Saint Canute

King of Denmark, Martyr († 1086)

Feast – January 19

Since the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus, the Roman Empire became a vehicle spreading Christianity through the world bringing blessings of prosperity. In 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III. This transferred the Roman Empire from east to west and set the foundation for the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until 1806. Wealthy towns with beautiful churches, monasteries and peaceful communities were desired by neighboring pagans too, but unwilling to discard their idols they saw different ways to assume it. 793 AD to 1066 AD was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen from Scandinavia and Denmark, known as Vikings, undertook large-scale raiding to collect significant wealth. This created a need for trade. Viking merchants regarded Christianity as a necessary evil that they had to put up with to be successful in trading. That is why when they went abroad, they would often allow themselves to be marked with the sign of the cross. It is believed that because of the extensive trade networks with Christians the Vikings chose Christianity during the 900s.

In 965 King Harald Bluetooth’s declared Denmark Christian, but the transition to Christianity took place gradually. Even with missionaries doing their best to introduce Christianity traces of the Norse gods were still evident up until the 1200s.

In 1042 St. Canute was born one of the many sons of King Sweyn II Estridsson. He was named after his father’s uncle Canute the Great – King of Denmark, England and Norway, often referred as the North Sea Empire. Sweyn took good care of the education of his son who being endowed with excellent qualities both of mind and body, answered perfectly well the care of his preceptors and governors. St. Canute was first noted as a member of Sweyn’s 1069 raid of England and was one of the leaders of another raid in 1075. As a young prince, he cleared the seas of pirates and subdued several neighboring provinces which were harassing Denmark.

The kingdom of Denmark had an elected ruler until the year 1660. Thus, when Sweyn died, many pitched upon our saint whose eminent virtues best qualified him for the throne, but the majority, fearing his martial spirit, preferred his eldest natural brother Harold, commonly called the Slothful.

St. Canute retired into Sweden to King Halstan, who received him with the greatest marks of kindness and esteem. On the 17^th of April, 1080, after two year’s reign Harold died and St. Canute was called to succeed him.

On his accession, he married Alice of Flanders, daughter of Robert, Earl count of Flanders. She bore him one son, Charles (St. Charles the Good, Earl of Flanders) and twin daughters Cæcilia and Ingerid.

He began his reign with a successful war against the troublesome, barbarous enemies of the state, and by planting the faith in the conquered provinces of Courland, Samogitia, and Livonia. His courage rivaled in excellence with his ability in the conduct and skills of war, but his piety surpassed all his other endowments. He chastised his body with fasting, discipline, and hair-cloths. Prayer was his assiduous exercise.

Amid the glory of his victories he humbly prostrated himself at the foot of the crucifix, laying there his diadem, and offering himself and his kingdom to the King of kings.

Denmark was officially a Christian country for over a hundred years but needed a zealous hand at the helm to cement this. St. Canute seemed to have been chosen for that task.

After having provided for the peace and safety of his country and enlarged its territories his next concern was to reform abuses at home. For this purpose, he enacted severe, but necessary laws, for the strict administration of justice, and repressed the violence and tyranny of the great, without respect for status. It became evident when he condemned to death a Danish lord whose vessel, to sustain the owner’s luxury, had pillaged the ship of a neighboring country and massacred the crew.

His charity and tenderness towards his subjects made him study all possible ways to ease them of their burdens.

He honored holy men and granted many privileges and immunities to the clergy. He enhanced the authority of the church and demanded austere observation of church holidays. By building and adorning churches, giving large gifts to the churches in Dalby, Odense, Roskilde, Viborg, Lund, he even donated his very great value crown to the church of Roschild, in Zealand he enhance the people’s esteem to provide for needs of the Church.

When childless English king Edward the Confessor died in 1066, the Norman King William the Conqueror built a large fleet and invaded England in September 1066. He defeated and killed Harold Godwinson the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 and on Christmas day the same year became King of England. He made arrangements for the governance of England in early 1067 before returning to Normandy. Several unsuccessful rebellions followed.

In 1069 St. Canute sent forces to assist the vanquished; but these troops found no one willing to join them and were easily defeated.

Later being invited by the conquered English, he raised an army to expel the Normans: but through the treacherous practices of his brother Olaf, was obliged to wait so long on the coast, that his troops deserted him. The pious king judging this a proper occasion to induce his people to pay tithes to their pastors proposed to them either to pay a heavy fine, by way of punishment for their desertion, or submit to the law of tithes for the pastors of the church.

In early 1086 a revolt broke out in Vendsyssel, where St. Canute was staying, first he fled to Schleswig and eventually to Odense. On 10 July 1086, he and his men took refuge inside the wooden St. Alban’s Priory, in Odense. Perceiving his danger, he confessed his sins at the foot of the altar and received Holy Communion. Stretching out his arms before the altar fervently recommended his soul to his Creator. According to the chronicler Ælnoth of Canterbury he died down on his knees following a lance thrust in the flank. His brother Benedict, and seventeen others, were slain with him.

Olaf succeeded him in the kingdom. God punished the people during the eight years and three months of his reign with crop failure, dreadful famine, and other calamities. According to Arild Hvitfeldt’s “Danmarks Riges Krønike”, in those years springtime was so dry that the fields looked as if they had been burned, and in the fall the skies opened up and rain fell so often that people floated about on pieces of wood to cut the heads off the grain that rose above the water; the hunger of the people grew so great that they dug the earth looking for roots. The wealthy grew thin, and the poor died of starvation. At the same time sanctity of the martyr was attested by many miraculous cures of the sick at his tomb. For this reason his relics were taken up out of their obscure sepulchre, and honourably entombed and his canonization was already being sought before the end of the reign of Olaf.

His successor, Eric I the Good restored piety and religion in Denmark and sent ambassadors to Rome, with proofs of the miracles performed. On 19 April 1101 Pope Paschal II confirmed the “cult of Canute” that had arisen, and King Canute IV was canonized as a saint under the name San Canuto.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          O. I. H. depicting K. O. Ik. of D.-1095PredecessorCanute I. the H. I. E. 1050Died18 A. 1095ConsortIngegerd of N. U. nameOlaf S. I. E. Catholicism, “WikiVisually.com.” http://wikivisually.com (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[2]          “Saint Canutus, King of Denmark, Martyr.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_canutus.html (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[3]          “Butler’s Lives of the Saints – Saint Canutus, King of Denmark, Martyr,” CatholicSaints.Info, Jan. 18, 2013. https://catholicsaints.info/butlers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-canutus-king-of-denmark-martyr/ (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[4]          “Canute IV of Denmark,” Wikipedia. Dec. 29, 2020, Accessed: Jan. 09, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canute_IV_of_Denmark&oldid=997083466.

 

 

Saint Damasus

Pope († 384)
Feast – December 11

In the year 272 in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea (today Niš, Serbia), Flavius Valerius Constantinus, also known as Constantine the Great was born to Flavius Constantius, an Illyrian army officer who became one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy and Helena, a holy Christian woman of low social standing from Helenopolis of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, modern Turkey.

Constantine served with distinction under emperors Diocletian and Galerius campaigning in the eastern provinces against barbarians and the Persians. In 305 he was recalled west to fight under his father in Britain. After his father’s death in 306, Constantine was acclaimed as emperor by the army at Eboracum (York). He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which ended persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. By 324 he emerged victorious in the civil wars against emperors Maxentius and Licinius and become sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. In those transitional and crucial times for the Catholic Church, about year 304 in Rome St. Damasus was born. His parents were Antonius and Laurentia. Both parents originally come from the Lusitania region covering today autonomous community of Extremadura and a part of the province of Salamanca in Spain. St. Damasus grew up in Rome in the service of the church of the martyr St. Laurence, which later became the basilica of San Lorenzo where his father received Holy Orders and served as parish priest. He began his ecclesiastical career as a deacon in his father’s church, and later served as a priest. Described by St. Jerome as “an incomparable person, learned in the Scriptures, a virgin doctor of the virgin Church, who loved chastity” he distinguished himself from others and in 352 was called to serve the Catholic Church as archdeacon to the Pope St. Liberius.

Three hundred years of Roman oppression ended, arenas were empty, but the war continued. Heresies such as Arianism, Apollinarianism and Macedonianism were confusing and dividing Christians in the east and west. When in 354 Emperor Constantius II, a promotor of Arianism, banished Pope St. Liberius to Beroea, an ancient city of the Hellenistic period and Roman Empire now known as Veria in Macedonia, northern Greece, a faithful archdeacon followed him into exile, but afterwards returned to Rome.

After more than two years in exile the emperor recalled him under extreme pressure from the Roman population who refused to recognize his puppet, Felix II. As the Roman See was “officially” occupied by Felix, a year passed before St. Liberius came back to Rome. It was the emperor’s intention that St. Liberius should govern the Church jointly with Felix, but upon his arrival, Felix was expelled by the Roman people. During the period before St. Liberius’ return, St. Damasus had a great share in the government of the church.

Following the death of Pope St. Liberius on 24 September 366, St. Damasus was elected by a large majority as the new Bishop of Rome, but a minority proclaimed deacon Ursinus as Pope, inciting a revolt in Rome, which resulted in violent battles in two basilicas, where 137 people died. Emperor Valentinian came to the defense of St. Damasus and drove the usurper from Rome for a time. Later he returned, and finding accomplices for his evil intentions, accused the Holy Pontiff of adultery. St. Damasus took only such action as was becoming to the common father of the faithful; in 378 he assembled a synod of forty-four bishops, in which he justified himself so well that the calumniators were excommunicated and banished.

As Pope his lifestyle was simple in contrast to many ecclesiastics of Rome. St. Damascus was fierce in his denunciation of heresies. In two Roman synods (368 and 369) he condemned Apollinarianism and Macedonianism and in 381 he sent his legate St. Zenobius to the Council of Constantinople convoked against the aforesaid heresies and to console the faithful who were cruelly persecuted by the fanatic Arian Emperor Valens.

In order to put an end to the marked divergences in the western texts of that period, St. Damasus encouraged the highly respected scholar St. Jerome to revise the available Old Latin versions of the Bible into a more accurate Latin on the basis of the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, resulting in the Vulgate. One of the most important works of Pope Damasus was to preside in the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of Sacred Scripture.

In the meantime, St. Damasus rebuilt and adorned the Church of Saint Laurence, still called Saint Laurence in Damaso, and provided for the proper housing of the archives of the Roman Church. He built in the basilica of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way the marble monument known as the “Platonia” in honour of the temporary transfer to that place of the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul and decorated it with an important historical inscription. He also built on the Via Ardeatina, between the cemeteries of Callistus and Domitilla, a basilicula, or small church, the ruins of which were discovered in 1902 in which, according to the “Liber Pontificalis”, the pope was buried with his mother and sister.

St. Damasus built at the Vatican a baptistery in honour of St. Peter. He had the springs of the Vatican drained, since they were inundating the tombs of the holy persons buried there, and he decorated the sepulchers of a great number of martyrs in the cemeteries, adorning them with epitaphs in verse.

His eighteen year reign reinforced the primacy of the Apostolic See and the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Roman Church based, not on the decrees of councils, but on the very words of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18).

During his pontificate on 27 February 380, emperor Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica “De fide Catholica” which proclaimed Catholicism, the doctrine which St. Peter had preached to the Romans and of which Pope St. Damasus was head, as the religion of the Roman State. The “Altar of Victory” was removed, no more Vestal Virgins, an no pagan priests reading in the Senate.

The Church was in the ascendancy. the Bishop of Rome’s importance swelled. Latin became the principal liturgical language as part of the pope’s reforms. Pope St. Damasus rode the first wave of these historical and religious trends. He was perhaps the first pope to rule with swagger. He died on the 10th of December in 384, when he was nearly eighty years old. In the eighth century, his relics were definitively placed in the church of Saint Laurence in Damaso, except for his head, conserved in the Basilica of Saint Peter.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          F. Media, “Saint Damasus I | Franciscan Media.” https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-damasus-i (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[2]          “Saint Damasus, Pope.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_damasus.html (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[3]          “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pope St. Damasus I.” https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04613a.htm (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[4]          “Memorial of Saint Damasus I, Pope,” My Catholic Life! https://mycatholic.life/saints/saints-of-the-liturgical-year/11-december-saint-damasus-i-pope-optional-memorial/ (accessed Jan. 09, 2021).

[5]          “Pope Damasus I,” Wikipedia. Dec. 22, 2020, Accessed: Jan. 09, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Damasus_I&oldid=995639706.