CHAPTER VII
CANUTE AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH—1017-1026
The English Church enjoyed Canute's favour from the very beginning: the King was a Christian; furthermore, he no doubt saw in the Church a mighty force that should not be antagonised. At the same time, there is no evidence of any close union between church and monarchy before 1020; and even then it was more like an entente cordiale than an open aggressive alliance, as it later came to be. Canute was a Christian, but he was also a shrewd statesman and a consummate politician. The religious situation among his Danish supporters in England as well as the general religious and political conditions in the North probably made it inexpedient, perhaps impossible, to accede to the full demands of the Church without danger to his ambitions and probable ruin to his imperialistic plans.
When the eleventh century opened, the North was still largely heathen. Missionaries had been at work for nearly two centuries—ever since Saint Ansgar entered the Scandinavian mission field in the days of Louis the Pious—and the faith had found considerable foothold in Denmark, especially on the Jutish peninsula. Canute's father Sweyn had been baptised; but other indications of his Christian faith are difficult to find. His queen, Sigrid the Haughty, was almost violent in her devotion to the old gods. Sweden remained overwhelmingly heathen for some years yet, while the progress of the Church in Norway depended on royal mandates supported by the sword and the firebrand. Only five years before the death of Canute, Norse heathendom won its last notable victory, when Saint Olaf fell before the onslaught of the yeomanry at Stiklestead (1030).
The army that conquered England for Canute was no doubt also largely heathen. It seems, therefore, safe to assume that during the early years of the new reign, the worship of the Anse-gods was carried on in various places on English soil; surely in the Danish camps, perhaps also in some of the Danish settlements. This situation compelled the Christian King to be at least tolerant. Soon there began to appear at the English court prominent exiles from Norway, hot-headed chiefs, whose sense of independence had been outraged by the zealous missionary activities of Olaf the Stout.[225] Canute had not been lord of England more than six or seven years before the Norwegian problem began to take on unusual interest. Before long the missionary King found his throne completely undermined by streams of British gold. The exiles who sought refuge at Winchester and the men who bore the bribe-money back to Norway were scarcely enthusiastic for the faith that frowned on piracy; consequently it continued to be necessary for Canute to play the rôle of the tolerant, broad-minded monarch, who, while holding firmly to his own faith, was unwilling to interfere with the religious rites of others. In his later ecclesiastical legislation, Canute gave the Church all the enactments that it might wish for; but it is a significant fact that these laws did not come before the Northern question had been settled according to Canute's desires and his viceroy was ruling in Norway. Edgar's laws, which were re-enacted in 1018, at the Oxford assembly, deal with the matter of Christianity in general terms only. The more explicit and extensive Church legislation of Ethelred's day was set aside and apparently remained a dead letter until it was in large measure re-enacted as a part of Canute's great church law late in the reign.
The early surroundings of the King had not been such as to develop in him the uncompromising zeal that characterised the typical Christian monarch in mediæval times. We do not know when he was baptised; it may have been in childhood, and it must have been before the conquest of England, as the Christian name Lambert, which was added in baptism to the heathen name by which we know him, would suggest that the rite was administered by a German ecclesiastic.[226] It is believed that he was confirmed by Ethelnoth the Good, the English churchman who later became Archbishop of Canterbury.[227] We do not know when the rite of confirmation was administered, but the probabilities point to the winter months of 1015-1016; for during these months Canute was several times in South-western England where Ethelnoth lived at the time.