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III

King Sweyn Estridsson Compared with David. The Sons of King Sweyn

The History of King Sweyn Estridsson and His Sons and of the Martyrdom of King Canute the Holy

Amid these works of piety, Sweyn Estridsson, like the bravest of kings and the most eloquent of prophets, David of old, stood forth as an example. David, as a figure of the true shepherd, crushed the jaws of wild beasts with a strong hand and thus foreshadowed how Christ would rescue the Lord’s flock from the attacks of its enemies. And when he struck down the foreigner Goliath — who, like the Antichrist, assailed God’s camp, challenged it to single combat, and exalted himself against God — with a stone — the cornerstone, the rock cut from the mountain without human hands, which is Christ — and then killed him with his own sword, David foreshadowed how the Antichrist would be destroyed by the breath of God’s mouth and by the splendor of Christ’s coming.

With enemies defeated on every side and hostile plots crushed, Sweyn enjoyed the happiness of kingship and the security of lasting peace. Yielding too readily to the temptations of pleasure, he fathered a numerous offspring, destined to inherit the rights of the kingdom. Some of his sons he devoted to the study of divine learning; others he entrusted to noblemen in different regions to be raised under their care.

When he himself departed this life at a place called Søderup (“the muddy settlement”), having passed beyond all hope of return, those responsible for his royal remains prepared him for burial with kingly honors. They carried him to a coastal island called Zealand, so named in the Danish tongue because it is surrounded by the sea, and to a prominent place long known as Roskilde (“Ro’s spring”). There they laid him to rest with due ceremony in the church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity and Saint Lucius the Martyr, a stone church built by Bishop Sweyn, who then presided over that see.

This took place in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1074, which was the twenty-eighth year of his reign, on the fourth day before the Kalends of May, while Jesus Christ, Lord and ruler of all, reigns forever.