It is undeniable that his favourite wife was the most stiff-necked pagan of her day.
Mary was forced to impose taxation which met with violent resistance, especially in 1539 from the stiff-necked town of Ghent.
He and his adherents were outlawed; no one was to print, sell or read any of his writings, " since they are foul, harmful, suspected, and come from a notorious and stiff-necked heretic."
The very existence of Denmark demanded the suppression and conversion of these stiff-necked pagan freebooters, and to this double task Absalon devoted the best part of his life.
He excommunicated the queen as a stiff-necked adherent of the French anti-pope, and in 1381 conferred Naples on the ambitious Charles .of Durazzo, with whom he was soon inextricably embroiled; while, a little later, he fell out with his new College of Cardinals.