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 followers under the ban of the Empire, was a hint too significant to be neglected, and for a time no more is heard of foreign preachers in Copenhagen.

Within Denmark itself, however, things were not standing still; and Christian's codes of laws, already referred to, were full of bold provisions for ecclesiastical reform. The monasteries were again subjected to episcopal visitation. Clerical non-residence, which, partly owing to local difficulties, was commoner in Norway and Denmark than elsewhere, was stringently forbidden. To make an end of the ignorant "priest-readers" (laese-praester) of whom the Danish Church was full, no candidate for holy Orders was to be ordained unless he had studied at the University and had shown that he understood and could explain "the Holy Gospel and Epistle" in Danish. The clergy were not to acquire landed property or to receive inheritances, "at least unless they wiÛ follow the precept of St Paul, who in his First Epistle to Timothy counsels them to be the husband of one wife, and will live in the holy state of matrimony as their ancestors did." The state which the Bishops were accustomed to keep up was forbidden: in journeying "they shall ride or travel in their litters, that the people may know them from other doctors; but they shall not be preceded by fife and drum to the mockery of holy Church." The spiritual Courts were no longer to have cognisance of questions of property. Most radical change of all, a new supreme tribunal was to be set up at Roskilde, by royal authority alone, consisting of " four doctors or masters well learned in ecclesiastical and imperial law," the decisions of which, as well ecclesiastical as civil, were to be final, the appeal to the Pope being abolished.

But Christian's new code never came into operation. His position was already one of great difficulty, and the toils were fast closing round him. He was in bad odour at Rome, partly on account of his attempted reforms, partly because of the three Bishops whom he had slain in Sweden; for Hemming Gadd had been put to death not long after the massacre of Stockholm, in spite of his loyalty to the King. This last matter was arranged without much difficulty. The Nuncio Giovanni Francesco di Potenza, whom Leo X had sent to Denmark, declared Christian innocent and found a scapegoat in Diederik Slaghoek, now Archbishop elect of Lund. For this and other crimes he was condemned to death, and burnt on January 22, 1522. But there were other difficulties which could not be met in this way. The citizens of Lübeck had declared war, and were soon devastating Bornholm and threatening Copenhagen. Christian was embroiled in a hopeless contest in Sweden. He had offended his father's brother, Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein, by obtaining the investiture of the duchy at the hands of Charles V, which he now abandoned by the Treaty of Bordesholm (August). And now, when everything was against him abroad, the seething discontent at home came to a head. Late in 1522 the nobles of Sjaelland broke out