There was a Norwegian Joab in the first half of the thirteenth century, who, like the chieftain of old, plotted against his rightful monarch and was finally slain within the sacred precincts of an Augustinian convent. Skule, King Hakon’s father-in-law, was a man of restless ambition, who could not find complete satisfaction in the titles of earl and duke, but stretched forth his hand to seize the crown itself. In 1239 he assumed the royal title, but a few months later (1240) his forces were surprised in Nidaros by the king’s army, and the rebellion came to a sudden end. Skule’s men fled to the churches; his son Peter found refuge in one of the buildings belonging to the monastery of Elgesæter, but was discovered and slain. After a few days Duke Skule himself sought security in the same monastery; but the angry Birchshanks, in spite of the solemn warnings and threatenings of the offended monks, slew the pretender and burned the monastery.[107] This was an act of violence which must have caused much trouble for the king’s partisans, and it is most likely the act which the author of the _King’s Mirror_ had in his thoughts when he wrote of the fate of Joab. Footnote 107: _Hákonar Saga_, cc. 239-241; Munch, _Det norske Folks Historie_, III, 977-978. Writers on political philosophy usually begin their specific discussion of the theory of divine right of kingship when they come to the great political theorists of the fourteenth century.[108] The most famous of these is Marsiglio of Padua, who wrote his _Defensor Pacis_ in 1324. In this work he asserted that the emperor derived his title and sovereignty from God and that his authority was superior to that of the pope. Some years earlier William Occam, an English scholar and philosopher, made similar claims for the rights of the king of France. Earlier still, perhaps in 1310, Dante had claimed divine right for princes generally in his famous work _De Monarchia_. Somewhat similar, though less precise, ideas had been expressed by John of Paris in 1305. But nearly two generations earlier the doctrine had been stated in all its baldness and with all its implications by the author of the _King’s Mirror_; and more than a century before Dante wrote his work on “Monarchy” Sverre had published his _Address_ to the Norwegian people. So far as the writer has been able to determine there is no treatise on general medieval politics, at least no such treatise written in English, which contains even an allusion to these two significant works. Footnote 108: On this subject, see Figgis, _Divine Right of Kings_, c. iii.