disregarded the Bigsraad altogether, subjected the higher orders to taxation, and violated all their most cherished privileges. Nor was it otherwise with the clergy, who soon found that in him they had a master. He levied from them by arbitrary and lawless methods the money which he really needed, but could not obtain in any legal way; Beldenak in particular was fleeced unmercifully. Meanwhile he skilfully availed himself of the jealousy between them and the nobles, who could not forget that many of them, including Archbishop Berger and Bishop Beldenak, were not nobly born, in order to overturn the power of both. For the time it seemed as if he had succeeded; and two great collections of laws, the so-called Secular and Ecclesiastical Code, which he put forth in 1521 and 1522 on his own authority, without submitting them to the Rigsraad, might seem to have marked the downfall of the aristocratic power. But in little more than a year they had been publicly burned and their author was a fugitive.
But Christian's work was not merely destructive. The people at large found in him a careful and wise ruler, who scrutinised every detail of civil life and government and was never weary of working for their good. His reforms of municipal government were at once elaborate and rigorous. He built great ships and put down piracy; he made wise treaties with foreign Powers. He extended commercial privileges to his burghers, and restricted those of the Hanseatic towns, endeavouring to make Copenhagen the centre of the Baltic trade; and with this object in view he encouraged Dutch merchants to found houses there, and extended a warm welcome to the rich banking-house of the Fuggers. He brought Flemish gardeners to Denmark in order that they might teach his people horticulture, and established them in the little island of Amager, where their descendants are to this day. He abolished the old " strand rights " and rights of wreck, and decreed that all possible assistance should be given to ships in peril and to shipwrecked mariners; and when the Jutland Bishops remonstrated with him, saying that there was nothing in the Bible against wrecking, Christian answered, "Let the lord-prelates go back and study the eighth commandment." He caused uniform weights and measures to be used throughout his dominions; he took steps for the improvement of the public roads, and made the first attempt at the creation of a postal system. He abolished the worst evils of serfage, and made provision for the punishment of cruel masters. His laws on behalf of morals and of public order are enlightened and wise; he abolished the death penalty for witchcraft; he founded a system for the relief of the sick. He did his utmost for the encouragement of learning. The University of Copenhagen, authorised by Pope Martin V in 1419, actually founded by Christian I in 1478 with three professors only, of law, theology, and medicine, first became important under Christian II. He founded a Carmelite House in Copenhagen, which was to maintain a graduate in divinity who should lecture daily in the
