In the month of May, 1530, the Imperial Diet assembled in the free city of Augsburg. No one doubted that the emperor, who had just been crowned by the pope in Italy, would be desirous of discharging his obligation to the latter by compelling the Protestants to prostrate themselves anew before the triple crown. The Danish prelates, especially, were persuaded of this. They took a higher tone, and said that if they could but meet the Lutherans, they would speedily reduce them to silence. They assumed to give at Copenhagen a rehearsal of the drama which was about to be acted at Augsburg. The Danish evangelicals, on their part, ardently desired a conference; and the king himself acknowledged the necessity for it. He therefore caused proclamation to be made throughout Denmark. ‘The bishops, the prelates on the one side, and the Lutheran preachers, Master John Tausen and his adherents, on the other side, were invited to appear at the Diet, before the king and the royal council, for the purpose of presenting their confession of faith and of defending it, to the end that one sole Christian religion might be established in the kingdom.’[287] [Sidenote: Diet Of Copenhagen.] The opening of the Diet was fixed for the 20th of July, 1530. The royal proclamation produced various effects. The prelates affected to be heartily pleased, and would fain have convinced every body of their sincerity. But it is not safe to triumph before victory.[288] The members of the roman party when by themselves were not the same men as they were in public. ‘Alas!’ they would say to one another, ‘if Odensee gave freedom to the Protestants, will not Copenhagen deprive the prelates of their dignities?’ The prelates took council among themselves, and came to the conclusion that they could not trust to their own strength. Paul Eliæ was the only man at all fit to cope with Tausen; but the prelates had not entire confidence in him. Eck and Cochlaeus had refused to venture so far as Scandinavia. The precentor of the cathedral of Aarhuus, Master George Samsing, one of the best Danish theologians, was despatched to the _holy_ city of Cologne to seek after doctors well versed in Aristotle,[289] masters of arts and bold and subtile mocks, skilled in the art of hitting hard blows, and of opportunely misleading their antagonists and their hearers in the labyrinth of distinctions and syllogisms. The precentor was not very fortunate in his researches; he succeeded, however, in persuading an unknown doctor named Stagefyr, and another whose name even is not known.