Editing St. Canute's Cathedral (section)

== History ==
St. Canute's Church in one form or another has stood on Abbey Hill in [[Odense]] ({{langx|da|Klosterbakken}}) for over 900 years.

Odense was established as the seat of the [[Bishop of Odense]] (Othinia) before 988 under the supervision of the [[Bishop of Schleswig]], itself a [[suffragan]] of the Archbishops of [[Hamburg-Bremen]]. The diocese included the southern Baltic islands of Denmark. The earliest bishops' names have not been recorded. Odense passed to the jurisdiction of [[Diocese of Roskilde|Roskilde]] in 1072 for a short period of time before falling to the [[Archdiocese of Lund]].

The earliest known church on the present location was a [[travertine]] church which was reported under construction by [[Aelnoth of Canterbury]], a [[Rule of St. Benedict|Benedictine]] monk at the nearby [[St. Alban's Priory, Odense|St. Alban's Priory]] in 1095. The foundations of the travertine church can still be seen in the crypt of the present building. The church was built in [[Romanesque architecture|Romanesque]] style with semi-circular arches supporting a flat timber ceiling. The travertine church was built specifically to house the earthly remains of King Canute, who was murdered in the church of St. Alban's Priory in 1086.<ref>{{cite web|url = https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/ancient-see-of-odense|title= Ancient See of Odense Denmark|publisher = Catholic Encyclopedia
|access-date=September 1, 2018}}</ref>