He was an outstanding jurist of canon law. Grand studied at the University of Paris and received a degree as a doctor of canon law. About he gained a prebend as canon of the Roskilde Cathedral and in he advanced to the post of cathedral provost.
Possibly Grand was an accomplice of the regicide. Maybe his donation of twelve prebendaries to the Roskilde Cathedral, which Pope Nicholas IV confirmed in , is to be understood as an atonement for that sin. Grand appeared as a political figure when in the cathedral chapter of Lund elected him as archbishop.
This position included the Scandinavian primacy. From the start Grand firmly opposed the royal power, openly sympathising with the exiled magnates and refusing any support of the royal family. Like Lund's former Archbishop Jacob Erlandsen , whose sister was Grand's maternal grandmother, he seems to have been the supporter of an independent church without any obligations towards the State or the king.
These views, which seem to have been expressed in a both daring and provoking way, made him appear to the young Eric Menved as a pure traitor - especially at a time of danger. In Grand approved himself as a jurist and decreed the new Constitutio cum Ecclesia Daciana , asserting canon law in Denmark at the expense of royal privileges.
This affront escalated in a dispute between Eric Menved and Grand on the investiture of Lund's dean , Thorkil, and its provost , Jakob Lange, with additional prebends. In the following year Grand initiated to set up a necrologium of the Archdiocese, an inventory recording all the dead to be clerically commemorated by Offices of the Dead and the pertaining prebends and foundations donated to account for these ceremonies. In , Eric Menved in return ordered Grand's and Lange's arrestment.
