Anders Sunesen

He is the author of the Latin translation of the Scanian Law and was throughout his life engaged in integrating a Christian worldview into the old legislature.

He managed to introduce tithe (taxation benefiting the church) despite the resistance this measure had met from the population of Scania during Absalon's time,[1] but his efforts to convince the priests of his day about the merits of celibacy was based mostly on his own example and relied on oratory rather than legal maneuvering.

[2] To educate the priests and to forward his ideas, especially about the integration between church and state, he wrote a didactic poem, Hexaëmon, consisting of 8,040 verses of Latin hexameter.

A nephew of Absalon and a member of the religious and political elite, Sunesen was well-traveled, having received his education in theology and philosophy in Paris, France, and his legal education in Bologna, Italy and at Oxford, England.

He eventually received permission to install a bishop in Reval (Tallinn), and in 1219, he accompanied Valdemar II in his war against Estonia.