He could not persuade the archbishop, who went his own way and was beaten and exiled for a season, nor could he prevent the King from yielding to the blandishments of Frederick and getting mixed up in the papal troubles; but he went with him to Germany and saved him at the last moment from committing himself by making him leave the church council just as the anti-pope was about to pronounce sentence of excommunication against Alexander.  He commanded Absalon to remain, as a servant of the church, but Absalon replied calmly that he was not there in that capacity, but as an attendant on his King, and must follow where he went.  It appeared speedily that the Emperor’s real object was to get Valdemar to own him as his over-lord, and this he did, to Absalon’s great grief, on the idle promise that Frederick would join him in his war upon all the Baltic pagans.  However, it was to be a purely personal matter, in nowise affecting his descendants.  That much was saved, and Absalon lived long enough to fling back, as the counsellor of Valdemar’s son, from behind the stout wall he built at Denmark’s southern gate, the Emperor’s demand for homage, with the reply that “the King ruled in Denmark with the same right as the Emperor in Germany, and was no man’s subject.”

However grievously Absalon had offended the aged archbishop, when after forty years in his high office illness compelled him to lay it down, he could find no one so worthy to step into his shoes.  He sent secretly to Rome and got the Pope’s permission to name his own successor, before he called a meeting of the church.  The account of what followed is the most singular of all Saxo’s stories.  Valdemar did not know what was coming and, fearing fresh trouble, got the archbishop to swear on the bones of the saints before them all that he was not moved to abdication by hate of the King, or by any coercion whatever.  Then the venerable priest laid his staff, his mitre, and his ring on the altar and announced that he had done with it all forever.  But he had made up his mind not to use the power given him by the Pontiff.  They might choose his successor themselves.  He would do nothing to influence their action.

The bishops and clergy went to the King and asked him if he had any choice.  The King said he had, but if he made it known he would get no thanks for it and might estrange his best friend.  If he did not, he would certainly be committing a sin.  He did not know what to do.

“Name him,” said they, and Valdemar told them it was the bishop of Roskilde.

At that the old archbishop got up and insisted on the election then and there; but Absalon would have none of it.  The burden was too heavy for his shoulders, he said.  However, the clergy seized him, “being,” says Saxo, who without doubt was one of them, “the more emboldened to do so as the archbishop himself laid hands upon him first.”  Intoning the hymn sung at archiepiscopal consecrations, they tried to lead him to the altar.  He resisted