sition on the part of Brask had brought him more and more beneath
the monarch's frown. Gustavus let no opportunity escape to add
humiliation to the venerable bishop. On one occasion Brask unwittingly
had consecrated as a nun a woman who formerly had been betrothed; and
when the woman later left the convent to become her lover's wife, the
bishop placed them both beneath the ban. This act called forth a
condemnation from the king. "The bearer tells us," were his words to
Brask, "that he has married a woman to whom he was engaged, and who
against her will was made a nun. We see no wrong in such a practice, and
wonder much that you did not inform yourself before the girl received
her consecration. The husband informs us, further, that you have placed
them both beneath the ban. This course appears to us unjust, and we
command you to remit the punishment.... We think it better to allow this
marriage than to drive the woman to an impure life." A little later,
when revolt arose in Dalarne, Gustavus fancied that he saw the bishop's
hand. "The priests," he said to one of his officers, "are at the bottom
of all rebellion, and the diocese of Linkoeping is the heart of this
conspiracy." Gustavus had no ground for this suspicion, and the charge
was utterly untrue. Brask thought the tax imposed upon the Dalesmen
altogether too severe, and did not hesitate to say so; but he was very
far from sympathizing with the rebels, and when it was ordered that the
diet should be held in Vesteras to please the Dalesmen, he was the first
person to suggest a danger in holding it so near the seat of the
revolt.[168]

Brask's influential position in the diet only added to the monarch's
wrath, and it was against him chiefly that the diet's acts were framed.
He was the wealthiest of the Swedish bishops. Hence the reduction in
their incomes, as commanded by the diet, fell heaviest on him. But even
here the monarch's greed was not assuaged. After the "Ordinantia" had
been passed, Gustavus rose and called upon the several bishops to resign
their castles. This step, though advocated by the burghers and
mountaineers as well as common people, had not been ordered by the diet.
Gustavus seems, therefore, to have made the demand upon his own
authority alone, and the issue proved that his authority was great. The
bishops of Strengnaes and Skara, on whom the demand was made first,
acquiesced as gracefully as was possible to so provoking a demand. But
when the mona