Dominican priests were also ordered as bishops in Vlorë and Butrint. In 1332 a Dominican priest reported that within the Kingdom of Rascia (Serbia) there were two Catholic peoples, the "Latins" and the "Albanians", who both had their own language. The former was limited to coastal towns while the latter was spread out over the countryside, and while the language of the Albanians was noted as quite different from Latin, both peoples are noted as writing with Latin letters. The author, an anonymous Dominican priest, writing in favor of a Western Catholic military action to expel Orthodox Serbia from areas of Albania it controlled in order to restore the power of the Catholic church there, argued that the Albanians and Latin and their clerics were suffering under the "extremely dire bondage of their odious Slav leaders whom they detest" and would eagerly support an expedition of " one thousand French knights and five or six thousand foot soldiers" who, with, their help, could throw off the rule of Rascia. Although Serbian rulers at earlier times had at times relations with the Catholic West despite being Orthodox, as a counterbalance to Byzantine power, and therefore tolerated the spread of Catholicism in their lands, under the reign of Stephan Dushan the Catholics were persecuted, as were also Orthodox bishops loyal to Constantinople. The Catholic rite was called Latin heresy and, angered in part by marriages of Serbian Orthodox with "half-believers" and the Catholic proselytization of Serbians, Dushan's code, the Zakonik contained harsh measures against them. However, the persecutions of local Catholics did not begin in 1349 when the Code was declared in Skopje, but much earlier, at least since the beginning of the 14th century. Under these circumstances the relations between local Catholic Albanians and the papal curia became very close, while the previously friendly relations between local Catholics and Serbians deteriorated significantly. Between 1350 and 1370, the spread of Catholicism in Albania reached its peak. At that period there were around seventeen Catholic bishoprics in the country, which acted not only as centers for Catholic reform within Albania, but also as centers for missionary activity in the neighboring areas, with the permission of the pope. At the end of the 14th century, the previously Orthodox Autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid was dismantled in favor of the Catholic rite. Renaissance Christianity was later overshadowed by Islam, which became the predominant religion during the