History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by S. A. Dunham

|1252 to 1258.|

The reign of this prince was even more troubled than that of his predecessors. Fearing a popular re-action in favour of Abel’s sons, who were minors, he claimed the guardianship. The claim was resisted by the house of Holstein; and to decide the contest both parties resorted to arms. The king was defeated; and though he soon collected a larger force, he found the number of his enemies increased. The people of Lubeck, always hostile to Denmark, and for that same reason always the allies of the counts of Holstein, ravaged the coasts, while those nobles reduced Sleswic. The two margraves of Brandenburg also complained that one of them had not received the dowry promised with his wife, Sophia, daughter of Valdemar II.; and they joined the common league. Nor was this all: during Abel’s reign, there had been some disputes with Sweden and Denmark; and to allay them a conference had been covenanted between the three kings. The death of Abel had prevented the pacification; and Christopher, engrossed by other troubles, was unable to give them the satisfaction required. In revenge the Norwegian arrived with a great armament, while 5000 Swedes penetrated into the heart of the country. Never had the situation of Denmark appeared so critical; but strange to say, its safety lay in the number of its enemies, who became jealous of each other, and of the advantages which each might secure. In this disposition, the offer of mediators was accepted; and conditions of peace between Christopher and his nephews were at length sanctioned. He agreed to invest those nephews, on their reaching majority, with the duchy of Sleswic; and they, in return, were to renounce all pretensions to the crown. In conformity with this treaty, Valdemar, the eldest son of Abel, was released from prison at Cologne, and invested with the government of the duchy. The margrave of Brandenburg was appeased by the pledge of two fortresses, until the dowry could be paid. Thus there remained only Norway and Sweden to be pacified; and though hostilities existed for some time, they were desultory, and were terminated by a reconciliation. An interview with Birger, regent of Sweden, easily led to that result; and when Hako of Norway, who had again arrived with a formidable armament, saw that Christopher was sincerely desirous to satisfy him, he now accepted the will for the deed, and became the friend of the monarch.

|1256, 1257.|

But the chief troubles of Christopher arose from his own prelates. Jacob Erlandsen, bishop of Roskild, a personal friend of Innocent IV., had imbibed the highest notions of clerical privileges. He condemned the influence of the crown in the election of bishops, which was certainly an evil, since royal favourites only were appointed to the rich sees. Acting on his own principle, that bishops had no earthly superior except the pope, he refused, when elected by the chapter of Lund to the primacy, either to allow royal influence any weight in the election, or to accept of confirmation at the royal hands. He next condemned some of the provisions in the ecclesiastical law which Valdemar I. had promulgated in Scania; and when opposed by the king, he intrigued with the royal enemies. There can be no doubt that in his resistance to the encroachments of the crown, not merely on the freedom of election, but on the ecclesiastical revenues, he was abundantly justified; but the manner of his resistance was censurable; and still more so was his league with the enemies of the king. If the primate was an archbishop, he was also a temporal baron; nothing was more easy than to confound the two characters; and while Christopher determined to punish him in the latter, he chose to forget the privileges of the former. Erlandsen was summoned before the states at Vyburg. In reply he convoked a national council to be held at Vedel, a town in the diocese of Rypen in Jutland. In that assembly it was decreed that if any Danish bishop were taken and mutilated, or afflicted with any other atrocious injury, by the order, or with the connivance of the king, or any noble, the kingdom should be laid under an interdict, and the divine service suspended. If the same violence were committed by any foreign prince or noble, and there were reason to infer that it was done at the instigation of the king or any of his council, in the diocese of that bishop there should be a “cessatio à divinis,” and the king during a month should be bound to see justice done: if he refused, the interdict was to be extended over the whole kingdom. After it was laid, no ecclesiastic, under pain of excommunication, was to celebrate any office of religion in the royal presence. The decree was sent to Rome, and confirmed by pope Alexander in October, 1257.

|1257.|

The wrath of the king and of his nobles was roused by this bold, though perhaps necessary, act. But the primate was of an intrepid temper, and quite prepared to share, if necessary, the fate of our Thomas à Becket. In the next diet a number of frivolous and two or three substantial charges were made against him; and he begged time until the next meeting of the states to prepare his answers. In the interim efforts were made to reconcile the two; and they sometimes met. But Erlandsen, by excommunicating a lady of Scania, a favourite of the king, again rekindled the half-smothered wrath of Christopher. Repairing to Lund, the latter held his tribunal, invited all who had any complaint against the archbishop to appear before him, and summoned the archbishop himself to appear and answer whatever might be urged against him. As ecclesiastics were, by a regulation of some standing, amenable to their own laws alone, the churchman denied the competency of the tribunal. In revenge the king revoked the concessions of privileges, immunities, and even of domains, made by his ancestors to the cathedral of Lund—a strange and lawless measure, which, if sanctioned by the nation at large, must have occasioned the entire ruin of the church. As well might a private gentleman revoke his father’s will, and reclaim property of which the bequest has been sanctioned by the laws of society. The officer who served the act of revocation was excommunicated by the primate, who had also the people on his side. Two or three of the bishops were gained by the court; the rest adhered to their spiritual head. Every day widened the breach between the two chief personages in the nation. The states being convoked at Odinsey to swear allegiance to Eric, eldest son of the king, Erlandsen refused to appear, and commanded his suffragans also to refuse. The rage of the king was unbounded. From the states which he now convoked at Copenhagen he obtained permission to seize the primate with the other bishops, and imprison them. A brother of the primate’s was the instrument of his apprehension, and he was conveyed to a fortress in Fionia. The dean and archdeacon of Lund, with the bishop of Rypen, were next secured; but the two spiritual peers of Odinsey and Roskild had time to flee from the realm.

|1258 to 1259.|

In his captivity the primate was treated with much rigour. What his proud spirit could least bear was insult; if it be true, that he was forced to wear a cap made from a fox’s skin, we may smile at what called forth the bitter resentment of himself and the pope. The king was soon made to repent his violence. In virtue of the ordinance of the national council at Vedel, the fugitive bishops laid an interdict on the kingdom; the pope espoused the cause of his church; and Jaromir, prince of Rugen, to whose hospitality the bishop of Roskild had fled, was persuaded by both to arm in behalf of the altar. Great was the wrath of Christopher to see the interdict so well observed, and to hear the murmurs of his people. How could he, alone, resist a power which had proved fatal to so many emperors and so many kings, compared with which his was that of the meanest vassal in his dominions? In the hope of obtaining what he called justice, he appealed to Rome. Yet at the same time he endeavoured to dispose his royal neighbours of Sweden and Norway in his favour. They, too, had bishops, and the cause of one was the cause of all: it was a struggle, he observed, between the rights of kings and the insolence of their subjects. They promised to assist him in this war alike on the pope and his own clergy, whom he was about to deprive of their temporalities; and had already powerful armaments in motion when intelligence reached them that he was no more.

|1259.|

Whether this monarch died naturally, or through poison, is doubtful. The suddenness of that death, and the peculiar circumstances in which he met it, could not fail to create the suspicion, and with some minds suspicion is truth. Even the monk whose fanaticism was said to have occasioned the deed, has been indicated by name. In the letter, however, which both his widow and his son addressed to the pope after this event, no one is implicated, and the charge of poison, true or false, was merely stated in general and indefinite terms. That he fell a victim to poison has not been proved, still less that it was administered by a churchman. The evidence, however, is rather indicative of a tragical end, though the causes and the circumstances must for ever rest a mystery.