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 University; and the famous Paul Eliae or Eliaesen (Povel Helgesen), a student of Erasmus' writings and of Luther's earlier works, and an earnest seeker after Catholic reform, who has been not inaptly styled the Colet of Denmark, came from Elsinore to be the first head lecturer. Christian directed that schools should be opened for the poor throughout his dominions; he exerted himself to provide better school-books; he actually went so far as to enact that education should be compulsory for the burghers of Copenhagen and all the other large towns of Denmark.

Meanwhile Christian had been turning his attention to matters strictly ecclesiastical. Here too it cannot be said that he was anything but an opportunist, and it would be superfluous to credit him with any very pronounced convictions in favour of the Reformed doctrines; but there is no reason to doubt the earnestness with which he set to work to correct practical abuses. As early as 1517 there had come to Denmark a papal envoy named Giovanni Angelo Arcimboldo, afterwards Archbishop of Milan, with a commission to sell Indulgences, the right to act under which he purchased from the King for 1100 gulden. It was just at the time when Christian was engaged in negotiations with Sweden; and he resolved to make use of Arcimboldo as an intermediary. Soon however he discovered that the envoy, apparently in pursuance of secret instructions from the Pope, was negotiating independently with Sten Sture. Arcimboldo managed to escape to Lübeck with part of his booty; but the King at once gave orders for the seizure of what was left, and found himself in possession of a rich harvest in money and in kind. That this action did not involve any breach with the existing ecclesiastical system is plain from the fact that the victims of the terrible " Stockholm bath of blood " were put to death by Christian, not as traitors to the King, but as rebels against the Holy See.

But he had already gone further than this. In 1519 he wrote to his maternal uncle, Frederick of Saxony, begging him to send to the University of Copenhagen a theologian of the school of Luther and Carlstadt. Frederick sent Martin Reinhard, who arrived at Copenhagen late in 1520, and began preaching in the church of St Nicholas. But Reinhard unfortunately knew no Danish, and his sermons had to be interpreted, it is said by Paul Eliaesen. The effect was not happy: the sermons lost much of their force, and the preacher's gestures, divorced from his words, seemed grotesque and meaningless. At the next carnival the canons of St Mary's took advantage of the fact by dressing up a child and setting him to imitate the preacher. What was more serious, Paul began to find that he had no sympathy with Luther's developed position. Mocked by the people and bereft of his interpreter, Reinhard was sent back to Germany. Christian now endeavoured to attract Luther himself; and, although this proved impossible, Carlstadt came for a short visit. But the Edict of Worms (May, 1521), which placed Luther and his