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. [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 1257.]