carry on their ambitious practices to the ruin of our realm." This explanation did not wholly calm the peasants; and when they found Gustavus holding another contest over their religious tenets, their suspicions were aroused again. Gustavus determined, therefore, that he must take some drastic measure to prevent revolt. What he needed was a vote of all the people to support his views. So he issued a proclamation in January, 1527, informing the whole country that, since he was reported to be introducing new beliefs, he should soon summon a general diet to discuss the more important matters of belief, particularly the overweening power of the pope.[150] To this serious step Gustavus was impelled by several things. In the first place he desired to fortify himself against the pope. During the last three years the pope had practically been without authority in Sweden. Gustavus had selected as his bishops men whose actions he was able to control, and the pope had deprived himself of even the semblance of authority by refusing to confirm them. However, the nominal supremacy of Rome was not yet shaken off; and until it was so, there was constant danger that her actual supremacy would revive. The monarch's chief anxiety concerned Archbishop Magni. That prelate owed his appointment mainly to the pliability of his temper, and to the assumption on the monarch's part that he would prove a ready tool. In this assumption Gustavus had soon discovered he was wrong. Magni, though of pliant temper, was a thorough Papist, and, as time went on, displayed a growing tendency to oppose the king. In consequence he gradually fell from favor, till he became an object of open distrust. The earliest evidence of this feeling appeared in 1525, when Magni, as one of the envoys sent to Lubeck, was warned to take no action without the acquiescence of the other envoys. This mandate was issued from a fear lest Magni should encourage Lubeck to raise her voice against the spread of Lutheranism in the Swedish kingdom. How far this fear was justified, it is difficult to say. As Lubeck had not yet embraced the Reformation, she doubtless sympathized in some degree with Magni, but there is not the slightest evidence that Magni was unfaithful to the king. In February, of the following year, when Magni was starting for the Norwegian frontier to administer the rite of confirmation, he wrote the archbishop of Trondhem that he would like to meet him and discuss the dangerous condition of the Church. Gustavus, hearing of the contents of this letter, was aroused again. The archbishop of Trondhem had given offence by harboring Swedish refugees, and Magni's simple letter caused the monarch to believe that the two archbishops were, as he expressed it, "in secret negotiation." Some two months later, Gustavus being in the archbishop's palace, a stately feast was given in his honor. This only added to the feud. The monarch was incensed to find that Magni was capable of such display.