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Chap. XLVII.
MURDER OF ST. KNUD.
247
gaze of the king, so patient and so sad, for ever haunted
him, and lie died shortly afterwards in great agony.
It is related in the same Chronicle how, while the
small but trusty band of the king defended his person,
the false Blakke killed the good Benedict, brother of
the king. Blakke himself was slain in the fight; and
when the battle was over, these two were found lying
side by side. The blood of the prince flowed in a long
stream of reeking gore along the pavement to the
right, that of the traitor to the left: even in death their
life-blood would not mingle.* About the year 1100
Knud was canonised, and his body is interred within the
church which bears his name, in a splendid shrine above
the high altar. His brother Benedict is allowed to
repose by his side. You may see them now, each in
a carved oak box, Benedict’s by far the smartest. He
and the Holy Knud remain, no longer regarded as relics
and holy, in a chapel of the building, and their
mouldering legs, once the admiration of thousands, may still be
discerned, half powder, through the glass apertures of
their coffins. There is no image of St. Knud here
extant, but in the village of Branninge, by Ribe, you
may see one, a very ancient carved figure, in the full
armour of the day, his head covered with a monk’s cap.f
* Blakke went backwards and forwards between the king and the
rebels, always on horseback ; hence the proverb, when speaking of a
traitor, “He rides on Blakkes horse.” The children in Skaane still play
at a game called “ At sto Blak eller Blakke,” in allusion to his perfidy.
He was brother to King Svend. See vol. i. p. 114, note.
t Peter Pagh, Bishop of Odense, was the first to introduce the
portrait of Knud the Holy into the arms of his diocese, 1339. He
composed, indeed, a very complimentary stanza in Latin on the subject—
not without a false quantity, though, for which I should have been put
in the bill by Cookesley at Eton,—saying how he had introduced a lily
into his shield. Alnothus, an Englishman from Canterbury, who lived
in Denmark for twenty years, wrote St. Knud’s Life, and dedicated it
to King Niels, his brother.
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