much he suddenly advanced, unless I am mistaken, on account of the merits of his pious and religious parent, King Sueno of happy memory, or certainly drawn by the grace of the Holy Spirit, as is afterward proved. For prudence of manners grew in him with the grace of youth, so that, squared to the very four cardinal virtues after the norm of illustrious men, he now avoided almost the ruin of madness or folly, and scorned the defect of sloth. Therefore the devil, the inventor or author of all malice, as if now dreading that he would at last withdraw many from him, and hence eliminate or at least restrain the frauds and filths or uncleannesses of men and of malignant spirits; Canute, I say, surviving and, as he had begun, diligently growing in virtues, struck with the darts of unjust and evil fear and envy not only the hearts of certain princes of this land, but even of his own brothers; so much that they thereupon denied him the rights of reigning over them, lest, on account of his probity, they should be judged as ignoble or reprobate.

[15] What then? As the brothers did Joseph, they drove this man into exile into the parts of the Swedes, having obtained the kingdom, he governs it piously, whom by the proclamation of his virtues they ought to have exalted to heaven. But he, prudent, like Jacob by the counsel of Rebecca, that is, of reasonable patience, usefully and innocently yielded to his brothers, until the divine power led him back in peace. And so, by the suffrage of God chosen and appointed King and governor for this people, trusting in the Lord like David, and fixing the anchor of his hope in the heavens, through the good works of this fleeting life he spread wide sails toward the harbor of salvation, God steering, amid the various storms of the world: he sustained the needy, and cherished the tearful, that he might receive some portion of the highest dignity and perennial glory, placed among the nobles on high; but the Pontiffs and teachers of this life vitally, namely the Bishops, and presbyters divinely intent on their offices, he loved above other things in temporal goods; and he raised them up with consolations and aids and gifts, and, that they might more freely or willingly advance to better things, he comforted them mildly and most devoutly with good promises. Moreover, too, frequenting the churches or congregations of the Saints, with diligent heart and reverent mouth, he enriched and honored them with vows and precious gifts, as appears especially at Roskilde, Dalby, and Lund at St. Lawrence, of which church he was the builder, father, and cultivator, so that there and here the memory of his goodness and holy religion may be recalled with the blessing of the Saints forever and ever. Amen.

[16] Strongly defending the rights of the Church: Meanwhile too, despising now all utterly perverse and empty things, as the ravings of the ancient enemy, and loving God the Savior through all things, he resolved concerning that nation, still little instructed in good morals pleasing to God, or exercised in sacred virtues; he resolved first of all to ask amicably and fatherly: to admonish, and through himself and the Bishops and prelates to instruct, that to God, of their goods,

they should vow the first-fruits or tithes, according to the law of God, and also pay them, and keep the religion of Christians more usefully and more honorably than hitherto, for the salvation of their souls. But when he made little progress with such moderation, and the foolish nation, neither fearing hell nor seeking heavenly things, clung too much to earthly desires, which war against the soul, or inclined its mind to worse; the King, moved by zeal for God, proceeded to deter the greater ones among them royally and powerfully, and to withdraw from them some things of their right; sometimes also to compel them by the authority of the elders or of the Saints, that they should obey God and the Saints, and prefer just and honorable things to transitory delights: that they should despise no faithful Christians as strangers and foreigners; but should hold them as fellow-citizens of the Saints and members of the household of God, inasmuch as brothers in Christ: and thus, growing together by the glue of charity, and supporting or helping one another, they might more surely arrive at the heavenly glory.

[17] but desiring in vain to soften the fierce nation, O, a man to be attended with all praise! who wished not to prevail here alone, or even to reign in heaven alone; but to draw many with him to the palace of Christ. For he knew that for those loving God, and in God their neighbor, all things work together and turn out for good, as our Lord Jesus Christ himself also testifies. But these things being arranged, he began to treat with the better and, in faith and virtue, more powerful men of this kingdom, by what reasonable occasion he might train this plebeian multitude with honorable labors, that at length sometime it might savor of pious things, and understand infernal things, whereby it might more cautiously provide for man's last end. Finally it was found and quickly resolved, by the precept of the King and the Princes, to be diligently proclaimed, that they should cross over to the English, that they might free their people by the valor of the soldiers from the heavy yoke of unworthy servitude, or at least that it might render the minds of those soldiers exercised and trained by vigils, cares, hunger, thirst, cold, or other labors, lest, as up to that time, their iniquity should come forth lightly, as it were from wantonness and fat, and pass into the affection of the heart.

[18] But others, regarding these things far otherwise, and regarding many of the King's counsels or benefits, he is compelled to cast his brother Olav into chains. or opposing his exhortation and excellent virtue with an envious and serpentine mind, and therefore desiring to hinder many from going to the English, secretly stirred up even his own brother Olav against him: who, if he perfectly and truly understood and knew how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in one, would rather lay down his life for a virtuous and true prince. Not to bring forward anything else, that he would ever resist such a man even by a light word, or desire to reign here without him. But the prudent King, learning these things without delay, and intending to take counsel not so much for himself as for his brother's error, sent him carefully into Flanders, lest, by reigning over him, he should incur the infamy of the evil counsel begun. But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no one, and in this he is more excellent than the other animals. Whence David also says: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the beasts, and made like to them. For these therefore and deeds of this kind, and especially on account of the love of justice and holy religion, he long patiently endured the losses of persecution and of his kingdom from the inhabitants of the land, puffed up in mind.

[19] But at last, nearly all conspiring against the Lord and his Christ, Fleeing into Funen, from the northern part, which is called Vendel, open contradiction is made, and a manifest resistance seems to arise, like an enveloping whirlwind. And thus, raging through the parts of the Jutes, and provoking them to the same fury, daily gathering more arms, roaring and gnashing, it pursues the footsteps of the holy King to the city which is called Schleswig: The King therefore then, seeing that he could not calm them by honorable means, nay, being compelled to flee from the Jutes, crossed over to the people of Funen, in whom he rather hoped for help. When he had arrived there, envoys sent this way and that by the persecutors or the plotters against the King came together, commanding these people with commands, that they should kill the King as a tyrant, if they did not wish their region to be burned or devastated. But they, fearing or heeding men more than God, and not honoring the King as was fitting, but with a fierce spirit, came together with swords, clubs, and arms to his court. Finally, his brother Benedict and very few, strengthened by the constancy of holy faith and charity, remaining with him in such cruel and unexpected tribulations of his own, King Canute, very pious, instructed by the examples of the Saints, directed his mind and his way to the church of the most holy Virgin Mary and the blessed Martyr Alban: frequently indeed intent on fastings and sacred prayers fittingly, and then especially, as desiring now and now to merit the fellowship of the Martyr Alban, dear to him above others, and translated here by him from the parts of the English, and of others laureled with their own or sacred blood, Christ the prince of martyrs favoring.

[20] there he is foully slain by his subjects. Nevertheless, still wishing to correct or calm the too rash and foolish populace, he offered sureties and guarantors for administering all Justice to his subjects, and, moreover, lest any innocent person should perish on his account, he applied an oath. But the crowd, lacking reason and insolent, and not heeding the calamity of the human race, then began to rage the more with insane mind, trying in every way to break in the sacred buildings of the Saints and the church of the Lord, or at least to destroy it by kindlings of fire. Why say much? The leader and glory of the Danes, choosing to exchange, through martyrdom, a certain and stable Kingdom, esteeming the transitory glory of this world at a straw, lays down his secular arms, lest he perish with them, if he should love the corruptible body more than the soul, he also repeated his confession for his errors and offenses, increased worthy fruits of penance, received the Sacrament of the Lord's body for the increase of eternal salvation with reverent devotion, and committed himself and his own to the Ruler of the heavens by the grace of good hope. And without delay: on every side the throngs of the populace throw stones through the windows and other openings at the King, and darts; until one of the sacrilegious men pierced the religious King with a lance. For, with hands stretched out in the manner of a cross at the altar of St. Alban the Martyr, he was pierced through in the side by the point of the spear-tip. And so on the VI day before the Ides of the month of July he thus piously fell, his blood shed beside the altar of Christ, our Lord, I say, Christ, reigning and helping, to whom is honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

THE TRANSLATION.

But because it is neither read in the Ecclesiastical books, nor commonly reported, that any King was so cruelly and so miserably slain in sacred buildings and by his own soldiers; we judge, or understand by experience, that almighty God was greatly moved or slighted on this account, in whose basilica, as in the hall of the supreme prince, he sought refuge and protection, as was fitting. Therefore the vengeance of God, for the sake of correction, immediately following, disturbed nearly all Denmark with a rainy tempest, a deadly pestilence, famine, and want of food, until through many visions and revelations it was shown to several that his little body, miserably cast down and hitherto lying despised, ought to be raised thence and henceforth reverently honored among the Saints. Why say much? These things soon being divulged, the Jutes with the Bishops and very religious priests came to us with good faith and devotion. They entered into counsel with us, and in it decreed that the bones of the King and Martyr ought to be elevated with worthy honor.

[22] By various signs Then, a three-day fast being appointed and performed with prayers, alms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, when the now-consecrated body of the King was elevated from the earthly dust, God almighty and merciful deigned to declare three great miracles in it, that he might recall the dull minds of those people to penance, or incite them to holy religion. For at the suggestion or petition of many, lest the mind of the foolish should waste away by doubting, we placed upon his holy bones four times a very burning fire, which in a moment, as if water were poured on, extinguished, bringing no trouble, nor harming anything, appeared nowhere. Another thing too, worthy of note, happened in Olav, his brother and successor in the dignity of this kingdom: for when there was the deposition of Canute, King and martyr, there occurred the liberation of Olav, then an exile and placed in chains in Flanders, and here his exaltation to the kingdom. And now, God disposing, when the translation of the exaltation of blessed Canute the martyr was made, there came about the deposition of this Olav from his earthly dignity.

[23] But the third miracle: on the Friday before Canute's translation, illustrated by God. all the good among us persisting in prayer and fasting, a great tempest of rain flowed, so much also in the following night, that it greatly troubled us. And on the Saturday too great darkness or obscurities were made until the third hour. But after we uncovered his tomb, and found the holy relics, at once, by a great light and serenity of the air, almighty God, to his own praise and by the merits of blessed Canute, king and martyr, deigned to gladden us with certain signs, and showed to many his ineffable mercy, by which he calls even the unworthy to penance, which mercy may he himself, by his prayers, deign to grant us forever, who lives and reigns with his Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God through all ages of ages. Amen.

§ III. In what order the Acts afterward written by others are here reviewed.

The first of all who committed the glorious martyrdom of St. Canute to writing, I plainly judge to have been he whom we have already given as the Anonymous, most probably placed in some ecclesiastical dignity, Ælnoth the Englishman, the chief writer of the Acts, who nevertheless composed rather a brief encomium, or oration to the people, than an ordered history, as I judge is sufficiently plain from the context set forth. A certain Ælnoth, or Ailnoth, Alnoth, or Elnoth of Canterbury, arranged the Life and passion a little later, adorned and amplified, after the manner of that age, with long historical, moral, poetic, and other digressions, often inopportunely thrust in, who in his preface to King Nicholas writes that he was born in Kent, not "Cantico," as Meursius reads, the metropolitan city of the English, and that he tarried in the parts of Denmark for four five-year periods and nearly twice two years; but in the epilogue he names himself the lowest priest, born in the world of the English, and a pilgrim in the parts of Denmark for numerous years. You would miss nothing in that author except the due sinews and a moderate brevity; since he mostly exceeds the limits of the narration pertaining to the Saint, adapting the whole matter rather in preacherly modes, exclamations, apostrophes, invectives, than by a historical thread: nevertheless truly to be commended on this title, that he was next in age to the Saint and nearly contemporary.

[25] For King Nicholas, to whom Ælnoth inscribes the Life of St. Canute his brother, was the fifth of the sons of Sueno to succeed to the paternal kingdom; contemporary with King Nicholas, cast first as a hostage into Flanders, or rather into chains, in the place of his brother Olav by his own will, so that, St. Canute being removed by his traitorous subjects, to Olav, the contriver of the whole rebellion against the Saint, there might be an approach to the throne

might pave the way; then also for himself, but after Eric, another brother, surnamed the Good, who, having administered the kingdom not without praise, having undertaken with his pious wife Botilde a pilgrimage to Palestine, seems to have met his last day on the island of Cyprus about the year 1105; if indeed all the things that are handed down concerning the succession of the brothers in Saxo Grammaticus can be reduced to some correct chronological series. But since the news of the death of the aforesaid Eric did not reach Denmark until two years later, Nicholas could not seize the reins of the kingdom, St. Canute the younger, son of Eric the Good, being excluded, before the year 1107. He is said to have held the kingdom for twenty-eight years, at last slain by the men of Schleswig in vengeance for the slaying of St. Canute the younger, treacherously killed by his son Magnus; so that he could not have prolonged his life beyond the year 1135.

[26] he was next in age to St. Canute From the age of this King Nicholas it is easily gathered that Ælnoth published the Life of St. Canute, written by himself, before the year 1135 already mentioned; who, if he had then tarried twenty-four years in Denmark, as he himself testifies, hinting in the Life itself at num. 76 that he was present at the most solemn translation of the sacred body of St. Canute in the sixth year of the reign of Eric, must have arrived in those parts not many years after the martyrdom of St. Canute; and he was thus very close to the age of the Saint, and could learn all things certainly and beyond doubt from credible persons of both sexes and orders, and from men of religious habit, which he might hand down to be reserved by the letters of memory for posterity. These Acts therefore, however much they are extended in oratorical fashion, are of great faith, authority, and weight, first published at Copenhagen in the year, if I am not mistaken, 1603, about twenty-eight years, says Joannes Meursius, before he himself brought forth his own second edition, printed in the same place in the year 1631, where he warns the reader that that earlier printing had previously been unknown to him: Nevertheless—these are his words—while I survey with my eyes that Copenhagen edition, obtained afterward of course, I see that the faults, which occurred rather numerously in the manuscript codex, are also represented here. And so, judging that I must persist in what I had begun, I again set my hand to the transcription, and corrected the corrupted passages met with here and there during the transcribing, and I showed them in my notes, which I add.

[27] Meursius's edition is imperfect, How far Meursius wiped out the faults of his manuscript, and by how much one edition exceeds the other, since the former is absent from our Museum, it is not easy for me to divine; but Meursius's copy must have been most crammed with them, nay, in some parts even defective, deficient, and mutilated, since from an accurate collation of the other manuscript, which among us is called the Tosan, with his edition, I have discovered many things wrongly written by him, many not rendered perfectly enough, others passed over, which perhaps he himself did not find in his exemplar, but which in every way savor of the style of the author, often a wordy repeater in many places. Most notable is the lacuna at our number 24, which there is no need to describe here, since it is sufficiently explained among the annotations. To enumerate the other variants one by one, besides that I judge it gloomy and useless, is certainly not the place for this. The often-mentioned edition of Meursius is extant, which anyone will be free to compare with this our own, whence all the differences can be gathered: but those to whom it is not at hand may have recourse to our annotations already mentioned, in which the things that seemed worthy of observation have not been neglected.

[28] That that Meursian edition of Ælnoth did not once please our Elders, and it is to be set after the older Copenhagen one; there are not a few arguments; and this one above all, that although it itself existed in our Museum, and was very well known to Bolland (for I reckon the earlier Copenhagen one to have been hitherto unknown to us)—although, I say, they had the Meursian recension before their eyes, nevertheless I notice that our manuscript was examined by them not carelessly, as worthy to be committed to type in its own time, certainly to be preferred to the Meursian. And that their judgment was neither premature nor vain, the most distinguished man Eric Benzelius taught not so long ago, in the year 1715, after an accurate collation of both editions made by himself, writing to us from Uppsala, that the earlier Copenhagen edition is in many places more excellent than that later one which Joannes Meursius gave. I forbear to say more; these things sufficed to rightly compel me to review anew the praised manuscript, once so greatly esteemed by Bolland, and from it to procure a third printing, collated with that Meursian one, but itself also much more excellent.

[29] I will not indeed deny that our copy too is sprinkled with not a few blemishes of its own, so that we are compelled to add a third from the Ms.; whether by the fault of the author himself, not writing Latin well enough, or of the copyists, whose unskillfulness and sloth no one could ever sufficiently blame. To the author himself are to be ascribed the longer and sometimes twisted and rough senses, which to reduce to correct syntax is not always so easy: to the copyists belong the omissions of words, the transformations of the same, and thus a harsher and less elegant manner of orthography, rather often somewhat emended by us, where it was altogether necessary. For Sueno, or Sweno, I always found Swegno expressed, never inflected, mostly indeclinably; but, this warning having been given first, I thought that both this and perhaps other names could be adapted to the more common manner of writing. Our manuscript is divided into various sections or shorter chapters, of which Meursius distinguished thirty-five, in an altogether unequal manner; to avoid which, adhering to our usual method, we have brought the chapters to the same standard; and we have suitably added titles, numbers, and marginal notes.

[30] The title, prefixed in our manuscript, ran thus: although it too is not free of blemishes. The Passion of the most glorious King Canute. Then: The Epistle of Ailnoth to Nicholas King of Denmark, on the passion of the most glorious King and martyr Canute: but all these again had to be contracted to our manner of arrangement. For the rest, it cannot be doubted that this is the first, most ancient, and chief history of the life and passion of St. Canute; would that the author had arranged and written it a little more concisely, abstaining from those side-pieces of which we spoke, those useless digressions and invectives, all of which are rather to be spoken for sermons than to be set before the eyes of readers: in which, on many counts, in my judgment at least, the elegant, sinewy, and rhythmical narration of Saxo Grammaticus is to be preferred, badly placed by Surius, who did not know Ælnoth, at January 7; inasmuch as it ought to have been referred to this July 10, since that day, January 7, belongs properly to the other, younger St. Canute, as Bolland long ago most rightly noted, in whom, at the said place, not a few things pertaining to each holy Canute are found, here deliberately passed over by us, lest the same be repeated in vain. It remains for something to be said of Saxo.

[31] Truly most excellent are the things which Saxo, the most learned historian of his time, related truly, Saxo's history is far more polished. gravely, and elegantly concerning the holy King Canute in Book XI, from which those writers of Danish and Swedish affairs who afterward followed took their material, among whom also Joannes Magnus condenses much into few words in book 18, chapters 12 and 13. I forbear here to relate how varied the judgments about that Saxo Grammaticus have been, which do nothing to our purpose: this is most certain, that from no one is that praise snatched from him, that he wove together his history in an elegant, florid, and polished style, to the wonder of his age, as all the most learned bear witness in Stephanius, who examined it, illustrated it with notes, and published it in the year 1644, in the Prolegomena from chapter 16, page 24, there laboriously and admirably refuting the Saxomastiges. The things he collected concerning the ancient Kings and peoples of Denmark are not to be weighed here; certainly in those things which were near to his own age, no one would call into doubt the trustworthiness of so great a writer. He lived and flourished in the twelfth century, probably dying in the year 1202 or 1204, as you may see in the praised Stephanius, chapter 15. That he was a Canon and Provost of Roskilde, and buried there, is the undoubted opinion of all. But since Surius took all his material from Saxo, as is clear from the collation of the two, it did not irk us to follow his edition here; only those things being added which we thought should be appended concerning the death of Olav the Starved, as a completion of the vengeance upon the parricides.

[32] The things handed down by others, Besides these writers, most worthy of trust, I refrain from inquiring what others have handed down about St. Canute, whether expressly or incidentally; and that I would carry away no reward of the labor from that source, the Life of Blessed Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, sufficiently taught me, which I found in our very large manuscript codex of Theodoric Paul of Gorcum, more than once cited by us elsewhere, where he prefixes to the history of the martyrdom of Blessed Charles a brief epitome of the Life of his holy parent, from which it will be enough to exhibit one specimen or two. Among other things he relates thus: And when St. Canute had most nobly governed the helm of the kingdom in the fear of the Lord for several years, and had gone from virtue to virtue, Arnaf, or Arnold, his brother, out of ambition to seize the kingdom, plotted much against him. You hear him here wrongly called Arnaf or Arnold, who ought to have been called Olav or Olaus, to whom the author, by a signal calumny, ascribes below the parricide of the holy Canute himself, as if committed by his own hand, importunately thrusting in a vision of St. Wenceslaus of Bohemia, who is said to have revealed to our Saint that he must die by his own kind of death. Let us follow the matter in order.

[33] They are rather to be scorned than esteemed. Thus he continues: Therefore when on a certain night he was resting, the prayers of the night being completed which he was accustomed to read, St. Wenceslaus the martyr of Christ appeared to him in a vision, and revealed to him that he must die by his own kind of death; charging him to build a monastery in honor of himself, who was called Wenceslaus. But the King, rising from sleep, astonished at the vision, having called together the clergy, began to inquire diligently from them about St. Wenceslaus, of whom he had never before heard, who he was: and being assured that he was a Prince of Bohemia, and martyred by Boislaus his brother, he began to build in honor of the same Saint at Kivallia a monastery of the Cistercian Order with great possessions, but never completed it. He himself, illustrious in soundness and justice and religion, while he was hearing the divine offices in his royal chapel, betrayed by his own people, was cruelly martyred by his aforesaid brother on the 25th day of the month of June. From wherever Theodoric received these things, they are all deceptive: St. Canute was neither slain by his brother, nor could he ever have known the Cistercians; nor accordingly does the apparition of St. Wenceslaus, resting on such fabrications, stand. But we do not linger over fictions of this kind; it remains for us to try to explore the times of our Saint and of some of his predecessors and successors.

[34] Let it not, however, escape us to mention here also with a word the above-praised Father Master Andreas Angelettus, Angelettus the most recent writer Roman Carmelite, Provincial of Saxony, the last, so far as I know, of the history

Collector of the history of St. Canute. From the specimen given above, in § I of this Commentary, I judge it to be sufficiently clear that the man studied prolixity, since, heaping up side-pieces from every quarter, he so stuffed out his collection that he extended it to one hundred and seventy-eight pages in quarto; and that too of no great worth, since most of his additions contribute very little to the deeds, virtues, or glory of St. Canute. We candidly confess that no greater account has here been taken by us of him, as of a most recent writer, than of the others; not even of those things which he recalls in many words concerning the cult once established, since those very things were to be drawn from no other source than from the genuine sources assigned by us. There is one thing of which he himself could be an eyewitness, and which we find in him alone, concerning the solemnity instituted in the century just past, which in his chapter 49, as the crown of the whole work, he describes in this manner:

[35] There was at last, he says, in the year 1641, in our church of St. Mary Transpontine, he could testify to the Roman solemnity. a chapel, in honor of the same St. Canute the martyr, King of Denmark, by virtue of a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, at the humble instance of the Lord Canon Christian Payngh, a Dane, by the help and care of Joannes Baptista Pamphili, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and at that time set over the affairs pertaining to the kingdom of Denmark, who, afterward raised to the pontifical see, was, of happy memory, called Innocent X; which decree was also promptly confirmed by Urban VIII, of blessed memory; and on the 7th day of January of the same year, according to the Roman Martyrology, in this same our church, the first feast was celebrated pontifically, the sacred College of the Most Eminent Cardinals assisting, with universal applause and the greatest joy of the city of Rome, which an innumerable throng of peoples, illuminations, ceremonial cars, and fireworks for two continuous days, and very many other observances of true piety and veneration due to so glorious a Saint, proved abundantly and more than enough. We ought therefore there also to pour out our suppliant prayers and offer our vows, especially on the day of the feast, which is celebrated every year on the same 7th day of January, most certain that we shall receive, by the most efficacious intercession and the merits of the most holy King and martyr Canute, graces not only not inferior to the ancient peoples of Denmark, but certainly equal and even more abundant. That the feast of the Saint is today transferred is very well known; let us proceed to arrange the series of his times and those of his brothers.

§ IV. The chronology of St. Canute and of his brothers, the Kings of Denmark.

[36] The proposed part of the Danish chronology Concerning Denmark, its conversion, and the genealogy of the Kings, Henschenius once treated in the Commentary on the life of St. Anscharius of Hamburg on February 3: the lineage, ancestors, sons, and grandsons of St. Canute Bolland had previously explained, as we said above, at January 7; from whom the praised Angelettus ought not to have departed, since these matters have been so cleared out in those places that neither could he himself bring forth anything more solid, nor does anything remain for me to add here. I undertake to illustrate only that part which may determine a little more accurately the years of our Saint's father and brothers, spent in the administration of the kingdom, than I have been able to find done hitherto. It is above all to be lamented that Saxo Grammaticus, otherwise a most diligent writer here, took less account than was fitting of designating the dates, so that it is most difficult to distinguish the series of years from him. But whence I had hoped for light, thence greater darkness has arisen; for Johannes Isacius Pontanus, a historiographer of Denmark well enough known from elsewhere, praised also above, who tried to work out his material by the reckonings of chronology, so entangled most of the things pertaining to this that it is a wonder he could proceed so inconsistently.

[37] The historiographer entangles it in more than one place From the death of Sueno the Great the successions of the sons to the kingdom must altogether be arranged and the times of each one's administration determined. That Sueno, Pontanus rightly asserts, page 191 at the end, passed away in the year 1074: Among his own people Sueno, he says, now almost worn out with age, first attacked by a slight illness, and then, the same growing worse and worse, in about his seventy-fourth year, exchanged life for death in a town of the Cimbric Chersonese, which the native writers call Slutorpium. And this epoch seems undoubted, asserted likewise by Stephanius in the notes on Saxo, page 219: Sueno, son of Estrith, having obtained the surname of the Great for his illustrious deeds, passed away in the year of Christ 1074, on the fourth of the Kalends of May, after he had for some while lain sick, seized by a slow fever, in a certain village of Jutland called Suttadorp. But no one could define that matter more certainly than Ælnoth, nearest in age, whose opinion, deduced a little more fully, you have at num. 17, where, the circumstances of the illness, the place, and the funeral rites being described, he adds: Done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand seventy-four, which was the twenty-eighth year of his reign, on the fourth of the Kalends of May.

[38] Johannes Isacius Pontanus Let us now hear Pontanus, page 195: Now let us turn our pen to Harald, who next took up the royal scepter after his father Sueno, as the eldest-born of the sons. Harald, eldest-born among the brothers, was declared successor to his father Sueno about the year 1083, or, as others prefer, 1088. If Stephanius rightly arranged the ages of the sons of Sueno, Harald is wrongly said to be the eldest-born among the various brothers, begotten from different concubines, since Gormon preceded him, as Pontanus himself had expressly stated on page 193, erring also in the second daughter Ingertha to be joined to the rest, who was born not of Sueno but of St. Canute, to pass over the other things there composed somewhat for the sake of flattery: here let there be reckoning only of the times. Pontanus has now said that King Harald was declared successor of his deceased father Sueno either in the year 1083 or in 1088, an interregnum of a whole nine years, or perhaps of fourteen years, being swallowed up. Let us combine the times of Harald, concerning whose death and last days he speaks thus on page 196: Having passed two years in reigning, Harald dies, so that it is necessary that he died in the year 1085 or 1090. Thus far he there.

[39] But Pontanus must not have been sufficiently mindful of them, not sufficiently attending to those epochs, when, proceeding to St. Canute, he writes thus about him on page 197: Canute therefore, after he had spent almost a full five years in setting affairs in order at home, about the year one thousand eighty-five, having taken his brothers into his clientage, etc., thought that England, lost by misfortune, ought to be reclaimed by hereditary right. These things, so closely following one upon another, neither Pontanus himself nor anyone else could easily reconcile. In the year 1083 Harald was declared successor of his father, having passed two years in reigning; and yet St. Canute, after he had spent five years in setting affairs in order at home, in that very year 1085 plans to reclaim England by hereditary right. Equally unhappy in this historiographer is the reckoning of chronology, when on page 199 he says that St. Canute presided over the kingdom about seven years, dying when the year 1087 was passing. The rest is no less confused, and yet Pontanus dares to accuse Molanus of having erred by a whole six years, where the latter most clearly expressed the year one thousand eighty-six, which is the true year in which St. Canute received the crown of martyrdom, as has already been said, and will appear more clearly from what is to be said below.

[40] A single and only observation was needed, on which the whole matter depended. so that, the two epochs being fixed, namely the death of Sueno and the martyrdom of St. Canute, the times of the latter and of Harald might be most fitly determined, allowing also some space of interregnum, of which Pontanus, on the already-cited page 195, speaks thus: But however the reckoning of the years be taken, it is certain that for some while there was an interregnum, and that the nobles of the kingdom disputed among themselves, and hung in doubt, whether they should bring Canute or Harald to the helm of the kingdom. Let us grant him, if he so wishes, a whole year; let us grant several: the further he extends his own, the more necessary it will be that his opinion be utterly overturned, since we shall never find either Harald's two years or St. Canute's seven; so that one may wonder that such a historiographer could stumble so often, in pages so little apart, while he confesses that he had Ælnoth before his eyes, from whom and from Saxo the matter had to be arranged a little more accurately, especially since the most explicit epochs of Sueno's death and St. Canute's martyrdom were laid down, the first of which he himself had distinctly marked, while in the second he differed from the true reckoning by only a single year.

[41] Ælnoth erred in the years of Harald; Notable is the error of Ælnoth or of his copyist when he says at num. 19 that Harald departed by the way of his fathers in the sixth year of his reign, which would reach to the year 1080 or 1081. But since St. Canute, according to Saxo, spent nearly two lustra in reigning, he would have to be said to have undergone martyrdom by no means in the year 1086, but in 1090, which is what Pontanus attributes to Ælnoth on page 199. But Saxo, and others after him, restore Ælnoth's slip, extending Harald's rule only to two years, and this fits chronology far more conveniently; and nearly two lustra of administration are preserved to St. Canute, while his beginnings are fixed in the year 1076, and his martyrdom in the year 1086, as the epitaph, related above in paragraph 1, most clearly expresses, adding that mark which renders the matter most indubitable, namely the sixth of the Ides of July and the sixth weekday, which in that year 1086 most aptly coincide under the Dominical letter D, but not in the other nearest years, so that this may be, in its kind, a chronological demonstration. I do not know where Labbeus found Saturday noted; but that mark consequently led him to the year 1087. For the rest, the epoch of the epitaph remains fixed for us, from which we judge that the not few others, recited by Stephanius in the notes on Saxo, page 222, must be altogether rejected. Now take the series of the three following brothers.

[42] from which nevertheless Ælnoth relates at num. 68 in what manner the first elevation of the sacred body was made, after King Canute, beloved of God and an excellent martyr, had rested in the same place for eight years and nearly nine months (which seem taken a little too scrupulously), Olav, the successor of his kingdom, reigning: until, the miracles of virtues increasing, by the common counsel and equal vow of the whole clergy and people, the several Bishops being gathered with a multitude of clergy, and the sacred bones being tested by fire, he was raised from the lowly mound, and solemnly conveyed to the southern basilica, raised from the foundations with a notable stone-work… and there, placed in a stone sarcophagus, was laid away in the crypt. Gradually we gather the times in which the successor of St. Canute reigned; for when he, as Ælnoth continues, had been raised from the earth… King Olav, whom we have foretold to be the successor of his kingdom, in whose reign also famine and pestilence, disease, and fear of enemies had occupied the borders of Denmark, being touched by illness… departed at once from life and from the kingdom. If I rightly perceive the writer's mind, he means to say that Olav the brother reigned amid various calamities for just so long as the body of St. Canute was laid in its first burial.

[43] and by the Anonymous cited above To the same effect speaks the Anonymous, whom we gave in paragraph 2, num. 22: Another thing too

happened to be noted in Olav, his brother and successor in the dignity of this kingdom: for when there was the deposition of Canute, King and martyr, there occurred the liberation of Olav, then an exile and placed in chains in Flanders, and here his exaltation to the kingdom. And now, God disposing, when the translation of the exaltation of blessed Canute the martyr was made, there came about the deposition of this Olav from his earthly dignity. But these things must needs suffer at least some latitude, especially that liberation from chains in Flanders, which could not have occurred at the time when the deposition of Canute, King and martyr, took place, unless we admit that that more solemn deposition was altogether different from the first burial of the sacred body, which, the rebels still raging, was done tumultuously, and had to await a more opportune time, that it might be called a true deposition. I judge the matter must be so arranged that, before Nicholas succeeded as hostage in Flanders in place of Olav his brother, and so both the liberation occurred and the exaltation to the kingdom, a year easily intervened, so that it was only in the year 1087 that both the exaltation was made and the deposition of the sacred body.

[44] it is to be arranged, In this way you will more easily reconcile the things which otherwise cannot be explained; namely that Olav reigned for as many years, or rather that the diseases, pestilence, and calamities inflicted on Denmark on account of the monstrous parricide lasted for as many years, as St. Canute had before ruled, namely for about two lustra, as Saxo Grammaticus recalls in more than one place clearly enough: yet so that this too remains true, which we have already reported from Ælnoth, that King Canute, beloved of God, rested in the same place for only eight years and nearly nine months; namely for an incomplete nine years from Olav's exaltation and the somewhat more solemn deposition of the sacred body; so that the death of Olav seems to be referred to the year 1096, in which all those things came to pass which we have recalled above from the praised Anonymous and Ælnoth; when also Eric the Good, fourth brother in the order of reigning, took up the reins of the kingdom to be governed, as Ælnoth relates at num. 69: And straightway, by the raising up of the whole army and the acclamation of the people, the most excellent Eric, God advancing him and the elements favoring, ascended to the rights of the kingdom.

[45] We conclude this our Commentary with Ælnoth, the series of St. Canute's remaining brothers. who writes thus at num. 76: But in the sixth year of the reign of the magnificent King Eric, all the Bishops of Denmark being gathered, with a multitude of clergy and an innumerable people of the land, the precious relics of the blessed Martyr, taken out of the stone sarcophagus, and raised from the crypt where they had hitherto been kept, all accompanying with solemn praises, by the same bishop Humbald whom we have mentioned before, on the thirteenth of the Kalends of May, we sinners beheld with our eyes placed in the same chest of which we spoke before, white as snow and wrapped in becoming silk. These things therefore were done at the beginning of the twelfth century, most probably in the year 1102, when Eric, surnamed the Good, torn away from illicit loves by his wife Botilde, was meditating all pious and holy things, even a pilgrimage to Palestine, on which at last he died, in the year, as we believe, 1105, his brother Nicholas succeeding in the year 1107, not before the news of his death, Canute the younger, son of Eric, being excluded, as we have sufficiently weighed in paragraph 3. And let these things concerning the series of the brother Kings be sufficiently said; now we append the third edition of the Ælnothian history.

THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND PASSION

By the author Ælnoth, monk of Canterbury.

From the Tosan Ms., collated with the edition of Meursius.

Canute, King and Martyr in Denmark (St.)

BHL Number: 1551

FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS.

PROLOGUE

To King Nicholas.

To the foremost Leader of princes, the Chief of nobles, the Patrician of the fatherland, pious, unconquered, magnificent, most serene provider of Denmark ^b, most illustrious in appearance as in the dignity of his name, King Nicholas ^c, The author dedicates this narrative to King Nicholas, brother of St. Canute. the lowliest of the ministers of the divine office, Ailnoth, brought forth in Kent ^d, the metropolitan city of the English, but now having tarried in the parts of Denmark for four five-year periods and nearly twice two ^e years, wishes to overthrow the forces of the enemy by divine power, to tread down the necks of the obstinate with the foot of might, to dispose the rights of the kingdom becomingly, to enjoy the security of peace, and, after the course of temporal rule, to be enriched with the blessedness of everlasting felicity.

[2] Royal severity is to be seasoned with clemency. The clemency of the greatness of your glory, just as any impudent and imprudent or senseless man detests it, so every provident man and executor of probity, discerning ^f by discretion both present and consequent things together with moderation, pursues by extolling it not only with praises but with a worthy affection of veneration. For the Judge of all, whom the prophetic King and mightiest of shepherds proclaims just and strong, the same he declares also to be patient and long-suffering. And Him whose honor he intimates that judgment loves, to Him he manifests that he sings mercy together with judgment. Whose measure of piety your Excellency, carrying out according to the small measure granted to mortals, and preferring the gentleness of mildness to the severity of justice, will on this account, by His own help, be made partaker of His glory; whose place you here fill both by dignity and by participation in His name. For He, casting down the mighty from their seat, both exalts the humble in the present and magnifies them forever with the honor of everlasting blessedness. By His grace, as it is most to be believed, your precious own brother Canute, now undoubtedly to be surnamed blessed, having obtained from the summit of temporal rule the glory of perpetual beauty, just as among mortals he excelled in the glorious power of the kingdom, so now, associated with the blessed spirits, shines forth more glorious in the magnificence of virtues.

[3] The deeds of St. Canute described by the author Having presumptuously undertaken to unfold the notable marks both of his deeds and of his contests, I beg that the ineloquence of my unskilled tongue be pardoned; so that if anything empty or void of the weight of truth should offend the sight of onlookers, it may not at once, with raised eyebrow, be condemned by Pharisaic envy, but, by the joint of sincere discretion, the things to be cast out being removed, the probable be inserted. For the disease of biting envy, which sometimes is wont to rise up against ^g the slightness of your weakness, I judge must not be extinguished, nay rather awakened, since I strive to fit for burning the fire winnowed from the ashes, little fragments being applied, though a smoke-belching flame darkens it. But let the cock, ranging through the halls, and beating the air under the roof-top with hoarse-sounding breath, pass by the shrew-mouse leaping in the bucket, and let him enter the war of contest with his fellows, his spurs sharpened. For I do not recount the fleets of the Greeks bringing destruction on the Dardanians: I do not commemorate the Hectorean battle-lines, notably meeting the arms of the Myrmidons with bosses set against them: but the things which I have learned concerning the deeds of a religious prince and a Martyr beloved of God, from credible persons of both sexes and orders relating them; men of religious habit, there devoutly serving Jesus Christ and His signal Conqueror, earnestly lending their support, I have handed down in writing to be reserved for the memory of posterity: presenting them to the piety of your majesty, that it may both be more fully gladdened by the glorification of so great a brother, and be more ardently incited to emulate the marks of the same virtue, the heavenly Provider inspiring it.

[4] He asks to be defended by royal authority. Therefore, provider at once of peace and of the fatherland, favor my undertakings with your accustomed piety, and deign to confirm by royal decree the things which I have touched upon by gathering concerning your most renowned ^h progenitor and the times of your glorious brothers, down to these present times of your magnificence; that the royal dignity may have the monuments both of its own and of preceding exercise to be handed down to posterity. But let every faithful man remove from the secret of his breast the scruple of ambiguity concerning the preciousness of the holiness of this man of God, on whom is the sum of our work, whoever does not hesitate that the Lord can do all things, and has foreknown and foretold them before they are accomplished. For He who cast down the Angel of pride from the highest ⁱ places for the contumacy of his self-exaltation, He Himself leads the humble and quiet, and those who fear His judgments, from the lowest places to the heights: and He who from the hardest flint, Aaron striking it with the rod, brought forth water, He Himself chose for Himself a Martyr from a King, from an earthly Prince a partner of the heavenly kingdom. But let him who dissembles that the Omnipotent has accomplished these things fear, lest he too be banished from the soil of the divine promise. For, as Peter attests, in every nation he who fears God and works justice is acceptable to Him: and since God is able from stones to raise up sons of Abraham, why would He not deign, out of a nation, however most hard ^k, yet marked with the Catholic faith, to make a religious Prince, an executor of truth and justice, a colleague of the Saints on high?

[5] But since all things are possible to him who believes, and God is believed to have accomplished in him the clemency of His power, He congratulates the King on his brother's glory and, a patron being provided for the earth-born, may He be magnified by all with the homage of due veneration: rejoice therefore, most distinguished King, adorned with so great a glorification of your brother: exult, confident that you have an advocate with God, on the throne of whose kingdom here, by His granting, you have deserved to sit. Rejoice that he has been carried up to the heavens, laid away in the bosom of Abraham, made the companion of Angels, fellow-citizen of the Martyrs, that he takes part in the choirs of the Blessed, beholds the face of God present, gazes upon the glory of majesty, and now by his intervention ^l, by divine aid, accomplishes that which here, once discharging royal power, he was not able to perform. For to those bereft of sight he grants the regard of light, he cleanses the skin rotting with a Lazar's decay.

He opens the blocked ^m ears, and restores speech, While he loosens the sinews of the tongue, and the reins of the step: He puts to flight fevers too, and drives away all pains: Since God is wonderful in His very Saints, Working powers and signs after their renowned deeds, That they may become bright in heaven, manifest to the age.

[6] Therefore let the royal power adorn the pledges of so great a brother with worthy gifts, and he urges him to adorn his tomb. let it enlarge the ornament of the sacred building, let it strengthen by making firm the men of the spiritual rule who there continually persist in the divine worship, that in return for the support of temporal aid you may forever obtain the reward of heavenly recompense. By the obtaining of his intercession also may the forces of the enemy be subjected to you, the wedge of foes be thinned, the strength of the kingdom be consolidated, the security of peace be confirmed, the wholeness of safety be granted, disease and pestilence be driven away, all advantages grow strong, disadvantages decrease, and, the long-lasting bound of your remaining ⁿ rule being run through, transmitted to the heights, may you be glorified in the eternal court. May your piety flourish and be strong forever, and may our weakness ^o be sustained by the regard of divine compassion and by the help of royal support.

ANNOTATA.

CAPUT I.

Various things are set forth beforehand concerning the Christian faith received rather late by the Northern peoples, concerning the victories and deeds of Sueno, the father of St. Canute, and of Harald his brother.

The kingdoms of the North, hidden in the remote parts of the world, were long and far held given over to pagan rites; Why does the North receive the faith late? until the divine clemency drew them from the depth of error and unbelief. For after almost all the kingdoms of the West, which Julius Caius, once the son-in-law of the great Pompey, had subjected to the Ausonian empire, submitted their necks to Christian laws; those nations, which on the opposite side of the Franks or Gauls and the Saxons stand in the Northern parts—namely the Swedes and Goths, the Normans and Isonii—received the standards of the faith so much the later, inasmuch as the teachers of the faith reckoned it a great thing ^b to turn aside thither, both for the want of sustenance and of goods, and for the fierceness and inborn hardness of the barbarians.

[8] But the Danes, who seem to be nearer to the Gauls and Saxons, The Danes, converted before the rest, remain steadfast in the faith. are on that account held superior to the aforenamed peoples; because they both inhabit their soil more usefully for necessary purposes, and received the faith of the Trinity before those others knew it; and they ennobled their borders by the might and counsel of noble Kings, both with Prelates and with ministers of the divine office, the churches of God being there daily increased on every side: and the faith received thus far they have hitherto faithfully preserved by venerating it. For that I may touch on something from the account of the ancients, from the time when the Bishop Poppo ^c, of venerable memory, bearing on his branded right hand the heat of glowing iron, and passing over fiery plates of iron with unburnt soles, declared by an evident token that Christ, the Son of God, is true and the only God; the nation of the Danes strives, Jesus Christ favoring, to preserve and guard the faith which it received, unimpaired to this day.

[9] But the Swedes and Goths, when things favor their wish and prosperities succeed, The Swedes are said to be inconstant in the faith, who killed St. Eskil. seem to venerate the faith of Christianity in name only. But when the breath of adversity blows—whether by the barrenness of the earth, or the dryness of the air, or the density of storms, or the incursion of enemies, or the burning of fire—they persecute the religion of the faith, which they seemed to venerate in word, not only with words but with deeds and with persecutions of the faithful Christians, and try to expel it altogether from their borders. Whence Bishop Eskil ^d of pious memory, coming from the most noble world of the English, and there proclaiming the Gospel of the faith to the wild and untamed peoples, for the testimony of truth being sundered from this transitory world by the fierceness and madness of the barbarians, the Angels rejoicing together, went to the heights to live forever.

[10] But the Northerners who, from the situation of their regions, are called Normans and Isonii, The Norwegians and Icelanders withdraw from their ancient rites with difficulty. who also, on account of the vehemence of the winter there and the longer succession of ice, are called Glacial both in their native and in the Danish and Norwegian tongue, do indeed observe the rite of the Christian religion, but, on account of the barrenness of the land and the scantiness of food, they defile the same religion of the faith, both on the solemn days of fasts and in the Lenten season, by the eating of unlawful foods. For from the North, as the Lord recalls through the Prophet, evil shall be spread over the face of the whole earth. Therefore those nations which we have mentioned, bound by the colds of ancient unbelief, are scarcely ever so kindled by fervor as to be made firm in the stability of the faith, so as to be wholly loosed from the bonds of unbelief: while they try both to grasp the Sacraments of the faith by human reasonings, which is not granted to mortals, and to prefer their own laws to the justice of God, and count it a shame to withdraw themselves from their ancient rites, whether religious or irreligious, out of regard for the fear of God.

[11] The wish of the writer. But that I may not linger longer on these things: whatever is lacking to the faithful, whether to those or to all, in fulfilling the divine commandments, the North wind rising up—that is, the cold of the body and of iniquity being driven away—let the South wind come and blow through the garden of the Church of the faithful, that its spices may flow: let the warmth of spiritual grace come, that is, and flow into the hearts of believers, that by the profession of true faith and the overflowing fragrance of works our light may shine before men—that is, before the lovers of the world, who savor not heavenly but perishable things—and that they may glorify our Father who is in heaven. And that we may fittingly pursue what we have proposed, may we be helped by the favor of Him who created us that we might exist, and of Him who recreates us that we might be reformed.

[12] Sueno the Great, King of Denmark, his rivals for the kingdom conquered, After many onsets of wars therefore, and clashes of contests, joined between Magnus, leader of the Northerners and Westerners, and Sueno, likewise named the Great, leader of the Easterners and Southerners, both most fierce; and after the memorable battle waged between Harald Fairhair and the same Sueno concerning the principality of Denmark; Magnus having departed by the way of all, and Harald being driven out from the borders of Denmark, Sueno the Great obtained the principality of his native soil: and as long as he lived he reigned most nobly: who, like that famous hero of the Trojans of old, renowned Priam, presenting an appearance worthy of empire; since, according to the divine interpreter, he was wise in heart and strong in might, he strenuously protected his nation from the incursion of foreign peoples, both by the aid of divinity and by the might and prudence of his counsel; and, peace being restored on every side, he made it terrible by arms and by its many forces to the peoples round about.

[13] He promotes divine worship. But because he was not without liberal studies, and not ignorant of divine readings, he did not neglect to advance the worship of religion: nay, the churches of the Saints, in the places where they were, he advanced by royal authority, and in those places where hitherto they had not been, he erected them: and he took pains both to increase and to venerate the clergy and the bishops. To orphans and widows, to the needy and to strangers, and especially to poor clerics, he came to aid with royal stipends: and from the mammon of iniquity he busied himself to make these his friends, by whom he presumed that he would be received into the eternal tabernacles. And, not to dwell on everything: he was gentle to the little, harsh and rough to the proud; the former he soothed with clemency, the latter he pressed with power. And to the poor he gives feasts, garments as coverings to the naked: the former he cherished lest they fail on the way, the latter he covered lest they perish either by the rigor of cold or the heat of scorching. But what among human things is in every part blessed? For God our Lord alone is truly good and alone truly blessed, being equal and coeternal with God the Father, and becoming man at the end of the ages, just as He went forth from an immaculate and undefiled virginal womb, so He conversed without the trouble and heaviness of our sin, having gone forth from the world—our world, I say—through the humanity assumed for us, in us, from us, He went forth from the world; who through the essence of His Deity promised His faithful an eternal presence.

[14] To excuse his sins, But we who are conceived in iniquities, and brought forth in offenses and sorrows, although we are absolved by the saving laver from the original committed sin, weighed down by the frailty of bodily weakness and the burden of superadded mortality, slip back into the mire of sin; and unless the heavenly Spirit relieved us, the destruction of eternal damnation would swallow us all. But He who said to the first-formed man, after the taste of evil and the transgression of the divine precept, "thou shalt die the death," to those believing in Him, and obeying His commands, promises eternal life: and He who brought in the severity of the legal censure through those sent before, He Himself, coming, brought mercy, that the hardness of the Law might be softened by Evangelical clemency, while those whom the former judges to be punished, the latter invites to seek pardon: for while the former proclaims, on account of this or that committed deed, that this man is to be blotted out from among the peoples, that one to be overwhelmed with stones, another to be condemned to death; the latter declares that the kingdom of heaven is to be opened to those doing penance, and intimates that every guilt, except the blasphemy of the Spirit—that is, despair of eternal salvation—is to be remitted.

[15] it is shown that all things are forgiven except despair. For in what way is he believed to be absolved from guilt, by whom the grace of that same remission is despised by despairing? And he who distrusts that the enormity of his crimes can be outweighed by the blood of the divine side, and does not reckon that the multitude of his guilts can be overcome by the spiritual grace of remission, and, persevering to the very end in that obstinacy of unbelief or despair, shall have failed; therefore, deprived of piety, he departs entangled in all his crimes; and from that salvation which he had despised by despairing, and by this had judged himself unworthy of it, condemned by Christ, he is thrust down, assigned to the pit of eternal damnation, to be burned with everlasting fires. But he who, having heard the Lord's voice, seeks the grace of true remission, that he may receive it; and seeks the indulgence of his committed sins, that he may find it; and knocks at the door of eternal piety with importunate prayers without failing, will find the gates of unfailing clemency open to true confession; through which one comes to the halls of the heavenly court, where the God of gods is beheld in Zion, that is, in the vision of eternal peace.

[16] Amid the aforesaid pursuits of piety, therefore, Sueno the Great, Sueno begot many sons of concubines like that mightiest of Kings of old, and most eloquent of prophets, David; who, in the likeness of the true shepherd, crushing the jaws of the beasts with a strong hand, had signified the Lord's flock to be freed by Christ from the devouring of those who lay in wait; and the foreigner Goliath, like Antichrist, insulting the divine camp, and offering the encounter of single combat, and exalting himself against and above God, having been struck by the corner-stone or rock which is Christ, cut from the mountain without hands, and cast down, and slain by the edge of his own sword; had signified that Antichrist himself is to be destroyed by the divine mouth and by the illumination of His magnificent coming; the enemies being conquered on every side

and enemies lying in wait being laid low on the ground, the felicity of the kingdom being obtained, and the quiet ^e and security of peace being gained, yielding much to the luxury of an enticing appetite, he sent forth an offspring ^f of numerous progeny, to succeed to the rights of the kingdom for himself; and some he applied to the studies of divine knowledge, some he delegated to be educated by nobles, each in their several places.

[17] But when he himself had departed by the way of no hoped-for return in the place which is called Suddadorp [*], that is, the miry village, those who provided for the royal corpse with royal funeral rites bear the clod of it into a maritime island, which, because it is surrounded by the sea, is called Seland in the Danish tongue, to the chief place, which of old was called Rooskild ^g, that is, the fount of Roe, and there in the church of the holy and undivided Trinity, and of St. Lucius the martyr, built with a notable stone-work by Sueno, then Bishop of that same See, honoring him with due funeral rites, they lay him away. Done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand seventy-four ^h, which was the twenty-eighth year of his reign, on the fourth of the Kalends of May, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Ruler of all, reigning forever.

[18] St. Canute being excluded, Harald is chosen as successor, The renowned King Sueno the Great therefore, the nations round about toward the peoples of his kingdom being pacified; and the churches of the Lord being eminently built in very many chief places, partly by the industry of his own religiosity, partly, having long since been completed by others, being becomingly adorned by him with royal gifts, and both the Bishops and the ministers of religious worship being enlarged; he himself at last, forsaking the use of human conversation, and entering the secret of a long repose, left to the heirs of his kingdom not so much the opulence of royal treasures as the security of reigning, peace having been made on every side: and to them he left, in the monuments of his works, the prudence of his paternal virtues to be diligently imitated. But when the royal young men, namely Harald and Cnut—now presently to be named Canute—were disputing among themselves concerning the right of the principality; Harald, because he was both prior in birth and seemed more modest in bearing, is admitted into the kingdom by the election of the whole nation, and is proclaimed that he may long live a happy prince of Denmark. Which the most fierce Cnut, though he bore it grievously, yet thought it better to yield to fraternal wrath than, like the royal boys of Thebes of old, to commit himself and his brother by contending, for the lust of reigning, to the fires of an everlasting pyre. For, unwitting, he awaited the aid of divinity that would be at hand for him, through which he did not know that he would afterward be exalted with so eminent a glory.

[19] who makes mild and pleasing laws for the people. But our Lord God Himself, who dwelling on high looks upon the lowly and knows the lofty from afar, was reserving for later the times of the exaltation of His chosen one: whom He had chosen to be honored not only with temporal but with everlasting rule. But that we may pursue what we have proposed, Harald, having obtained his father's rule, exceedingly favored the wishes of the people, and strove to decree for them, by royal authority, laws and rights—not so much such as they might wish to choose, but rather such as, whatever kind they had chosen, were to be preserved for posterity. Whence the laws sanctioned by him the Danes to this very day demand from the Kings elected and to be elected for them; and him, as the provider of public peace and liberty, on account of the laws granted by him, they extol with praise and favors. But when he too had departed by the way of his fathers in the sixth ⁱ year of his reign, a famous place, which is called Valley-town, that is Dalby in the Danish tongue, received him to be reserved for the future resurrection, and, having received him, commended him to mother earth, attended with religious funeral rites.

ANNOTATA.

* Pontanus: Slutorpium; died in the year 1074.

CAPUT II.

The illustrious virtues of St. Canute, his mercy toward the poor, his care for justice and divine worship, his rigid penance, etc. The expedition into England, thwarted by the treachery of his brother Olav.

[20] A new preface to the life of St. Canute. The coastal rowings being passed over, and our gaze now sated with the sight of the neighboring regions, as we make for the deep sea, let us with skillful industry stop up the chinks of our raft, lest any vein of the treacherous sea cut off us who sail: and, the wood of the Lord's Cross being raised, let the sails of the virtues rise up into the deep, so that, our ears dulled to the song of the sirens, the swift East wind blowing, as we run our course, being borne by the merits of our Hero to the bosom of the longed-for harbor, we may fix the anchor of our hope on the divine clemency, lest the adversity of the rocks shut off the ship of spiritual merchandise, and mingle the joys of the shore with the wailings of weeping, the treasures now carried further while they float scattered on the wave. But He who said, Open thy mouth and I will fill it, let Him direct the lips of our understanding and the utterances of our mouth, that we may so proclaim the praises of His soldier, as to handle things pleasing to His majesty.

[21] Cnut, called Canute by the Apostolic See, shines with many virtues, The renowned offspring therefore of the glorious King Sueno the Great, although his inborn prudence emulated all the industry of his father's virtue, our most distinguished Cnut (whom afterward the Apostolic See, the Supreme Pontiff presiding and very many both Prelates and men of religious order assisting, whether on account of the hoariness of his understanding or the sincerity of his life, or because it was decreeing that he should be numbered in the canon of the Saints, established should be reckoned as "Canute") like a carbuncle shining forth among precious gems, tried not so much to imitate his father's pursuits as to hand down famous deeds to posterity by his own monuments: for there grew in him the prudence of honorable manners together with the grace of comely youth. Whence at last, the heavenly clemency providing, he advanced to the summit of the kingdom. For he was keen in intellect, worthy of empire in appearance, with lively eyes, strenuous in arms and in spirit, and the industry of his mind was betrayed by the eloquence of his speech. And because it is neither of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy; and from the beginning of the rising age the elect are to be placed in the eternal mansions in the palace of the everlasting Father; the Lord was forming in him an elegant attendant for Himself, whom from the fasces of royal dignity He was making a companion of the heavenly ones and a Martyr.

[22] merciful to the poor, reverent to priests, assiduous in sacred things. But he himself, after his brother's departure from the world, promoted to the rule divinely provided for him, bound himself over to the King of kings, the Lord, by faithful services; that by His protecting aid he might be fortified against the incursions of both earthly and aerial enemies. He cherished the hungry, and clothed the poor, naked and cold, mercifully aided orphans and widows, sustained pilgrims and the needy with the stipends of mercy. Men of the religious order he honored, some as Lords, some as Fathers: and the sanctuaries of spiritual ministries he adorned with the gifts of royal bounties. The holy churches of God's Saints, to hear the sacred order of the daily course, he assiduously frequented; and what he had there received with capacious hearing he laid away in the cabinet of his precious breast: to which the divine Spirit incited him, that his memory might remain unto the age of the age.

[23] Avoiding the wantonness of very many Kings, but also of Solomon himself, on account of which his descendants of old, ten parts of the kingdom being taken away, [Having married Adela of Flanders, he devotes himself to justice and the propagation of divine worship,] scarcely deserved to rule over two, the Lord being angered; he chose for himself, by the counsel of the wise, a most noble wife of imperial stock; whom, brought with signal honor from the western shores, according to the estimation of her name, who was called Ethela ^b, that is, noble, receiving the noble one nobly, the unchaste embraces of concubines being despised, he was content with her marriage alone, Jesus Christ and His Angels being witness. But also, as is said of blessed Job, he most diligently investigated useful causes which he did not know; and often discussing with the prudent and religious, he assiduously turned over in his mind how he might daily increase the religion of the Christian faith in his kingdom. For he saw with sagacious industry that many things handed down from antiquity were observed in the present which were rather to be corrected for the sake of divine justice than to be carried out for the favor of the common people: which, the grace of the heavenly Judge inspiring, he was disposing to restrain.

[24] the wicked opposing his holy zeal. But the fierceness of the untamed nation and its inborn hardness daily deferred the accomplishment of his will. And because, as truth attests, everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light, that his works may not be reproved; those who wished rather to cling to depraved practices, and willingly to lie in sins, than to abandon what was unjustly observed, once the reasoning of justice had been heard; complained in their conventicles that he was insisting on vanity, and as it were devoting his effort to new and unheard-of inventions: and on account of this, they debated how the yoke of his domination, by the untamed and hitherto unbent, hard necks of contumacy

might shake off from their necks, not inflamed by the illumination of the divine Spirit, but puffed up by the suggestion of an alien spirit, they took counsel ^c. For the carnal man did not perceive the things which the Spirit of all knowledge poured into the royal breast. For ^d, when he himself was trying to snatch them from the servitude of sin, and to lead them back to the liberty of justice; hearing but not understanding, and blinded though seeing, they thought him, as it were, an invader of ancient peace and quiet and a robber of their former liberty. Therefore they gathered iniquity to themselves, and went forth abroad. They went forth abroad, when, preferring their own statutes to the divine justice, they were not subject to the justice of God: and through this, sundered from the fellowship of the just and cast out from their borders, they were assigned to the college of the wicked, because they became willingly the servants of sin. Wherefore, falling into the snare which they prepared for the feet of the innocent; and rushing into the pit which they dug, they became imitators of the Jews, because they could not bear one who rebuked their vices. But the account of their destruction being reserved for its own time, let us return to unfolding the nobility of the virtues of our magnificent Hero.

[25] He confesses his sins, and privately has himself scourged for them: Growing therefore in the servant and true King (because to serve God is to reign, and to command the vices is to rule) in the regard of the fear of God; sifting his past acts and ignorances and the offenses of his youth with careful examination, opening them with the humility of true and sincere confession to the religious men attached to him, then indeed Chaplains ^e of the royal household, but now venerable Bishops, namely Gerold and Arnold, he so subjected the affection of his devotion to the divine clemency, that—what will seem incredible to some—he did not refuse to have the blows even of bodily chastisement inflicted upon him by them alone, God being witness, and the conscious sharers of his secrets. For he had heard, and hearing had understood, that the more the outer flesh is worn down, the more the inner spirit is relieved.

[26] In Lent and on all Fridays, fasting on bread and water. And, as those who desire to be Christ's do not shudder ^f to crucify the flesh with its vices and concupiscences; on the solemn and private days of fasts too, and on the sixth day of the week, sitting at the royal table, while by his fellow-diners he was thought to use liquors mixed with wine or mead, only his faithful servants knowing, together with the Beholder of hidden things, he used pure water; and the dishes of royal delicacies being only set to his mouth, and partly handed to those sitting around him, partly distributed and sent to the poor; he himself, with dry bread and salt applied, did not so much sustain his body accustomed to delights, as, these being taken not to sufficiency, he tortured it: for he desired that his works be not made known in the encounters of the streets, but approved by the Searcher of hearts; so that his left hand might not know what his right hand did: because he awaited from it not the favor of human praise, but the reward of the Father who sees in secret.

[27] The fame of his name. But since, according to the saying of Truth, a city set on high cannot be hidden; and the light of a lamp ought rather to be brought forth on high than to be concealed in a hidden place; the fame of the virtues and constancy and prudence of the most noble Prince is spread more widely: and he was held most renowned both among the Scots, the Orkney-men, and the Irish ^g, who dwell in almost the farthest bounds of the West, and among the English and the Gauls and Saxons. Nor was he unknown within the Italian borders; and to the Franks themselves, who are also called Romans ^h, a most warlike people, he resounded not so much as one to be admired as one to be feared.

[28] Summoned by the English against William the Norman, For the most noble nation of the English, which is known to trace its origin ⁱ from the ancient Saxons, as the Venerable Bede the Priest, historiographer of that same nation, describes; Harald, a most valiant King, being slain by William, Duke of the Southern Normans, by the ambushes of war, and William himself thus at last seizing the empire of the English by force; long oppressed by the rule of those same Romans or Franks whom we have mentioned above, it began to presume that it would be restored to its former liberty only if it knew that the most distinguished prince Canute, with the forces of his army, had landed on the shores of Britain to avenge the slaying of his kinsman—namely Harald, once King, slain by those same Romans. For, their renowned Dukes and Counts, Satraps and nobles and persons of various dignities being partly slain by the sword, others assigned to workhouses, some deprived at once of the honor and inheritance of their fathers' treasures and dignities, some banished from their native soil, the rest oppressed as by public servitude, not bearing the ferocity of their tyranny, they resolved to draw in the aid of foreigners, since the provident cunning of their enemies had left them no leader or prince for repairing or recovering their liberty.

[29] Whence, envoys being sent more frequently, they demand the aid of the most excellent Prince Canute, he plans to succor them, desiring rather, the enemy being assailed, to contend for obtaining the empire of the English, than, by suffering the tyranny of their foes, to bear the dominion of their ferocity. By whose straits and embassies the most pious Hero, incited, resolved that their distress must be succored; that he might both restore the most noble nation to its former liberty, and punish the insolence of the Romans or Franks by avenging the slaying of his kinsman. He therefore ordered a very large fleet to be prepared, and commanded his own, by a proclaimed edict, to be ready for everything. But He who disposes all things and judges all, whose judgments are a great deep, and whose counsel no mortal could search out; whether for the sake of deferring the chastisement of that still-guilty nation, or for the sake of reserving the glory of the most noble Prince's Martyrdom for his own nation rather than for foreigners, was hindering the course of human will: He who was disposing to make for the Danes a patron out of a Prince, a protomartyr out of a King: protomartyr I say, because by no account of the ancients have we learned that anyone of their race was distinguished by martyrdom, that none among them thus fell by the constancy of persevering justice. Therefore, crowned with glory and honor, he remains placed at the right hand of the eternal King. But these things are known to God.

[30] The fleet meanwhile was daily being prepared, and, both by the nobles and by the common people, a fleet being prepared for that end, with all urgency haste was made toward that land, noble as much in crops as in the opulence of goods. But the rumor of their expedition sailing even to Britain, and, running about, filling the whole world of the English, William, by the art of defense, as a warlike hero not unskilled, began to fortify camps and towns, to gird the castles about with walls and ditches and bulwarks, to renew the walls of the cities, to apply watchfulness to the villages, and to assign naval guards to the various ports; and, an army being hired both from the Gauls and Britons, and gathered from the men of Maine, the houses of the cities were so filled that the householders scarcely seemed to sit at their own hearths.

[31] But to the English, whose desire for the coming of the Danish army he had learned to be not the least, William meanwhile providing for his affairs. he commanded to shave their beards ^k, to fit their arms and spoils after the manner of the Romans, and, to deceive the sight of those arriving, to make themselves in all things like the Franks, whom we have preferred to call also Romans; which very few did. But of this there. The fleet therefore being prepared, the army of the Danes is conveyed to the shores of the western port, the sails spread out billowing, and there the arrival of the royal fleet was awaited day by day, while the King tarried in a most renowned place, which received the name Ethebi from the Lady Ethe ^l, once mistress of that place—which in the Danish tongue, interpreted, is called Field-town—discussing with the prudent and wise how the enterprise begun might, for the profit of many, with Jesus Christ helping, come to a fitting result.

[32] A tumult arising among the Danes through the treachery of Olav, But just as the people of Israel of old, while Moses tarried in converse with God, demanded of Aaron that gods be made for them, to furnish them the leadership ^m of their desert way; and on this account, God being angered, were deprived of the longed-for soil both in sight and in use: so also the common people here, impatient of the delay of their detention on the shore, complained of the waitings, useless to their domestic affairs, and clamored, counsel being more frequently taken, that either the faculty of returning home, or of choosing for themselves another leader of the expedition (the King being intent on other things), or of sending messengers to the King, that he should hasten with his fleet as quickly as possible, be granted: by whose frequent clamor and long-continued outcries the Princes, moved, resolve to send messengers to the King, and to insinuate into the royal ears the complaints of the ready army. Of which embassy Olav, the own brother of the same glorious King, made no happy executor, approached the King with his companions, sets forth the mandates of the army, and, freely pleading, shows the causes of their complaints.

[33] he is sent captive into Flanders, the army is dismissed home. But the King, of perspicacious industry, the matter being protracted longer, sends ⁿ that same brother of his to be kept into Flanders, to Robert, most noble Duke of the western people, related to him through his daughter—namely Queen Ethela; and by intermediaries sent back to the army what he wished. But autumn drawing near, the envoys being sent back, the whole multitude entreats with no small urgency that, on account of the affairs of their domestic needs, he command the army to return home. He would have the whole fleet ready, wherever he should choose, in the spring season. Which, the King assenting, the nobles and magnates intervening, gladly they snatch their anchors from the sands, throw down the tents fixed above, and raising the tops of the masts, give their sails to the winds, and seeking the deep sea and praying prosperity for the King, they hollow the waters with the stern, and carry back to their homes the things they desired.

ANNOTATA.

they were so called—not only the Franks, or those who sprang from the Gauls through intermarriages, but the Gauls themselves and the Franks—whence also their tongue obtained the name of Romance, as distinguished from Latin. Who does not know that those famous stories of fabulous heroes are thence called "Romances"?

CAPUT III.

Many things sanctioned for the good of the Church, the excessive rigor of the ministers, the sedition of the wicked, the withdrawal of the holy King, the court plundered and despoiled, the various crimes of the rioters.

[34] The army therefore having returned home, the religious Prince, as hitherto, [Canute sanctions the discipline of morals, and the laws of feasts, fasts, liberty, and hospitality:] devoted himself to cling to the pursuits of piety, to exalt the reverence of divine worship, to advance the rights of the clergy, to establish, a penalty being set by royal edict, the observances of the chief days and the lawful fasts, as they are held throughout the whole Christian world, and to restrain, as far as he could, all things very contrary to God; to adjudge to public liberty the slaves set free by hand and those redeemed at a purchased price by the labor of their own sweat; and to decree that newcomers, and those arriving from wherever, and hitherto liable to no one, be equal to the inhabitants in right and equity: (which, though hateful and inconvenient to the Danes, is, as we judge, not at all contrary to God) to strive to suppress the obstinacy of the rebels, whether against divine or legal institutions, and to tame their untamed necks with the rod of royal equity.

[35] wherefore the wicked stir up the people against him. By these things, therefore, the enemy of piety and the foe of virtue and truth, being provoked, while through them he fears that the number of those obedient to him is now presently to be diminished, runs through the tricks of various snares, and, that he may disturb the times of so great religion, and swallow into the jaws of his own malignity the people now at last, through the diligence of the devoted Leader, to be as much as possible subjected to God, stretching the engines of his cunning, goes about like a roaring lion; he seeks whom he may devour. And just as once he had incited the priests and Pharisees and masters of the law against the very author of truth with the poison of envy, through whom the simplicity of the common people might be instigated to condemn the maker of life; so also he incites against the religious Prince, with the goads of ancient iniquity, those greater by birth and preeminent also in eloquence, and readier in audacity to right and wrong, and by inciting inflames them, by inflaming inclines them, prone and ready, to every wickedness: and, that they may blot out the memory of the just man from the earth, he arms both noble and ignoble by provoking them with no unusual instigation. Whence almost all the common people of the land, infected with the poison of his iniquity, and ensnared in the toils of his malice, are prepared for every crime, and with averted sense and face cast down to the ground, they avoid looking on the highest things; lest they be rightly turned away from the paths of malice, whereby they might become partakers of those of whom the divine wisdom testifies that they compel the Lord to depart from them.

[36] The royal ministers exasperate them the more by their injustice. Nevertheless, that we may pursue what we have proposed, the executors or collectors of royal business began to press more than just in aggravating cases, to increase the weights of the balances, to depreciate the prices of any goods whatsoever, and, that I may explain it in common terms, to admit the value ^b of ounces scarcely at the price of a solidus; to pervert judgments, as they report, and to strive to oppress both nobles and ignoble by force and power. By whose insolence very many being exasperated, the elder ones kindled at once with anger and envy, all resolve to break in upon the royal Prince with counsel and arms, and, both in him and in those ministers, messengers being sent about everywhere, to avenge the public injuries, as they think. Therefore the go-betweens of impiety and madness run about, and incite not only those ready for crimes, but even the minds of the simple and innocent, that they may multiply the accomplices ^c of crimes, and disturb everywhere the right of truth and justice.

[37] The pathetic exclamation of the writer. Alas the grief! abounding iniquity rises up, charity grows cold and lukewarm: the people are incited to every crime, right is trampled down, and wrong exalted: and like a beast made ready to devour, thirsting for blood, it longs to be sated with royal blood: it sharpens its arms with limbs, its mind with cruelty. And alas! it fears lest the time for crime come, and lest it fall before it fulfill every service of iniquity.

But to what does this fury tend, or whither does the violence turn? That the raging people should rise up against the King! Mad populace, see for yourself what will flow upon you from it: Pestilence will come, the herds will yield to diseases, So that the ox will fail, and what the cow supplies to you. The barren and cursed countryside will render a scanty harvest Of seed, and scarcely any field will pay its fruit: Acorns will fail in the woods, and shoots in the fields. And you will lose both the abundance of milk and the sweetness of honey; The flocks will fall, the fish will die in the deep: Hard famine will lay low the failing men. And you who now disdain to bow your neck To your own Leader, will lie beneath the leader of hell.

[38] The King therefore, in the southern regions beyond the river which is called Lima [*], the royal business being accomplished as usual, The open sedition of his subjects, is conveyed to the maritime region, which in the Danish tongue is called Wendel, which is interpreted "convertible"; and there in a royal manor, which, from a Lady once of that place, Burhlina ^d, is now, the vowel being changed, called Burhlanis, he resolved to reside, to take his ease with the royal retinue, charging the royal collectors concerning the business to be accomplished and at the same time investigated. At whose coming both nobles and common people, incited, gather conventicles of impious counsels, and mutually instigate their minds to iniquity, counting it a shame to yield to the royal ordinances, and to esteem themselves inferior to the royal power. Therefore, while they lay snares for the power, they oppose the Lord; because, according to the truthful Apostle, He who resists the power resists the ordinance of God. And by this they are assigned to the fellowship of him who, while he scorned to be subject to God, fell cast down from the highest seats of the heavens into the deepest places of hell.

[39] There is a place therefore called Cornic Bay, where all the multitude of iniquity, which Canute strives in vain to appease, with poisoned mind and armed arm, is gathered, and in nightly as well as daily assemblies lays snares for the religious prince: unanimously resolving either to drive him out from their borders, or (which is unspeakable to say) to exterminate him from the land of the living. On the appointed day the King with his men enters to behold the multitude of their assembly, and, the obstinacy of their will being known, returns to his own to consider the matter: but there, very few of the things which he had proposed being arranged, on account of the insolence of the raging men, desiring to mitigate the fury of the gathered and conspiring multitude, and providing for himself and his own according to that command of the Lord, If they persecute you in one city, flee to another; he resolved to yield the place, and, lest a greater tumult should arise, determined to depart more quietly.

[40] The northern parts therefore being left behind, he makes for the borders of the western people, for a while he withdraws, the conspirators, the court plundered, pursuing him. and, the crowds of his followers being sent on to the place which to this day, according to the ancients, is called Acresburch, that is, the city of the field, he himself, not far off, settled with a numerous retinue in a manor of the bishopric nearest there, to take his ease with the most reverend Bishop Henry. But the King's departure being made known, the throng of plundering bands began to invade the royal courts, and to drive out from the buildings there the stewards of goods, to inspect everything with searching greedy eyes, to plunder with their hands whatever was nearest, to overturn everything after the manner of swine, to trample underfoot, by treading, the remains of the royal provisions, which they had not been able to gulp down by devouring. And what more? As is read in David, the whole multitude, confirmed in the counsel of malignity, sets out on the way, some following the royal footsteps on their own feet, some on the feet of horn-footed horses, resolving, a proclamation being set forth, either to snatch away the memory of the religious Prince from the earth, or to drive him from the right of the kingdom. But the most reverend Bishop, who at that time, as we have foretold, was keeping the glorious King with him, the unhoped-for arrival of the raging legion being heard of, approached the seditious troops with the prudent, and with placid speech instigates them to refrain [*] from the insolence begun by a counsel not at all sound, and, setting forth right and wrong, most eloquently pleads that they may not come to the infamy of the whole world.

[41] In a foul tumult But because from those whom the enemy of truth and foe of piety had filled with the disturbance of unrest, the divine Spirit had fled, and the same Spirit of God could not rest upon the restless and swollen; as the Jews of old, not bearing Stephen who rebuked them, were cut to the heart and gnashed their teeth against him; so, roaring against the sound counsels of the reverend Bishop, they resound with insane clamors, and now presently, an assault being made, they hasten to rush upon the reverend Bishop, they scatter the shore-sand with their spears, they assail the air with their voices; and, lest the crowd acquiesce in him pleading true and persuading useful things, they persist in dissuading, all sorts of disadvantages being set forth. But that the confirmation of the malignant speech might be accomplished, the exhortations of the most illustrious Man being scorned, and his pious persuasions set aside, the accomplices of ferocity being multiplied along the way ^e, the seditious legion, headlong to every crime, hastens hurriedly to the aforenamed city, where the ministers or stewards of the royal treasures were staying: and it strives that from there the fame of the insolence begun may be spread abroad into the whole world of the Jutes.

[42] many being despoiled, killed, and put to flight, And why do I linger? You would be amazed, beholding the irruptions of the raging men: for some are dragged naked from their beds, others suffocated before the doors, some cast headlong into the river: but they even pursue the Magnates themselves, searching everywhere: while for these the way of fleeing is shut off by arms, and for those at once the enemy and the sword stand before the doors. Each troop therefore contends, those from without ^f assailing, these within desiring to defend themselves and their own. But the multitude of those breaking in continually increasing, some, stripped even of their very garments, leap forth naked to arms: others come forth wounded and as it were torn by beasts. Some also escape, their houses being broken open. Thereupon each seeks the nearest hiding-places, and some, taking to their ships, yield to the fury of the assailants; the King with his men being by this time removed beyond the river from these tumults. All therefore being driven from there, both the royal ministers and the household folk themselves, all the furniture is overturned, the bedding is upturned, the little cells of individuals are ransacked, the lodgings are searched, and the very halls are dug up; and what each greedy plunderer may seize, or hungry man gulp down, the plunderers wrangling among themselves, wanton greed contends. Hence the ignoble and rapacious are enriched, while the nobles too are deprived of their own by the hostile troop, and others are despoiled of what they had once acquired with a wounded side.

[43] The throng therefore, driven by such furies of persistent obstinacy, They try to intercept Canute. insists on driving out every right from their borders

and, that no place of refuge anywhere be left to the religious Prince; and that it may leave no one surviving who rebukes their vices, it strives, the go-betweens of its madness and dementia flying about everywhere, a demon accompanying, as though on flying winds. But just as the master of piety wept over Jerusalem with her children, who often conspired against the very fount of perennial mercy by the counsel of the Pharisees and the instigation of the Scribes, foretelling the things to come, since she was ignorant of the future; so now no herald of piety would weep for you, Jutland—not undeservedly—on account of the insolence of your inhabitants, and of those who persecute the man of God at the instigation of the enemy of probity; foreseeing the disadvantages that will come upon you because of this insolence, though for the time hidden from your sight; since you believe only in things present and not in things unseen; nay, place the least faith in the things to come, which he could scarcely make you discern. Wherefore it is not unfitting to address you with these complaints:

[44] Nation hostile to the good, why do you lie in wait for the just one! Why, driven by furies, do you make firm your pact with the demon? Invective against the wicked, and especially the Jutes. That as he, swollen, is cast down from the high heaven; So you cast down the goods from your own soil, So as to be at once both rabid and bereft of piety? And why do you thus drive from your land your only patron? And what you attempted, when you wished to have accomplished it, Why did you not fulfill it? whereby afterward the growing glory of the just one Might both wear you down, and by casting you down might lift you up: So that when it came, you might see his manifest Signs, honor, glory; you might be able to know Your own guilt, and, faltering, set bare your soles: And entering the sacred doors with contrite breast, Laying aside your old spoils, probity being taken up, And at once holding your bared arms stretched upward, Wetting your face with tears and beating your breast with palms; And on bent knees begging pardon for your sins; Reproaching your own crime, but rendering thanks to the honor Of the Martyr, and weeping over the deeds you had done. But what you, proud Jutland, scorn to have, Behold, bright Funen, your rival, takes as her own: And although she completed the malignant undertaking, Yet she rejoices in the honorable signs wrought, Assiduously beholding, and, changed in turn, frequenting them; When now she entreats him whom by expiring she had slain, With smitten breast, with face and eyes cast down, And with moist gaze, with fists, and with a broken heart, And with bent knee, sad for the crime committed, That he may be willing to be appeased and merciful to them, And with continual prayer may wash away all the ancient crime. The hall too is enriched with little gold ornaments and gifts, And here now shine the adornments of tawny metal, Precious with silk of saffron beauty and with gems. Hither the people flow together, here the crowd has pious joys, And exults that it has received a holy Patron. The organs resound sweet-sounding with fair pipes, And they strike the beautiful lyres with the plectrum in graceful singing. All these things you, raging, drive away from your shores: She is lifted up, having what you diminish by losing. But let these things be kept in the order of events; To which, now omitted, let their places be given—times for the deeds.

[45] Canute, fleeing, comes to Wybergh. A most renowned place, therefore, stands almost in the middle of the region of Jutland, which—whether from its own eminence, or from the frequency of the ancient sacrifices there, or from the memory of an idol once most famous there, which was called Wyg—is called in the Danish tongue Wybergis ^g, as it were the height of Wyg, or the mount of war, or of sacrifice: where very often from all the parts of Jutland no small multitude gathers, both to treat of common causes, and to discuss and at the same time to establish the truth or firmness of the laws; and what shall there have been decreed by the common sense of the assembled multitude cannot with impunity anywhere in the parts of Jutland be made void. Hither therefore the most distinguished Hero, coming with his surviving retinue, while he inquires there whether he may find anyone keeping faith, not only does not find one; nay, he even perceives there the snares of ambush set for him. For the northern common people, as we have mentioned above, driven by infernal furies, which is known to have been the author and beginning of this crime, had now breathed out the signs of its madness by proclaiming them everywhere, and left the religious Prince no place of escape anywhere. And (alas!) while for the foxes a den of aid lies open, and the birds seek out for themselves woven nests, those serving the Son of Man, that is Jesus Christ, have nowhere to lay their head. Thence he betook himself, with his men, without tumult, to the harbor of the river which is called Sleh ^h, about to set out for Funen by a sea-journey, with his retinue now wearied by land.

ANNOTATA.

* Otherwise: Limma.

* For "abstineant."

CAPUT IV.

The flight of St. Canute into Funen, the abominable treachery of Pipero the courtier, the assault of the raging men on the basilica of St. Alban, in which the King, pierced through by a lance, falls a Martyr for justice.

[46] The ships therefore being not sluggishly fitted out and the necessaries brought aboard, the magnificent Prince, about to leave utterly the Jutish fury and Jutland itself, The King fleeing into Funen entering the wave-wandering bays with his household retinue, and with young men now to be tested by a new contest, is conveyed to the parts of Funen: where, while seeking the security of present rest, he does not find it; he deserved to be distinguished with the everlasting palm of felicity and the perpetual memory of a glorious triumph. For you, most ancient seducer, accomplishing all these things—God permitting and disposing them to better ends—by the arts and instigation of your malice; you who once, comely and magnificent, for the contumacy of your immense swelling, were cast down from the height of the heavens, and afterward seen in the serpent, had seduced our forefathers by the promise of Deity; no wonder if now, through the spaces of a single kingdom, you stretch the engines of your snares against the man of God, since daily throughout the whole world, hindering the path of the faithful, you heap up, to the pile of your own damnation, a multitude of accomplices to be burned with you in eternal fire. Assail, then, the ministers of your impiety, and sharpen your venom against the servant of God, marshal their minds, rouse their arms to weapons, prepare ambushes, heap up the accomplices of crime: that by how much the crueler the savagery of the plotters shall be, by so much the more glorious may the memory of the religious Prince's victory be made.

[47] The King's arrival therefore being made known, so that what the divine providence was disposing might not be accomplished too late, He betakes himself to Odense, nightly and daily go-betweens being sent about everywhere, the multitude of the common people, gathered together, assembles counsels of iniquity, and, that they may drive the religious Prince even from their own borders; or, what is a crime to say, make him bereft of life, agrees with all urgency. But he himself sets out to the chief place—namely of his contest, triumph, and rest—which is called Othenswi, with Eric his brother, afterward a most glorious King, and the renowned Sweno, and Benedict too, the partner of his labor and contest, the courtiers accompanying him, about to await there the outcome of events, and to consider what counsel he should admit for his own. But the seditious multitude is daily increased, and sends to the royal court not so much intermediaries as spies, and inquires everywhere into the royal counsels, and strives with all urgency to cast it down together with its retinue. Of which sedition, as chief and contriver of the fraud, one called Pipero ^b, most distinguished among them, cunning in genius, eloquent in speech, fraudulently approaches the innocent Prince, and, that he may lend credence to his frauds, does not conceal the furious edicts of the senseless legion, which nevertheless, by himself proposing very many of them, he brings forward as things by no means slightly to be softened.

[48] where Pipero the courtier betrays him to the raging people. Sitting therefore next to the royal table and the King, according to that word of David, He who ate my bread has magnified supplanting over me; being at last not only stuffed with the royal feasts and made drunk with the cup, but also honored with gifts, as the master of truth [did] to Judas the betrayer by handing him the dipped bread, saying, What thou doest, do quickly; the religious Leader being betrayed with a kiss of peace, from a feigned and poisoned heart—just as that one sold the author of light and the teacher of piety to the Pharisees for the silver received; so this one too, the light being forsaken, that is, the probity of faith cast down, ensnared in the darkness of unbelief, as night to night to show forth not knowledge but folly, runs to meet the hostile bands: and the things which he had learned from the King, not by disclosing but by perverting, he proclaims; and pleads by what fraud they may circumvent him.

[49] Longer curses And alas, you wretched, foolish, senseless one, captive in mind! in vain you gather an army of impiety, since, to increase the reproach of your detestation, you will now make him whom you persecute with your associates more renowned more widely throughout the world: for you were not ashamed now to become the betrayer of the life of him whose guest you had been a little before. Why then, most cruel one, did you not set the sign of the Cross against the foul and hateful enemy standing at your right hand? Why did you not foresee the arms now hanging over your shoulders? And if neither the kindness of the shared feast nor the dignity of the gift conferred recalled you from the crime, why did not perennial infamy and everlasting disgrace, as befits a sagacious industry ^c, on account of the unspeakable wickedness, occur to your mind? For with your bowels still distended with the banquet, and with as it were blood-stained gaze, you had not yet digested what you had consumed; and you were summoning the persecutors to whom you might now betray your pious fellow-guest ^d. O you shameless one, deprived of piety and probity, to be detested by the acclamation of the whole world, and most worthily to be assigned only to the Stygian shades and the jaws of Cerberus!

[50] against the impious betrayer. O you most unhappy one! You have become worse than Annas, more evil than Caiaphas, crueler than Pilate. For he, when the Jews cried out that Jesus should be crucified, having taken water, desired not so much to wash his hands from filth, as at the same time by both voice and office to make himself free from the blood of the Just one; but you, driven by the ferocity of cruelty, and made drunk with the venom of all impiety, the spirit of malice administering it, not only did not restrain the insolence of the unskilled crowd, but sharpened it to accomplish the malignant undertaking more swiftly. For it was not the terror of Caesar that incited you to these things, but the suggestion of the ancient seducer that provoked you, whom the gaze of Him who sits above and beholds all things from on high did not recall ^e from the crime. For as once, by giving a kiss to the Lord Jesus, the impious Judas made known to the Jews whom they should seize,

made known ^f; in no unlike manner you drew the assault of the peoples against the man of God. Wherefore, as he departed from life by a noose, so you afterward, seized by a demon, your tongue bitten off, your spirit forsaking your wicked corpse, are sent down, not undeservedly, to the lower world ^g, to seek out one all but your partner.

[51] The seditious raging, the King withdraws into the basilica of St. Alban, But the seditious multitude, having followed the aforementioned prince of their madness, runs heaped-together in a mass to the place of the royal seat, headlong bent on every wickedness, the neighing of horses and the crash of the peoples and the clashing of arms touch the sky, the running and the charge shake the ground; the dust rising from the soil and spread higher and wider into the air, while day still survives, intersperses the darkness of night, and with a nebulous gloom wraps the sight and even the minds of the blinded men. But the evening time drawing near, the devout hero, about to hear the evening synaxis, and now to commend himself and his own to the Maker of all, seeks the basilica of the precious martyr Alban, situated not far off, with only his faithful companions of labor, and, as it is right to believe, sharers not so much of the contest as of the reward; the rest seeking such hiding-places as they could and consulting their present life.

[52] where, the sacred mysteries being received, he is besieged. But the hostile troop, arriving from all sides, meets him, and by rushing in occupies both the royal houses and the halls: some too try to break into the sanctuaries where the religious Leader was with his men; others to shatter the doors of the basilica, some to set fire, the rest to press on, that they might either seize them alive, or stand over them as they fell. But the fire being quenched by the dew of heavenly power, the most unconquered young men from within stand against the enemy before the doors, not sluggishly shutting off the entrance with arms, and most gloriously fighting for their Prince. The most devout King meanwhile sought the eternal King, not to inquire with Herodian deceit, but with Davidic humility confessing himself guilty of crimes, and Him truly to be the true God, and not only insisting on true and sincere confession, but fortifying himself with the sacrament of the life-giving communion, enriches the altars with gifts both of gold and of silver; his companions also performing these same things, and in turn resisting with arms, lest the entrance lie open to the enemy.

[53] The death of Pipero, wounded and seized by a demon; The multitude of the conspiring legion at last hastening up from all sides, and pressing on the walls of the church all around, the monstrous Pipero stands from without before the doors, and, as it were to single combat, summons the hitherto most faithful steward of the royal treasures, and challenges him, if he has any heart or strength, to come out. And when he came out not sluggishly from within, hard blows being dealt in turn, they are wounded; the one within gloriously falling, the other surviving a little while, as a sign of a more evident vengeance. For being thereupon carried home and invaded by a most fierce demon, he began to attack whatever was near, both with biting and with hands, to tear apart, to crush, to cast forth foam from his mouth, to cry out horribly with shouting, to utter vain and unheard-of things, to declare plainly his fraudulent crime, and at last, his tongue bitten off, terribly to depart from his wretched life. But the persistent enemy, with obstinate insolence, presses on the walls of the basilica and sends in stones with arrows through the openings, and, the chief Leader being struck—as Stephen was, with stones, and, as Sebastian was, wounded with darts—the sacred building is drenched with the blood both of him and of his companions, wounded and at length slain; and, that I may so confess, by the preciousness of their Martyrdom it is consecrated anew.

[54] [likewise of another, who had overturned with a spear the water offered to the Saint.] But that the King might become a devout imitator of the passions of Christ, just as the Lord Jesus, set on the Cross in the midst of the wicked, so this one too, placed amid the troop of the hostile multitude, sought, amid the darts of the raging men, water to be handed to him as he thirsted: and when one, moved by piety, bringing it drawn, was handing it to him through the window; another, thrusting in a spear, and the vessel being struck from the hands of both, and at the same time the water poured out, took from the King indeed for a little while the leisure of quenching his thirst, but did not take from that man the reward of piety. But that man, no long time after, driven by madness, leaning over a spring, as if to quench his own thirst, his head at last plunged into the depths, and his knees monstrously spread above, and his wicked spirit dragged out to the depths of the pit, left there a lifeless corpse, as a sign of divine vengeance, for those coming after to behold. And this man indeed, failing in this manner, experienced by a manifest vengeance that he had offended against the servant of God.

[55] The praises of the holy King preparing himself for martyrdom. But what more? Shall I speak or be silent? For the completed malignity of the crime begun weighs to be expressed, and the sequence demands that the deed, to be detested by the ages, be brought forth. For hitherto we were beholding the glorious Prince contending with his most distinguished heroes against his adversaries, and as it were furnishing the arms of pious affection to those standing near. But now, since all things present incline to their setting, and, the flowers being ripened, the time of the cutting draws near; although, from compassion for human frailty, it is reckoned to sorrow, to declare that the presence of so most glorious a man has been taken from the world; yet it grows to the increase of a greater gladness, to extol with praises him who, after the course of the laborious contest, has been carried up to the heights. But what shall I say of the senseless rage and madness of the populace? For when it opposes an earthly Prince, it does not fear to bring the engines of its fury against the very Lord of virtues. For it had seen the fire set to the sacred buildings, lest the holy things be burned, quenched from above: it had heard the most religious Leader, placed amid clashing arms and flying stones, persuading all things useful and reasonable and promising peaceful things; but, filled with the spirit of malignity, and emptied of the spirit of kindness, they are moved neither by divine powers, nor mitigated by the persuasions of human reason: for the counsel of the heavenly Arbiter ^h was pressing to be accomplished, who in this manner was summoning His athlete from present troubles to be inserted into everlasting rest. For to him the memory of perpetual glory was being prepared, but to these the infamy of perennial detestation, of whom, as of the persecutors of the Lord, it is said; If they had known, they would not have brought the arms of their fury against the glorious Prince.

[56] [The conspirators at last break through the basilica, Canute being pierced by a lance.] The most valiant heroes therefore driving the hostile ranks from the doors of the basilica, the enemy, turned to the east of the sanctuary, where they had spied the most devout Prince persisting in prayers, press on with swords and axes to cut and demolish the posts, and cast to the ground the little caskets of the relics of the precious Martyrs—namely of Alban, and also of Oswald—with the sacred cross set between, the post sinking to the bottom. Amid these things, the heavenly Bridegroom summoning to the eternal chamber the one who would soon be conscious of His secrets, the most distinguished King being turned at once in breast and mouth toward the altar, one from the band of the impious, a lance being thrust in through the window, pierces his side, and stains the sacred building with the blood of the innocent one. But he himself, even after the deadly wound not unmindful of Christ, his brother Benedict, the colleague of his contests, grievously wounded, standing by and being embraced, and a kiss of peace being given, with arms stretched out in the manner of a cross, and his limbs laid on the ground before the sacred altar, a stream of blood flowing from the wound of his side, with his voice still surviving calls upon Jesus: and commending his spirit to his Creator, he left the clod of his precious corpse consecrated with blood, and entered the secret of everlasting mercy, to rest forever from these tumults.

[57] His companions, valiantly defending themselves, fall. But the most steadfast comrades-in-arms, the Leader being slain, not only did not yield to the enemy, but even, by exhorting ⁱ one another, roused their spirits, put forth their strength, met not sluggishly those rushing in through the openings, manfully returned arms for arms, repaid the like to those who dealt it, choosing rather gloriously to fall than, so great a Prince being lost, to survive: and, as the hostile multitude increased in bands, they being not so much laid low as suffocated by the adversaries who in turn pressed upon them, the sacred building is sprinkled with gore, the floor of the temple is watered with a wave of blood: and that Prophetic saying is fulfilled, in which it is said: The nations came into thy inheritance, they defiled thy holy temple, they poured out the blood of the Saints round about. Whence not undeservedly, as is held in what follows, they became a reproach to their neighbors, a mockery and derision to those dwelling round about, and a shaking of the head among the peoples.

[58] The aggravation of the cruel parricide. For who would not detest a religious Prince assailed and provoked by ambushes by a profane people! Who would not execrate that a King was slain by his own nation? For, that I may relate some things from the ancients: Greece endured Agamemnon the most harsh for twice five years and more, holding Argos from his own people by war and by sea: Spain bore Hannibal the most ferocious, stained with the slaughters of nobles: Judea tolerated Herod the most atrocious, persecuting the author of light and the maker of all, esteeming the crime of parricide as of little account, shutting up nobles in dungeons, impiously butchering the innocent throng of sucklings, torn from their mothers' breasts: Rome herself, the head of the world, chose to endure ^k Nero the most cruel, searching his mother's womb with the sword, slaying his brother, setting the City on fire, and destructively exterminating the senators of that city and the Fathers of the world: but contumacious Denmark could not bear a religious Prince, carrying out divine things, enjoining useful and liberal things, striving to restrain the common people from servile deeds.

[59] Canute killed for the sake of justice. O execrable pride! O detestable contumacy! O stiff neck, which, while you scorn to be bent in the present, are reserved afterward to be restrained and bent by everlasting punishments! For when you wrenched from present life him who rebuked your vices, you made yourself bereft of the blessedness of perpetual life: and you who preferred yourself to the other nations undeservedly, not by right ^l, but by arrogance; by such indications you showed yourself to all more faithless and more unhappy, and also more detestable. For while you refuse to be subjected to the right of a Prince set over you by God; by casting him down, you make yourself over to the dominion of that one of whom the truth of the sacred eloquence testifies: He beholds every high thing, and he himself is king over all the sons of pride. But He who, dwelling on high, looks upon the lowly and knows the lofty from afar, cannot be deceived: who also in the Gospel, strengthening the humble and threatening the proud, said: Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. But Peter, the chief of the Apostles, crying out; Fear God, honor the King; with what face do you strive to fear God, you who scorn to render to the royal power the honor divinely commanded? But, doubt being set far aside, the reproach of Isaiah against the ancient people, which the Lord Jesus sets against the Jews reproaching them, is expressly manifested of you also: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men.

[60] The languor of the Danes in matters of faith. But who would not know that you extol the faith of the Christian religion with words and mouth most eloquently, yet prefer your own statutes to the divine laws? And to whom is it unknown that you not only despise the religion of the same faith, and the proclaimers of that religion, but even assail them with wiles and cunning, with frauds and envy? For your faith, according to the attestation of James, is dead without works. Because, although you may sometimes seem to perform certain deeds befitting faith, you are proved to do them no less for human favors than for the reward of the Father who sees in secret. Wherefore, the desired favor of human praise being shown, and the temporal reward received, you are deprived of the eternal recompense. But of these things concerning the unbelief and unhappiness of the impious, thus far

having been written out, let us return to pursuing what we have proposed.

ANNOTATA.

CAPUT V.

The cruelty of the parricides against Benedict, the Saint's brother; Denmark afflicted divinely with many plagues; Adela deterred from carrying off the sacred body, which, growing bright with many signs, is solemnly elevated and set forth in a shrine for veneration.

[61] The most excellent Leader therefore being slain within the sacred building with his most unconquered athletes, and that same sanctuary being now not violated by the blood of the slain, but rather, as it is right to believe, consecrated anew; The parricides plunder the basilica. the troop of the profane searches corner by corner not so much the royal halls as the very sanctuaries, plundering the things recently placed there, and not leaving the things long ago admitted and held and longer preserved; so that the things they were plucking from the sacred altars they might divide among themselves for their mice ^b, and that prophetic saying might even be literally fulfilled: The stones of the sanctuary are scattered at the head of all the streets. Then, curiously searching everywhere the place of the royal seat, and desiring providently to take precaution lest anyone of the royal stock, as an avenger of the crime, be left surviving, they learn that Benedict, the own brother both of the precious Martyr and King and the colleague of his contests, still survives the searchers, and, kept in the nearest lodging, is present.

[62] Rushing thither in a headlong course in bands, and the royal Youth being found, Benedict, Canute's brother, dragged by the feet, they butcher. grievously wounded, dragging him by the feet—which is unspeakable to say—they bring him into the midst of their conventicle of impiety, that, according to the Apostle's saying, he might be made a spectacle to the world and to the administrators of the Prince of this world, and that through them every service of iniquity might be accomplished. And while they debated in what manner, or by what kind of death, they should destroy him, now like hunters disputing over the prey, they tear him limb from limb even while half-alive, that they might leave nothing of cruelty unfinished. Some fix the noble body to the earth with lances, some strike with axes, some with swords; and, that none might be free of the profane crime, whatever each had seized with his hand as nearest, they bring, and they leave him, deprived of life by a thousand wounds, and cut piecemeal through his limbs; heaping up the infamy of their atrocity, and making themselves forever detestable to the whole world. For as the prophetic King testifies; They are corrupt and have become abominable in their pursuits, because there was none among them doing good, or busying himself to restrain those acting impiously; but on account of the enormity of their avarice, together with their cruelty and malice, their throat was like an open sepulcher: for with their tongues they dealt deceitfully, and the venom of asps was under their lips.

[63] A new invective against the parricides. And how was their mouth not full of cursing and bitterness, who invited to the partnership of their crime whomever they could, and themselves went on to every worst and nefarious thing? To shed innocent blood they show not so much swift feet as wanton hands, knowing God indeed, but neither fearing His judgments, nor caring to invoke Him; but those whom, at His command, they ought to venerate and fear, devouring them, in the gluttony of impious atrocity, as the food of bread. For they turned away both their senses and their eyes, lest they should see heaven, and lest they should remember the just judgments. For there they trembled with fear, where there was no fear; for fearing lest, by leaving anyone surviving as a corrector of their depravity, or by obeying the power set over them by God, or by remaining subject, they should be made equal to the other nations round about, and by this be made, as it were, bereft of their former liberty; while they strive neither to yield to divine institutions, nor to obey the royal power, but to be more powerful and more excellent than the other nations in audacity and in contumacy alike; they are made, on account of the enormity of the crime committed, execrable to God, detestable to the world, hateful to men, viler and more contemptible than all, and are adjudged not unequal to the very persecutors of the supreme Truth. Therefore contrition and unhappiness are in their ways, because, turning aside from the way of peace, and setting the regard of divine respect behind their backs, not before their eyes, they fell into the Evangelical scandal; for that they preferred rather to pursue than to abandon the vices of human depravity.

[64] Denmark afflicted divinely with many plagues, on account of the unjust slaying. For who would presume to doubt that He can be deceived, who declares that the servant knowing the will of his Lord, and not doing worthy things, is to be beaten ^c with very many stripes? For from the time when the mad multitude vomited forth the rage of its fury upon the religious Prince, the field remained barren of crops, the meadows are thinned of grass, the wood scanty of acorns, the water unfruitful of fish: pestilence consumed the herds: disease weakens men: famine oppresses them, thinning nobles and rich, taking the life of the weak, according to that saying of Jeremiah: They failed in famine, at the head of the streets. And elsewhere; The granaries are laid waste, the storehouses are broken up. And the fear of the enemy occupying the whole region, each sex trembled, daily suspecting the coming of adversaries as if now presently rushing in; until the preciousness of the slain one, declared by divine signs, shone forth, and the enemy of virtues perished; and a peaceful prince arose to the kingdom, the elements, as I confess, rejoicing together and favoring, God advancing him. But these things are to be more fully explained in their own places.

[65] The body of the holy Consort, buried, The aforementioned tumults therefore being calmed, and the executors of impiety withdrawing at once from the divine temple and from God, the devout clergy there, the faithful being gathered, insisting on the office of humanity, tend the bodies of the slain, laying the royal limbs and those of his own brother, within the basilica of their contest, in separate coffins, and commending the corpses of the glorious soldiers, in the courtyard of the same basilica, in the western and northern corner, to be reserved for the day of resurrection, to mother earth. But the venerable and most prudent wife of the King beloved of God, amid the impending pressures, displaying the nobility of her spirit in her countenance, and carefully providing for herself and her situation, was disposing to snatch away the now precious limbs of her dearest husband from the din of the persecutors still assailing, and, carried with her to her native borders—namely Ghent—to lay them away with fitting honor in the monastery of Blandinium, consecrated to the Prince of the Apostles.

[66] All things therefore being arranged and the fitting implements for accomplishing these things acquired, the queen trying to carry it off to Ghent, she approaches by night with her people the basilica in which he was kept, recently buried, to accomplish what she had proposed, desiring to convey the noble body to a more eminent place, as she supposed. And so, the thresholds being unbarred and they having entered before nearly the middle hour of the night; a light sent from heaven filled all the corners of the church, and, as with the splendor of the midday sun, most brightly lit up both the courtyard and all the neighboring places. No small fear too struck the venerable Queen and her companions, and, with wonder and dread at the increasing splendor, held them back from persisting in their purposes. For the providence of Him who disposes all things, which had decreed that same place to be distinguished by the preciousness of his martyrdom, did not permit it to be bereft of his patronage, such indications being shown.

[67] But the most prudent Queen, with sagacious industry weighing the divine wonders, she is deterred by the heavenly light. although she remained sorrowful at the separation from so great a husband; yet rejoices at the sign of so evident a prodigy, now confident that she has an advocate with God, whose sign of holiness she understood this to be. And so, yielding to the divine powers, and now, with lowered countenance, bowed down, rendering due thanks to everlasting mercy, at once glad and anxious

She herself is prostrated at the tomb of her noble husband, Bedewing the ground with frequent poured-out weepings, Commending herself with prayers to the highest Lord, And asking the merciful Christ to dispose all her affairs

And there too, tears being abundantly poured out, and suffused with joy mixed with grief, she rose:

And the sacred cross likewise and the venerable holy things Being saluted again, with downcast ^d face and knees often bent; Long turning over many things with her prudent heart; And leaving the dearest pledges of her dear one, She at last departed in presence, not in mind.

[68] Now King Canute, beloved of God and an excellent martyr, rested in the same place for eight years and nearly nine months, The elevation of the sacred body, first tested by fire. Olav, the successor of his kingdom, reigning: until, the miracles of virtues increasing, by the common counsel and equal vow of the whole clergy and people, the several Bishops being gathered with a multitude of clergy, and the sacred bones being tested by fire, he is raised from the mass of earth and solemnly conveyed to the southern basilica, raised from the foundations with a notable stone-work, but not yet wholly constructed, though now afterward consecrated ^e to his name: and there, placed in a stone sarcophagus, he is laid away in the crypt.

[69] The death of Olav the Starved, and the succession of the more fortunate Eric. But he being raised from the earth, and it being declared by evident signs that he was a saint of God, King Olav, whom we have foretold to be the successor of his kingdom, in whose reign also famine ^f and pestilence, disease, and fear of the enemy had occupied the borders of Denmark, being touched by illness, as one not chosen a beholder of virtues, departed at once from life and from the kingdom: and straightway, by the election of the whole army and the acclamation of the people, the most excellent Eric, God advancing him and the elements favoring, ascended to the rights of the kingdom, and obtained by the equal will of all the principality and monarchy of all Denmark: and soon, he being carried up to rule, the times being changed, an abundance of crops smiled, opulence of goods overflowed, the security of peace, as in the times of Solomon of old, gladdened all: because he too appeared, to the Kings and mighty round about, strenuous in prudence and provident in counsel.

[70] In these times therefore, by the security of peace, as if opportunity being granted, the divine wonders toward the precious Very many signs increasing at St. Canute's body,

pledges of the Martyr multiply, and the power of the heavenly King daily increases the praises of His soldier. For to the blind sight is restored, to the deaf hearing is restored, to the mute the tongue is loosed ^g, withered hands are restored, the step of the weak is repaired, the Lazar's skin is cleansed, and to all who seek help in the name of Jesus, the aids both of health and of heavenly clemency are conferred alike. But the fame of his virtues being spread more widely, a multitude of the faithful flows together from everywhere to implore his intercession: that they might be helped by the patronage of him whom they had provoked by persecuting, seeking with faithful devotion pardon for the crime committed.

[71] Eric supplicates the Pontiff for his brother's canonization, But the most prudent King, providing for the public good, envoys being sent to the Roman Pontiff, makes known the deeds that were done, and demands that he provide for the devotion of the faithful by Apostolic authority. Who, the Bishops dwelling round about being gathered, and very many venerable men of the religious order, all sitting after the synodal manner, and treating of the things that are God's, silence being commanded, charges the envoys to declare their commands, and at the same time to demonstrate the proofs of their embassy. The written records of the deeds therefore being brought forth openly and read through, and the royal mandates eloquently pleaded by the intermediaries, they render immense thanks to the Omnipotent, who manifests His elect in the various parts of the world by glorifying them.

[72] [who is entered in the roll of the holy Martyrs: and is called Canutus instead of Cnut.] And so at last, by common counsel and the equal decree of all, they decree that the once glorious King be enrolled in the college of the blessed Martyrs now in heaven, with the glory of martyrdom, the dignity of his name also being increased, so that he who formerly was called, as with an imperfect word and an unloosed bond, Cnut, might now, on account of the hoariness of his understanding and the maturity of his deeds, and especially because he was now adjudged to be numbered in the canon of the Saints, be called Canutus. For so once, when Abraham entered into a covenant with God, the enunciation of his name was increased together with the participation of divine familiarity, so that he who hitherto was known to God and held approved in faith, might from this also, among men, by the exercise of his deeds and the amplification of his lineage and name, be held more glorious and more magnificent. And fittingly the precious martyr, beloved of God, Canute, after the manner of Abraham, is distinguished by the amplification of his name, who, received into the bosom of the same Abraham, is proved by evident signs to enjoy the felicity of eternal rest.

[73] The envoys therefore, strengthened by Pontifical authority, and equally comforted by the testimony of so many and so illustrious men, The envoys of Eric returning from the City into Denmark, the shrines of most blessed Peter and of the Saints being adored ^h as they had desired, and the mandates to be conveyed to the glorious King being received from the Pontiff, the Apostolic benediction being at last granted, joyfully leave the borders of Ausonia; the merits of the now undoubtedly blessed Canute attending them, and everywhere keeping their journey prosperous. And having entered the longed-for parts of Denmark, and until they reached home, being everywhere received with affection by all, honoring the royal majesty with their faces and greeting it with their mouth, they announce the words of the Apostolic Benediction, declare the mandates, and joyfully set forth what answers they had received concerning the matters entrusted. At which the most magnificent Hero, most abundantly gladdened, all the magnates rejoiced, the Bishops with the clergy congratulating, the whole people, as at the coming of the announcers of a new peace, rejoices together with the highest exultation, extolling with assiduous devotion the Maker of all, who, even in the remote parts of the world, provided such patronages for His faithful by divine clemency.

[74] Thereupon, the unbelief of the faithless being cast down and confounded, the cult of St. Canute is made more renowned, and the concourse to his tomb. and the religiosity of the faithful being raised up and brought in, basilicas are built to be dedicated to his martyrdom, estates are granted, things fit for sacred uses are applied: so that, just as they had conspired with equal counsel to the slaying of the religious Prince; so now, by the common devotion of all, in each place, it might be frequented with the homage of devotion. The report also of his virtues and the corroboration of the Apostolic confirmation thereafter flying more widely about, not only from the neighborhood, but from the regions lying round about, an innumerable multitude of nobles as of the people yearly ⁱ, each bringing the tokens of their devotion, and faithfully imploring his intercession.

[75] The most prudent Queen Ethela too, hitherto, as we have set forth, his most noble wife, [Adela, married to Roger of Apulia, sends gifts to the tomb of St. Canute, her former husband.] now become, beyond the borders of Italy, the consort of the bed of the most illustrious Roger, Duke of Apulia, having heard such great and so longed-for reports about her once dearest husband, rendering what was due to the heavenly ^k author of goods, adorns the precious pledges of her beloved with precious gifts sent to them; so that him to whom here she had becomingly cleaved with the chaste affections of marriage, she might now, sequestered from the world and associated with those above, both call to mind in her thought, and might honor ^l with becoming gifts sent to him, whom by her presence she could not. Whence, from the things bestowed and preserved, by the King's command, and by the counsel and help of the Reverend Humbald, Bishop of that same See,

A chest for the sacred bones, made with notable design, Is fashioned, of the pure shining and tawny metal, Beautifully decorated with blue and saffron gems, In which the holy pledges of the Saint might now be laid away.

[76] But in the sixth year of the reign of the magnificent King Eric, all the Bishops of Denmark being gathered, [The solemn translation of the relics into a new reliquary, and the Saint's epitaph.] with a multitude of clergy and an innumerable people of the land, we sinners ^m beheld with our eyes the precious relics of the blessed Martyr, taken out of the stone sarcophagus, and raised from the crypt where they had hitherto been kept, all accompanying with solemn praises and immense joy, by the same bishop Humbald whom we have mentioned before, on the thirteenth of the Kalends of May, placed in the same chest of which we spoke before, and white as snow, and wrapped in becoming silk, an epitaph being at the same time set upon it, composed in this manner:

Now safe in the highest heaven with the King, Canute, A Martyr and King, is laid away in a gilded chest: Who, slain unjustly for the deeds of justice, As he confessed Christ in life, so in death itself: Betrayed by his own minister, as God Himself was by His minister, And seeking ⁿ drink, he bore the blow of darts: And a lance pierces his side, even as it did Christ's. Before the sacred altar his ^o sacred blood also flows. And dying, he is filled among the stars with the holy spirits.

[77] The epilogue of the author, These things I, Ailnoth, the lowliest of priests, brought forth in the world of the English, and a pilgrim in the parts of Denmark for numerous years, have dictated to you, O illustrious King and precious Martyr, by writing out your deeds, and have composed, handing down [q] to the memory of posterity the conflicts of your contests, and I, an ugly painter, have depicted, as they say, a beautiful man; I have wrought a monument more lasting than bronze, which no onrush of waves may swallow, no devouring flame consume, but which may remain even to the final chaos, and retain the monuments of your praise unto the age.

[78] Do you succor my unhappiness before Jesus with your prayers, wherein he especially invokes St. Canute. have mercy on my calamities, relieve the miseries of my straits, sustain my weakness, lighten my frailty, illumine with the splendors of your virtues one wrapped in the thick gloom of crimes, raise up one now presently sinking under the burden of things committed, weighed down by the masses of sins, admit the help of your compassion to one left wounded and half-alive by the Evangelical robbers, close over the wounds of my scars, the antidote of your intercession being infused; cleanse away the rottenness of vices, lead me to the stable of divine reconciliation, that, admitted however little into the eternal tabernacles, I may deserve to behold you with your fellow-citizens, and, even if the last, to stand at the door of the kingdom. And because, dark, I have undertaken to speak of the shining one, filthy, of the clean one, indulge my wanton tongue, pardon my audacious lips, and reconcile all the faithful to the Word through which all things were created, whose power of majesty does not cease unto the ages. To Him, with the Father and the coeternal Spirit, may blessing, honor, praise, and thanksgiving remain and increase for everlasting time. Amen.

ANNOTATA.

p. Meursius corrects, at his own discretion, "mensa" a table, whom we have followed: but perhaps he errs; for the sense seems to require that the precious coffer be set upon a table; but then "spectandus" will have to be read.

q. So again Meursius, although in his copy and ours "tradenda" was read, which would be best referred to "gesta" the deeds. But if it be referred to "conflictus" the conflicts, "tradendos" would have to be read. But let enough be said about these and such minutiae. There remains the last correction of Meursius, if I am not mistaken, when he writes in the epilogue, "sarcina admissorum jam jamque sub onusto fasce decidentem" sinking under the laden bundle: where ours has "sub onusta," "fasce" being struck out. Neither sense can be admitted, unless "onustus" be taken for "heavy" or "weighty." Let the other Life of Saxo Grammaticus follow, which has been sufficiently illustrated by what has already been said.

VITA ALIA (ANOTHER LIFE)

By the author Saxo Grammaticus.

Canute, King and Martyr in Denmark (St.)

BHL Number: 0000

FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS.

St. Canute, still a youth, subdues pirates. Canute, son of Sueno, by the benefit of favorable fortune, heaped with the highest gifts of nature, with great proof outran his age in spirit. For, in his early youth, he subdued the piratical monsters of the light galleys, passed an adolescence illustrious with Sembian and Estonian trophies, and by new degrees of strength surpassed the foundations of his father's might: which victory was an omen of his future dominion. For the enlarging and defending of his fatherland he kept continual watches, and presumed to be held the author of deeds of which, on account of his tender age, he could scarcely be a spectator. Nay, he strengthened his youthful body by continual practice for briskly accomplishing wars and manfully sustaining arms, and his warlike fame by its force rose to such a height of renown that he seemed to have obtained, together with the sharing of the name, the revived spirit and fortune of the great Canute; so that no one doubted that he would obtain the succession of his father's kingdom. For, already mature in virtue, he did not seem unseasonable for honor. Nor was the appearance of liberality lacking to his adolescence: whose brother Harald, elder in birth, of a very dull heart, a perpetual sleep of sloth held oppressed amid the beginnings of his youth.

[2] Harald is made King of Denmark; But Sueno being dead, the doubtful opinion of the people debated the choice of the royal succession. For the greater part of the Danes, mindful of how great perils of his still-private fortune they had been exposed to through Canute, fearing worse if he should put on the kingdom, a malignant interpreter of his virtue, condemned by a most unjust estimation of his merits that which ought to have increased to his glory, the rewards of his virtues being taken away, repaying his most illustrious works with the disgrace of a rejection. Therefore, as it hated this one from fear of troubles, so, embracing Harald from desire of ease, it preferred dullness to boldness, and chose rather that a sluggish King should rule over it than a valiant one. Wherefore, the brightness of his excellent character being despised, it did not blush to grant to vice the summit denied to virtue, and, valor being rejected, it pursued sloth with honors. But it colored this disposition of an ungrateful mind with a deceptive show of reason; contending that Harald, as the elder-born, was owed the kingdom by the very right of nature. A strange kind of affection: virtue had made the one hateful, vice had made the other acceptable. The Scanians alone, moved by a just inclination of mind, cherishing the probity of Canute, rejected the sloth of Harald. But Harald took care, through suborned agents, to solicit into his own favor most of the supporters of his brother's party, by promising an amendment of the laws and the pleasantness of a freer life. Thus partly hope, partly fear, turned the minds of the common people away from Canute. He himself, his forces failing him, slips away with only three beaked ships into the narrowest straits of the Scanian sea, bidden to be deprived of the kingdom whose safety he himself had protected, whose borders he had enlarged. Where, admonished by a fraternal embassy, promising a share of the kingdom, to return, the blandishments of the messages being scorned, he entered Sweden as a fugitive, thinking it exceedingly foolish to trust himself, in his broken fortune, to the promises of one whose threats he had received while that same fortune was still flourishing.

[3] Soon, as though forgetful of his injuries, the affairs of his fatherland being left untouched, Canute succeeds him when he dies he earnestly pursues the war against the Easterners, begun while his father was alive. Meanwhile Harald, having passed two years in reigning, dies. He being dead, Canute, recalled by his nation's votes to the summit of the kingdom, took care, the throne being received, to renew with all his forces the Eastern war, which he had begun in adolescence and inaugurated in exile, rather for the sake of enlarging religion than of satisfying desire, desiring to grasp, together with the increases of fortune, also an increase of renown. Nor did he withdraw his hand from the undertaking before he had utterly destroyed the kingdoms of the Curonians, the Sembi, and the Estonians. Then, the enemy being removed, looking about for a marriage, and reckoning the neighboring matches obscure and beneath his dignity, he called into matrimony Ethla, daughter of Robert, Prefect of Flanders, from whom a son, Charles, came to him. And when he saw the sinews of the ancient law loosened and blunted by the insolence of the Magnates, striving by all the ways of his genius to repair the discipline of the ancestral custom, he set forth by most severe institutions the cultivation of a more approved justice, and recalled the bruised and failing tenor of equity to its former state. He showed no indulgence to blood, none to kinship, so as to conduct himself less justly: he granted to no friendship or familiarity impunity for injury: but, outrunning all the weights of ancient custom, he bound with a most tenacious knot the shaken bond of law, and carefully took up the traces of his father's severity, and by that zeal contracted the most grievous offenses of the Magnates.

[4] To sacred things he rendered their due honor; those bearing priesthoods he attended with the nourishments of favor; greatly favoring the Bishops and the whole Clergy, and when he saw that too little just a veneration was paid to the Bishops by the sluggish and rude people, lest he should leave the more powerful men of so great a name among private persons, by the industry of a more circumspect decree, he granted them the fellowship of Princes, and assigned to them the first place among the Nobles, just as to Dukes, conciliating authority by honor. He provided also that a veneration less than just should not seize the weight of so great an office, and that those placed in the highest citadel of religion should not grow cheap by the lowest condition of worship. Nor did he only bestow increases of dignity on the Bishops, but he also strove to adorn the order of private Clerics with most benign decrees. For, that he might render them a more heaped-up honor, he relegated the controversies of the lettered, exempted from the condition of the common court, to the judgment of the same profession. To these same clergy he permitted that those guilty of offenses against religion, unable to repel the charges, should be punished with a pecuniary fine. To them also he handed over the arbitration of punishment in all things committed against divine matters, and separated all actions of this kind, assigned to Priestly judgment, from the public court, lest their common condition should make equal those unequal in honor. Wherefore he added weight to their dignity, and willed that an honor higher than a private eminence should belong to the regard due them. By which it was brought about that it is lawful for no one of the Danes, except the King or the Bishops, and him who is regarded as the foremost successor of the kingdom, to summon anyone in domestic actions. The same King tried to accustom the people, still rude in sacred things, to the religion of tithes. But the persuasion of his purpose was in vain: for the rudiments of a new-born worship could not take the maturity of things.

[5] and remarkably liberal toward the churches. But lest Bishop Sueno should seem to carry out too negligently the promised repair of the temple, he brought the begun fabric of the sanctuary of Roskilde through to its end. For the adorning of which he hung up, as its ornament, a crown most laboriously wrought in art and expense, considering that the royal wealth ought rather to serve the splendor of sacred things than human avarice. Egynus too, at almost the same times, with the King helping, completed the work of the church of St. Lawrence begun by himself. These being ordered to be dedicated, the King bestowed a marvelous munificence by way of endowment. For in the church of St. Lawrence he established annual stipends for the cantors, supported by the Bishop's subsidy. For he himself, partly from his treasury and the royal estates, partly the Bishop, from the benefices previously bestowed on the temple, provided their daily expenses: and so great was the eagerness of religious rivalry between them, that it remained uncertain which of the two was the more reverent toward God. And so on the first day of the dedication the King, solemnly venerating the altars, granted a fourth part of the royal coinage, a fourth part of his exaction upon the citizens, a fourth part of the summer tax, to him who should for the time be Bishop of the place, to be possessed by perpetual right in place of a gift. Nor, defending the private rights of the Clerics less sparingly, did he take care that from those who cultivate the land of the sanctuary almost the whole right of the royal payment should be assigned and rendered to the ministers of the choir. For the rest, the penalties of a withdrawn [*] military expedition, and the punishment of violated peace, and the inheritances of those who had died without near kin, he willed to be of royal right only. And so he acted as no lesser an author in issuing privileges to the temples than in granting benefices. And, that he might procure eternity for his laws, he subjected those who should try to overthrow them to the execration of the Bishops. The old force of which edict, afterward rashly assailed by many, still perseveres.

[6] But the King, though in all things he had conducted himself holily and industriously, He wishes to reclaim England by arms, showed himself conspicuous especially in the love of religion, and never had his eyes turned away from its most exact worship. Who, when he saw the throng of his brothers, youthfully intemperate, very burdensome to the fatherland, nourished with lavish and abundant stipends, took them into his clientage, only Olav presiding over the parts of Schleswig, and lightened the public burden by private expense. At last, as he perceived that the name of the Danes, their arms falling into sloth, had been buried since the times of his paternal uncle, a desire of new undertakings crept over him. And that he might more certainly represent his mind, not content to have adorned his endeavors with Eastern victories, he judged that England, lost by misfortune, ought to be reclaimed by the title of inheritance. For he recalled the warlike glory of his ancestors, and that the borders of the empire had grown by no wealth more than by English titles, and that a greater splendor had come to them from the spoils of one island than from those of the whole East. He held that to fall away from their imitation was the mark of a stupid and degenerate spirit, and that it was better to be without a kingdom than to have the exercise of majesty shut up within the narrow bounds of a tiny land. So that, therefore, by the conformity of his undertakings, he might answer to the valor of his ancestors, and produce work consonant with their pursuits, and equal the glory of his ancestral name, he commended to his own industry the restoration of all that his father's sloth had corrupted, and, hating his father, emulated his grandfather.

[7] First, therefore, he discloses his secret plan to Olav, but the expedition is disturbed by the treachery of his brother Olav. and, he urging it on, he then opens the matter to the people. Eager was the assent of all. But him whom the King had believed to answer to him with a reciprocal fraternal love, he had secretly as a rival, and, ignorant of his insidious dissembling, he reckoned that the affection which he himself bestowed was returned to him. Whom, although prudence warned otherwise, yet his holiness forbade to entertain a malignant suspicion about his brother: lest he should seem rashly to condemn kindred faith, and in the fear of fraud to place enemies and kinsfolk side by side. But Olav, from an affectation of the kingdom, forgetful of piety toward his brother, covered the disposition of a most perfidious heart with the highest simulation of faith, and not only fostered the King's published purpose with flatteries, but even furnished it with encouragements: not that he hoped a most powerful kingdom could be recovered by him, but that he might turn the difficulty of the commanded undertaking into hatred of the one commanding it. For indeed, disdainfully esteeming his brother's spirit, he repaid his most pious love with parricidal fraud. For when he perceived that he was hateful to the citizens, because he had restored by new laws the severity formerly neglected, in order to render the hatred of him more heaped-up, he privately spurred on what publicly displeased. And lest he should revolve the plot alone, a company being chosen, he formed an assembly of clandestine conspiracy, nor was his cunning in vain. For the chief men, whose violence had been blunted by the royal sanctions, had fellowship with Olav in the parricidal purpose. But Canute, esteeming the minds of all intent on glory rather than on crime, the fleet being commanded, is conveyed to the shores of the Lymic sea, from which the shortest passage into the ocean lies open, once passable by ships, but now shut off by an intervening mass of sands. Here the King, long awaiting his brother's arrival, was, by the delay of sailing, shaken out of the eagerness of the army. For Olav, a reason for his slowness being rendered, drew out the delay of his coming from day to day, and, devising a scheme for quashing the expedition, sought nourishment for his perfidy by a lying pretense of hindrances, desiring to drag out the delay until either he himself might meanwhile deprive of the kingdom the King setting out without him, or might, the King being held in suspense by the delay, leave him destitute of an army; and the King might turn out either contemptible by the impunity of the deserters, or hateful to all by their punishment. Thus mocking both his brother and his lord by the delay of his coming, by the device of so crafty and so insidious a scheme, he tried to undermine the effort of a generous and valiant purpose.

[8] Nor did the crafty method of his counsel deceive him. For the whole fleet fell away from the King, wearied by waiting for him. Olav is sent captive into Flanders, and the army disperses. For, ignorant of the things that were being done by his brother, he had often by messages demanded the arrival of the tarrying one: when at last, being made more certain of his perfidy, the fleet being ordered to wait, he hastened with a most select band in haste to Schleswig: and there, his brother unexpected

and astounded, intercepted him. Then, him being brought forth and accused, and not strongly repelling the charges, as one convicted and incapable of defense, he orders him to be put in fetters by the soldiers. Who refused to administer with their own hands an insult undue to royal blood: whose veneration among them was so great that they would rather punish those sprung from it with death than with chains, thinking that more tolerable which the common condition allows than that which servile punishment exacts. But the modesty of our nation is wont to place the greatest disgrace in the punishment of chains, and reckons to be afflicted with these sadder than any fate; esteeming noble minds more punished by a shameful than by a bloody punishment, and judging the one so much more honorable than the other as the state of nature is believed to differ from the fault of fortune. The task charged to the soldiers, their common brother Eric carries out, judging that more should be attributed to the regard of just command than of an unjust brother, and that blood should not be spared while vices are punished: for that he whom virtue has failed obtains no reverence of lineage, and, foul with the stain of his spirit, has darkened all the splendor of his birth. Therefore he regarded not so much the name of brother as the purpose of a parricide. So much does the value of blood grow cheap, when one has made himself ignoble by his character. After these things the king took care that Olav, confined in chains and banished by ship into Flanders, should be consigned to prison custody. The conspirators, having little learned of his capture by rumor or report, that they might more cunningly disband the army, pleading the king's idle delay and absence, the fleet being circumvented by a clandestine warning, ordered the men to go home. Which thing, if anyone had openly urged, he would by law have deserved, his goods being confiscated, either to be driven into exile, or to be visited with capital punishment. Wherefore it seemed safest to the instigators of the defection that, without any named author, the people should itself claim for itself the license of desertion, lest the crime of departure be held so much private as public. But the insidious scheme of the Magnates so prevailed over the improvident rashness of the multitude, that the common people, led no less by their authority than by weariness of the delay, took most confidently the liberty of returning.

[9] [The King fines the deserters with a money penalty: which he strives to change into the payment of tithes:] Of which deed the King, having taken cognizance, first showed grief, then gladness. For he shaped the injury into the form of religion, and seized, under the name of a fine, the first occasion for exacting tithes, glad that opportunity had procured for him a most useful means to his purpose, and that by his own disgrace it was permitted to furnish the honor of sacred things. And when the Magnates had heard that Olav, whom they had hoped would be the leader of their faction, had been intercepted by his brother, being disappointed of their proposed fraud, they practiced the utmost dissimulation of it. And so the King, an assembly being afterward summoned, teaches how much military discipline had always profited the Danish arms: that the commands of superiors had always been obeyed by inferiors, that the authority of Kings rests on the votes of the people: that the fame of Princes had grown by nothing more than by the faith of the soldiers: and that their command is of no moment, if it does not subsist by plebeian aids. But that an insult hitherto unknown to Kings had befallen him, that the authors of an unwonted defection had preferred dullness to boldness, and by greed of ease had undermined the enterprise of a most splendid affair. He added also how great a sum of money they had deserved to be condemned to for the impious crime of desertion, proposing forty talents of coin to be paid by each of the steersmen, three by each of the rowers, in place of a fine. No one refusing the contribution, payment of the money was promised. Which being known, Canute declared that he would remit that exaction, if they were willing to pay tithes to the Priests. Then the assembly, leave to consult being asked, withdraws a little from the King to deliberate whether the proposed conditions ought to be satisfied. Each was judged difficult to perform. For in paying the money, they believed that very many would be afflicted with want. But the payment of tithes, to be observed in every age, would inflict an eternal servitude on the debtors. Therefore, as if to those about to make a less harsh choice in a context of sad matters, that seemed the more bitter which had continuance as its companion. For since they perceived that the one would punish themselves only, the other their posterity too, they preferred present want to a perpetual burden. And so, an estimation of the times being made, preferring to redeem their fault by that whereby they would create a penalty for themselves only, rather than by that whereby they would create one for their posterity, they chose rather to be diminished once in money than always in liberty, thinking that what was elicited by right was free of disgrace, but that what was extorted by persuasion was liable to reproach. Nay, they judged that to pay out an annual crop to others pertained to ignominy, not to religion. And when the King saw that the worse part of the condition was approved by them, feigning the exaction of money, having entered the northern parts of Jutland, he appointed Tosto, surnamed the Embezzler, and his colleague Horta, as collectors for gathering the payment, desiring, by the fear of the fine, to introduce the religion of tithes. These same collectors were ordered to leave the property of the deserters untouched, the prices of their possessions being assessed. Who, carrying out the mandate more harshly than they had been ordered, harassed the common people with an unjust exaction. Which matter the rivals of the King, lamenting in the assembly of the people, aggravated the calumny with lies. Feigning also things greater than the truth, they rendered the collectors hateful to all. For they judged it the work of the soldiers, not the command of the King: and they regarded not the zeal of the one commanding, but of the one commanded.

[10] At whose instigation the multitude, attacking the collectors, [hence disturbances against the collectors and against the King, who flees into Funen, where he is betrayed by Blacco.] checked the common injury by a public uprising, looking more at what was being done than at what had been ordered to be done. Nor, sated with their slaughter, did it, raging, break out against the King too. Who, thinking its assault should be opportunely avoided by his absence, withdrew to Schleswig: and there, his wife being established with his son, he ordered her, if things went ill, to flee to her fatherland, since she would have no protection among the perfidious. For he feared to leave an heir unseasonable for the kingdom to the discretion of the household. Therefore the Wends, believing that liberty remained for them only in arms, began, like victors, to insult his flight. Who, when, the Jutes threatening, he saw both his old aids failing, and the straits of the time did not permit new ones to be gathered, in order to be safer by withdrawal, seeks Funen, about to seek safety by the protection of the island: where nonetheless he experienced a violence unworthy of his most religious spirit. For hence the confidence of raging, increased for the Jutes, sharpened the roused rashness of the multitude: hence the presumed license of running riot inflicted a sad storm on the King. Indeed the people, fearing from dread of punishment to give up what they had begun, thought perseverance should be shown to their crime. For they did not believe that one twice injured would remit the penalty to the guilty. And therefore, thirsting for his destruction, with the most ardent hatred they sought the death of the most holy man: and, as if compelled by despair of pardon, they chose rather to remove an enemy than to experience an avenger. Not content to have driven him from their own borders, they decree that he must be driven from Funen too. And now the King, a report of a crossing-over being received, had resolved to migrate to Zealand, when a certain Blacco, having obtained his first familiarity, but nonetheless secretly hating him, with the counsel of a feigned faith urges him to spare his flight, to seek the protection of the district of Odense, and not, in womanish fashion, to look about for a hiding-place: he promises that he will meanwhile spy out the doings of the people, and set blandishments against its anger. But that if he should be unable to mitigate the mind of the people, he would announce it to the King so far in advance as would be enough for undertaking flight. The counsel was obeyed. Then Blacco, the embassy being neglected, coaxing the people with sinister counsels, in place of conciliating favor, more eagerly builds up hatred against the King. He urges that they seize the author of the calumny as quickly as possible, and not permit the fugitive to slip away: he recalls that the avengers of oppressions loathe a tyrant, not a King: that what is committed in emulation of honor is free of guilt: that the guardians of the fatherland, like the ministers of piety, are exempted from parricide: that private crime is absent, where the vindication of public liberty is accomplished. Moreover, that they would be most wretched if they failed of their undertaking; most happy if they accomplished it. The people being solicited to the slaying of the King by these and consonant means, he raised up against the head of the undeserving one the deadly efforts of all, and by that action kindled, as with a certain fury's torch, the common people driven distracted by madness. And straightway the assault grew, when it began to have an instigator. For he did not set his own steadfastness against its rashness, but enrolled himself as the author of the public madness. Therefore the more inflamed storm of sedition boiled up at his pestilent harangue, and a heavier tumult burst forth for those who had gained an instigator of the tempest. Returning thence, he announces a more peaceable disposition of the people: that the storm of the uprising would easily subside, if the King were willing to lay aside his anger in turn, and to remit the penalty to the guilty. Whom the King, thinking him a faithful minister of the embassy, receives with a banquet of royal magnificence, and attends the malignant interpreter of his piety with gifts. On both sides thanks were given for perfidy. For Blacco, taking up the parts in alternating turn, the office of embassy being corrupted, began to act the betrayer instead of the mediator, and from a spy turned out an instigator of crime, wrongly interpreting the King's mind, falsely the people's. Thus the lie of the crafty man, wrapped in the title of embassy, deceived alike the King and the people: the one, that he should not avoid the impending danger; the other, that it should not spare him who awaited it.

[11] The incited people dare to assail the Saint in the temple The next day the King sends the same man, promising things equal to the former, to spy out the doings of the sedition, and took the common enemy as the author of a peace to be made between himself and the crowd: nor was the wonted perfidy lacking to the envoy: by whose pestilent counsels the common people, incited, more vehemently unsheathed their uprising against the head of the King. Canute meanwhile, accustomed to the daily solemnities of sacred things, lest he should prefer anything to religion, approaches the sacred building of Alban, about to pray for himself. For he chose rather to approach God with prayers than the enemy with arms, lest he should detract anything from charity: where, while attending to religion he performs the offices of holiness, the ring of the roused multitude closed the sanctuary with arms. As many therefore of the soldiers as could outrun the enemy, seeking a share of the peril, sought the King, desiring to transfer his danger onto themselves: and though they could have obtained safety by withdrawal, they sought peril by their presence, and chose rather to become renowned by death than safe by flight. With how great humanity shall we believe this retinue to have abounded, which, lest it desert the unhappy fortune of its lord, set itself against a peril that it was permitted to avoid, and, amid great opportunity of fleeing, thought it better to guard the safety of the King than its own? Benedict too, imitating in faith the bond of brotherhood, had resolved to die with his brother in the temple. But Eric, shut off separately by the enemy, since he alone could not sustain the multitude, through the midst of the enemy's masses, forcing a way out with the sword, broke free. Then, no one presuming to break violently into the dwelling of religious peace, Blacco first, the rest hesitating, attacked the doors with the sword, and by his leading gave the same license to all. Thus he showed himself the leader and author not only of sacrilege, but also of public parricide. Seeing which, the common people, the motion of sedition being roused, assails the temple, and, an irruption being made into it, defiled the divine dwellings and the most holy inner shrines with a sacrilegious storm. But Blacco, slain in the very entrance which he had burst into, the expiations of parricide being paid, paid the penalties of the violated sanctuary: his death was avenged by the destruction of the slayer. And so for the fate of the one, crime, for that of the other, piety, furnished the cause. I should believe that then the pious blood, mingled with the parricidal, flowed by separate channels, and that, without any commingling of the streamlets, on this side the sacred, on that the wicked blood, passed in divided beds. Benedict, receiving the intruder at the threshold, while he fights the more fiercely at the doors, is slain.

[12] The King himself, amid the bloody din of the impending violence, and first his brother, then himself, having confessed his sins, they slay. by the confidence of his conscience, kept the same disposition of mind, and attended to religion no more sparingly than if danger were absent, lest more should be indulged by him to the forces of fear than of constancy. But not even his last hour was empty of the zeal for holiness. For when he perceived that the wall was being broken through on every side by the people, (for it was wooden) and therefore that his death was near at hand, a Priest being summoned, having confessed the secrets of his deeds, through the utmost bitterness of grief he absolved the faults of his past life, and by the wholesomeness of penance procured for himself a reward. For he had reposed so much confidence in his innocence, that he seemed not, oppressed by danger, to flee death, but, free of fear, to seek it. Nay, with arms stretched out on both sides

before the altar, secure of his fate, he fell. Where, while, prostrated in the manner of a victim, he awaits his slayer, pierced through by the deadly cast of a lance thrust in through the window, he gave forth the pious sacrifice of his death, and, the blood of his soldiers being poured out, at last poured out his own. For indeed, assailed by frequent darts on every side, he kept his body immobile, nor did he leave the place where he lay before, dead, he was consigned to the bier. From whose most holy wounds more glory than gore flowed forth: for by the ending of his present life he received the beginning of a better one, punished by hostile judgment, preserved by divine. Happy the parricide of those who applied to heavenly uses him whom they had taken from the world of earthly powers, and, despoiled of a perishable and fragile power, established him a partaker of solid and eternal felicity. But his hidden virtue also afterward shone forth with most clear proofs. Hearing these things, the Queen sought again her fatherland with her son not yet of age, two daughters being left behind her: of whom Ingertha, married to Folco, a most noble man of the Swedish nation, had sons Benedict and Canute: and through these same she received as grandson Birger, who even now survives, Duke of Sweden, with his brothers. But from the marriage of Cecilia, Eric, Prefect of the Goths, begot Canute together with Charles. From whom emerged a numerous posterity of most noble lineages, cohering in a bright series of kinship.

[13] The impious try to obscure the miracles of St. Canute. But the people, exulting at the slain King, reckoned it in place of pleasure to pursue with insult what they ought to have bewailed as a crime. Who, though they alleged for their parricide the cause of piety, and colored it with the name of tyrannicide, God, not suffering His soldier to be defrauded of his reward, published the hidden innocence of the most holy man by manifest signs, and granted to the exceptional splendor of his life also bright ornaments of his death. Indeed, to confute the malice of the parricides, He disclosed the merits of the punished one by miraculous proofs, and uncovered the virtue unknown to the common people by a marvelous brightness of things. By which the common people, struck with wonder, showed envy of the virtue, and long tried in vain to darken the conspicuous experience of the signs. For, blazing up more obstinately with the roar of its old envy, and with the ancient forces of hatred, it could not be brought to honor with divine honors him whom it thought slain by itself for a crime; trying to deny by human arguments a thing declared from heaven. For although it saw the character it had condemned approved by heavenly judgment, yet, to dissemble and conceal the credit of the miracles, it feigned a just cause for the slaying, and, retaining a firm defense of the deed, did not blush to be the most persevering champion of its own opinion. Not content to have despoiled the King of life, it tried also to strip him of the praises of his death; striving to bury also the fame of him whose light it had extinguished. But the divine splendor could not be wrapped in human darkness: for the brightness of the miracles drove away the gloom of doubt with the clear light of the facts. For the healing of his holiness attended various afflictions of weaknesses with the wholesomeness of remedies. And when the envy of the detractors, the signs increasing, was compelled to yield to the virtue, and could no longer frustrate belief, yet, persisting in the defense of the deed, it indeed assented to his holiness, but asserted that it proceeded not so much from the merits of his past life as from the penance of his last hour. Thus it both alleged a just cause for the deed, and bestowed honor on one void of life. For it said that the King had deservedly perished, but that the pious man had escaped by his tears, esteeming his intention nearer to avarice than to religion. For which error it afterward paid no small penalties. But the descendants too, redolent of their fathers' envy, impute the fame of his holiness not to his character but to his tears, and by their present incredulity entangle themselves in the past error, nor can they be brought, hatred being laid aside, sincerely to esteem his blessedness. But his sacred rites, arisen in a little town, shone forth over almost the whole world, and his cult, first received by the townsmen, gradually crept out into general observance. Whose virtue, both of life and of miracles, to be venerated privately by the people of Odense, public religion also consecrated. But the happy fortune of signs attends his heavenly spirit even to this time. Hence it is that Canute, now possessed of the immortality of a divine soul, as he strove to exalt his fatherland with earthly patronages, so ceases not to protect it with heavenly ones. And therefore his holiness, most opulent in the fruit of glory and renown, holds a splendid place in the Calendar. Nay, he administers his salutary effects by daily signs, and repays the malice of his fatherland with benefits. For every Danish age will glory in the marks of his virtues. By such rays of illustration is renown bestowed on the deaths of the Saints, when mortal envy is opposed by heavenly benefit.

[14] Canute being slain, the Jutes, by the persistence of their wicked association embracing a singular favor for Olav, [Nicholas puts on the chains for his brother Olav, that the latter may succeed Canute.] sought with most eager votes that he be made King: hoping that he would render them the greatest favor, for whom they had sought the kingdom at so great a risk. Nor did they think this honor should be bestowed on his brothers, suspected because of their exceptional love for Canute. Therefore, a sum of money being agreed on, they gave Nicholas, the common brother both of the past and of the future King, as a hostage for his ransom, and, Olav being received, they impose the kingdom on him. Nor did Nicholas give a small proof of fraternal charity: for he did not hesitate to put on his brother's chains, and by his own bonds to buy the kingdom for his brother. Hearing which, Eric, mindful of the insult which he had inflicted on him by the command of their common brother, from fear of vengeance, with his wife Botilda—who had come to Ulvo the Galician as granddaughter through his son Trugot—sought Sweden. But the Danes, money being eagerly contributed for the return of their surety, paid the agreed sum to the creditor. Him being freed from Flemish custody, fortune, hostile to the parricides, cast as it were some disaster upon the abundance and fertility of our people. For when the Danes, applauding the beginnings of the new King, more wantonly insulted the ancient ruin, the divinity, always hostile to the criminal, lest crime long flourish in impunity, willed to repay their petulance with penury, and by a common want exacted the expiations of the public parricide. For, that He might punish not individuals only, but all, the extreme inclemency of the air equaled the number of the years in which Canute had held the kingdom, and by heavenly strength produced a vengeance greater than human force. For by the heat of the spring and summer season all the sown crop withered: but the autumn was so rainy that if anything had grown up, nourished by the moisture of the places or by marshy dampness, it fell down by the persistent flooding of the rains, although the interest of human convenience demanded a contrary state of the sky. Therefore the summer solstice lacked the seasonable moisture, and August, loving dryness, received that same moisture poured out without measure. Then plainly the face of the fields, flooded with heavenly rains, was seen to present the appearance of a widely-extending pool; so that what the summer had scarcely produced, the autumn crushed: and so great an inclemency of the seasons arose, that neither did the rain soften the heat, nor the heat temper the flood of the rain. Nay, the country-folk, the waters covering the fields, reaping the heads of the ears floating on the surface, gathered them in little boats, and then consigned the rotten remains of the ears to be dried in furnaces heated with fire: and so, putting them under the millstone, since they could not provide bread, they turned them to the use of porridge. Wherefore so great a want of food set in, that the greatest part of the people, destitute of nourishment, was consumed by starvation.

[15] That matter punished the rich with want, the poor with death: the extreme inclemency of the air, and famine in Denmark for many years. and despoiled the greater of money, the lesser of life. For the people of the rich, food not being at hand, procured a saving outlay with gold and silver: but the flock of the poor, destitute both of wealth and of food, a dreadful famine everywhere consumed. The King himself, driven to the last wasting, exchanged his estates for a great deal of grain, and, his lands being ordered to be sold, procured food with the prices of his possessions. To the nobles it was no shame to pay out for the same use the insignia of their nobility. For indeed the harvest was abundant for the neighbors, so that it seemed a private vengeance upon the nation, not a public one upon the lands. Which so dire a disaster compelled the convicted mind of the people to confess the holiness which it had before disparaged, and made venerators out of the despisers of his eminence. Indeed so evident a punishment, others abounding in grain, falling upon the Danes privately, clearly proved both the guilt of the parricides and the innocence of the slain. This plague Bishop Sueno, whose authority among the Danes was supreme, having forewarned the people to repent of the parricide, predicted would come on. For he was held pious toward the people, reverent toward God, and celebrated religion with more attentive care, and his sermons with more excellent eloquence: thus, the favor of all being seized, he held over our people the citadel of authority and the summit of eloquence. He formed the characters of his subjects not only by words, but also by the most serene examples of works: nor was he more elegant in voice than in mind. The same, the church of the Trinity being finished, had Canute as a partner of the religious work in building up its enclosure. Nor did he bestow less labor in constructing sanctuaries of Mary. For, having earnestly built one in the city, another at Ringsted, he founded a third to Michael at Slagelse: so much did he show himself to burn with a singular devotion to holy shrines. And not content with holiness at home, he resolved to seek an increase of it abroad, the labor of pilgrimage being undertaken. And when, setting out for Jerusalem, he had reached Byzantium, he took care that ornaments of various kinds that he had procured, together with relics of sacred ashes, should be sent back for the necessary uses of his home temple. But whose piety Greece saw, his death Rhodes beheld. At almost the same times, Richald being taken off, Ascer, exceptional in the splendor of his character and lineage, obtains the priesthood of Lund. Olav, when he had passed nearly two lustra in reigning, amid the continual straits of his household affairs, could accomplish nothing worthy of royal magnificence.

[16] But the neighbors too, contempt being made of his poverty, The penance and death of Olav. counted it in place of shame to assail the starving one with the sword, thinking that starvation ought not to be overwhelmed by arms, nor one afflicted by heaven to be pressed by human means, nor the vengeance of heaven to be aggravated by the forces of mortals; for to whom would a kingdom be an object of envy, ruined for so many years by the most despised want! When the King, celebrating the divine Nativity, bread not being at hand in the house, looked upon his fasting household on every side, greatly confounded by the shameful want of the tables, his head covered with his hands, and his face suffused with tears, through the utmost sickness of soul, attended with a groan the difficulty of the time. Indeed he bewailed that so tiny a feast was set before so many guests, judging a most despised famine an ignominy to a most honored day. Who seems to me to have bewailed, in appearance another's, but in truth his own, want. Then, a supplication being made, gazing on the heavens, he prayed God, the author of all, that if He had conceived any anger against the people, He would sate it by his own peril, not theirs, esteeming the most unhappy state of his fatherland, the most difficult condition of the time. For he blushed to set before the eyes of princes a banquet so destitute of viands, by which he would seem rather to furnish famine than to drive it away. Nor did he find the ears of the deity difficult; for he obtained a swift path of fate, and by pious prayer procured for himself death, for his fatherland safety, (if only there is any virtue in parricides,) and by the shame of a noble living turned away the penalty of the greatest disaster. And so his laid-down life can be ascribed to his memory more splendidly than his deeds, who had the fate of his fatherland as the cause of ending his own breath. Moreover, how much charity toward his own he had implanted in his heart, he made plain, when he both wished to atone for their evils by his own head, and demanded that the common peril should redound to himself alone. For, because he devoted his own life for the safety of the citizens, he is not to be defrauded of the title of a pious soul. For fortune carried out the famine with its author in an equal death, and changed starvation into satiety.

* Or should it not be "detrectatæ" shirked?