The History of
Protestantism |
Chapter 1 | . . . | CAUSES THAT INFLUENCED THE RECEPTION OR
REJECTION OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE VARIOUS COUNTRIES. Germany -causes disposing it toward the New Movement Central Position Free Towns Sobriety and Morality of the People Switzerland The Swiss Hardy-Lovers of Liberty The New Liberty Some Accept, some Refuse France Its Greatness Protestantism in France Glorified by its Martyrs Retribution Bohemia and Hungary Protestantism Flourishes there Extinction by Austrian Tyranny Holland Littleness of the CountryHeroism Holland raised to Greatness by the Struggle Belgium Begins Well Faints Sinks down under the Two-fold Yoke of Religious and Secular Despotism. |
Chapter 2 | . . . | FORTUNES OF PROTESTANTISM IN ITALY, SPAIN,
AND BRITAIN. Italy Shall Italy be a Disciple of the Goth? Pride in the Past her Stumbling-block Spain The Moslem Dominancy It Intensifies Spanish Bigotry Protestantism to be Glorified in Spain by Martyrdom Preparations for ultimate Triumph England Wicliffe Begins the New Times Rapid View of Progress from Wicliffe to Henry VIII. Character of the King His Quarrel with the Pope Protestantism Triumphs Scotland. |
Chapter 3 | . . . | INTRODUCTION OF PROTESTANTISM INTO
SWEDEN. Influence of Germany on Sweden and Denmark Planting of Christianity in Sweden A Mission Church till the Eleventh Century Organized by Rome in the Twelfth Wealth and Power of the Clergy Misery of the Kingdom Arcimbold Indulgences Christian II. of Denmark Settlement of Calmar Christian II. Subdues the Swedes Cruelties He is Expelled Gustavus Vasa Olaf and Lawrence Patersen They begin to Teach the Doctrines of Luther They Translate the Bible Proposed Translation by the Priests Suppression of Protestant Version Demanded King Refuses A Disputation Agreed on. |
Chapter 4 | . . . | CONFERENCE AT UPSALA. Programme of Debate Twelve Points Authority of the Fathers Power of the Clergy Can Ecclesiastical Decrees Bind the Conscience? Power of Excommunication The Pope's Primacy Works or Grace, which saves? Has Monkery warrant in Scripture? Question of the Institution of the Lord's Supper Purgatory Intercession of the Saints Lessons of the Conference Conscience Quickened by the Bible produced the Reformation. |
Chapter 5 | . . . | ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN
SWEDEN. The Battles of Religion More Fruitful than those of Kings Consequences of the Upsala Conference The King adopts a Reforming Policy Clergy Refuse the War-levy Conference respecting Ecclesiastical Possessions and Immunities Secret Compact of Bishops A Civil War imminent Vasa threatens to Abdicate Diet resolves to Receive the Protestant Religion 13,000 Estates Surrendered by the Romish Church Reformation in 1527 Coronation of Vasa Ceremonies and Declaration Reformation Completed in 1529 Doctrine and Worship of the Reformed Church of Sweden Old Ceremonies Retained Death and Character of Gustavus Vasa Eric XIV. John The "Red Book " Relapse A Purifying Fire. |
Chapter 6 | . . . | PROTESTANTISM IN SWEDEN, FROM VASA (1530)
TO CHARLES IX. (1604). Ebb in Swedish Protestantism Sigismund a Candidate for the Throne-His Equivocal Promise Synod of Upsala, 1593 Renew their Adherence to the Augsburg Confession Abjure the "Red Book" Their Measure of Toleration The Nation joyfully Adheres to the Declaration of the Upsala Convocation Sigismund Refuses to Subscribe The Diet Withholds the Crown He Signs and is Crowned His Short Reign Charles IX. His Death A Prophecy. |
Chapter 7 | . . . | INTRODUCTION OF PROTESTANTISM INTO
DENMARK. Paul Elia Inclines to Protestantism Returns to Rome Petrus Parvus Code of Christian II. The New Testament in Danish Georgius Johannis Johannis Taussanus Studies at Cologne Finds Access to Luther's Writings Repairs to Wittemberg Returns to Denmark Re-enters the Monastery of Antvorskoborg Explains the Bible to the Monks Transferred to the Convent of Viborg Expelled from the Convent Preaches in the City Great Excitement in Viborg, and Alarm of the Bishops Resolve to invite Doctors Eck and Cochlaeus to Oppose Taussan Their Letter to Eck Their Picture of Lutheranism Their Flattery of Eck He Declines the Invitation. |
Chapter 8 | . . . | CHURCH-SONG IN DENMARK. Paul Elia Opposes Harangues the Soldiery in the Citadel Tumults The King summons a Meeting of the Estates at Odensee His Address to the Bishops Edict of Toleration Church-Song Ballad-Poetry of Denmark Out-burst of Sacred Psalmody Nicolaus Martin Preaches outside the Walls of Malmoe Translates the German Hymns into Danish The Psalms Translated Sung Universally in Denmark Nicolaus Martin Preaches inside Malmoe Theological College Established there Preachers sent through Denmark Taussan Removed to Copenhagen New Translation of the New Testament. |
Chapter 9 | . . . | ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN
DENMARK. The King summons a Conference Forty-three Articles of the Protestants Agreement with the Augsburg Confession Romanist Indictment against Protestants Its Heads In what Language shall the Debate take place? Who shall be Judge? The Combat Declined at the Eleventh Hour Declaration of Protestant Pastors Proclamation of the King Dissolution of the Monasteries, etc.. Establishment of Protestantism Transformation undergone by Denmark. |
Chapter 10 | . . . | PROTESTANTISM UNDER CHRISTIAN III., AND ITS
EXTENSION TO NORWAY AND ICELAND. Scheme for Restoring the Old Faith Abortive Unsuccessful Invasion of the Country by Christian II. Death of the King Interregnum of Two Years Priestly Plottings and Successes Taussan Condemned to Silence and Exile The Senators Besieged by an Armed Mob in the Senate House Taussan given up Bishops begin to Persecute Inundations, etc. Christian III. Ascends the Throne Subdues a Revolt Assembles the Estates at Copenhagen The Bishops Abolished New Ecclesiastical Constitution framed, 1547 Bugenhagen The Seven Superintendents Bugenhagen Crowns the King Denmark Flourishes Establishment of Protestantism in Norway and Iceland. |
BOOK TENTH
RISE
AND ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN SWEDEN AND DENMARK.
CHAPTER 1
Back to
Top
CAUSES THAT INFLUENCED THE
RECEPTION OR REJECTION OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE VARIOUS
COUNTRIES.
Germany -causes disposing it toward the New Movement
Central Position Free Towns Sobriety and Morality of the People
Switzerland The Swiss Hardy-Lovers of Liberty The New Liberty Some
Accept, some Refuse France Its Greatness Protestantism in France Glorified
by its Martyrs Retribution Bohemia and Hungary Protestantism Flourishes
there Extinction by Austrian Tyranny Holland Littleness of the
CountryHeroism Holland raised to Greatness by the Struggle Belgium Begins
Well Faints Sinks down under the Two-fold Yoke of Religious and Secular
Despotism.
WHAT we have already narrated is only the opening of
the great drama in some of the countries of Christendom. Protestantism was
destined to present itself at the gates of all the kingdoms of Europe. Thither
must we follow it, and chronicle the triumphs it obtained in some of them, the
defeat it sustained in others. But first let us take a panoramic view of the
various countries, as respects the state of their peoples and their preparedness
for the great, spiritual movement which was about to enter their territories.
This will enable us to understand much that is to follow. In these opening
Chapters we shall summarize the moral revolutions, with the national splendors
in some cases, the national woes in others, that attended them, the historical
record of which will occupy the pages that are to follow.
In some
countries Protestantism made steady and irresistible advance, and at last
established itself amid the triumphs of art and the higher blessings of free and
stable government. In others, alas! it failed to find any effectual entrance.
Though thousands of martyrs died to open its way, it was obliged to retire
before an overwhelming array of stakes and scaffolds, leaving the barriers of
these unhappy countries, as France and Spain, for instance, to be forced open by
ruder instrumentality's at a later day. To the gates at which the Reformation
had knocked in vain in the sixteenth century, came Revolution in the eighteenth
in a tempest of war and bloody insurrections.
During the profound night
that shrouded Europe for so many centuries, a few lights appeared at intervals
on the horizon. They were sent to minister a little solace to those who waited
for the dawn, and to give assurance to men that the "eternal night," to use the
pagan phrase, had not descended upon the earth. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, Wicliffe appeared in England; and nearly half a century later, Huss and
Jerome arose in Bohemia. These blessed lights, welcome harbinger of morn nay,
that morn itself cheered men for a little space; but still the day tarried. A
century rolls away, and now the German sky begins to brighten, and the German
plains to glow with a new radiance. Is it day that looks forth, or is it but a
deceitful gleam, fated to be succeeded by another century of gloom? No! the
times of the darkness are fulfilled, and the command has gone forth for the
gates to open and day to shine in all its effulgence.
Both the place and
the hour were opportune for the appearance of the Reformer. Germany was a
tolerably central spot. The great lines of communication lay through it.
Emperors visited it at times; imperial Diets were often held in it, which
brought thither, in crowds princes, philosophers, and scribes., and attracted
the gaze of many more who did not come in person. It had numerous free towns in
which mechanical arts and burghal rights flourished together.
Other
countries were at that moment less favorably situated. France was devoted to
arms, Spain was wrapped up in its dignity, and yet more in its bigotry, which
had just been intensified by the presence on its soil of a rival superstition
Islam namely which had seized the fairest of its provinces, and displayed its
symbols from the walls of the proudest of its cities. Italy, guarded by the
Alps, lay drowned in pleasure. England was parted from the rest of Europe by the
sea. Germany was the country which most largely fulfilled the conditions
required in the spot where the second cradle of the movement should be placed.
In its sympathies, sentiments, and manners Germany was more ecumenical than any
other country; it belonged more to Christendom, and was, moreover, the
connecting link between Asia and Europe, for the commerce of the two hemispheres
was carried across it, though not wholly so now, for the invention of the
mariner's compass had opened new channels for trade, and new routes for the
navigator.
If we consider the qualities of the people, there was no
nation on the Continent so likely to welcome this movement and to yield
themselves to it. The Germans had escaped, in some degree, the aestheticism
which had emasculated the intellect, and the vice which had embruted the manners
of the southern nations. They retained to a large extent the simplicity of life
which had so favorably distinguished their ancestors; they were frugal,
industrious, and sober-minded. A variety of causes had scattered among them the
seeds of a coming liberty, and its first sproutings were seen in the
interrogatories they were beginning to put to themselves, why it should be
necessary to import all their opinions from beyond the Alps, where the people
were neither better, braver, nor wiser than themselves. They could not
understand why nothing orthodox should grow save in Italian soil.
Here,
then, marked by many signs, was the spot where a movement whose forces were
stirring below the surface in many countries, was most likely to show itself.
The dissensions and civil broils, the din of which had distracted the German
people for a century previous, were now silenced, as if to permit the voice that
was about to address them to be the more distinctly heard, and the more
reverentially listened to.
From the German plains we turn to the
mountains of Switzerland. The Swiss knew how to bear toil, to brave peril, and
to die for liberty. These qualities they owed in a great degree to the nature of
their soil, the grandeur of their mountains, and the powerful and ambitious
States in their neighborhood, which made it necessary for them to study less
peaceful occupations than that of tending their herds, and gave them frequent
opportunities of displaying their courage in sterner contests than those they
waged with the avalanches and tempests of their hills. Now it was France and now
it was Austria, which attempted to become master of their country, and its
valorous sons had to vindicate their right to independence on many a bloody
field. A higher liberty than that for which Tell had contended, or the patriots
of St. Jacob and Morat had poured out their blood, now offered itself to the
Swiss. Will they accept it? It only needed that the yoke of Rome should be
broken, as that of Austria had already been, to perfect their freedom. And it
seemed as if this happy lot was in store for this land. Before Luther's name was
known in Switzerland, the Protestant movement had already broken out; and, under
Zwingli, whose views on some points were even clearer than those of Luther,
Protestantism for awhile rapidly progressed. But the stage in this case was less
conspicuous, and the champion less powerful, and the movement in Switzerland
failed to acquire the breadth of the German one. The Swiss mind, like the Swiss
land, is partitioned and divided, and does not always grasp a whole subject, or
combine in one unbroken current the entire sentiment and action of the people.
Factions sprang up; the warlike Forest Cantons took the side of Rome; arms met
arms, and the first phase of the movement ended with the life of its leader on
the fatal field of Cappel. A mightier champion was to resume the battle which
had been lost under Zwingli: but that champion had not yet arrived. The disaster
which had overtaken the movement in Switzerland had arrested it, but had not
extinguished it. The light of the new day continued to brighten on the shores of
its lakes, and in the cities of its plains; but the darkness lingered in those
deep and secluded valleys over which the mighty forms of the Oberland Alps hang
in their glaciers and snows. The five Forest Cantons had led gloriously in the
campaign against Austria; but they were not to have the honor of leading in this
second and greater battle. They had fought valorously for political freedom; but
that liberty which is the palladium of all others they knew not to
value.
To France came Protestantism in the sixteenth century, with its
demand, "Open that I may enter." But France was too magnificent a country to
become a convert to Protestantism. Had that great kingdom embraced the
Reformation, the same century which witnessed the birth would have witnessed
also the triumph of Protestantism; but at what a cost would that triumph have
been won! The victory would have been ascribed to the power, the learning, and
the genius of France; and the moral majesty of the movement would have been
obscured if not wholly eclipsed. The Author of Protestantism did not intend that
it should borrow the carnal weapons of princes, or owe thanks to the wisdom of
the schools, or be a debtor to men. A career more truly sublime was before it.
It was to foil armies, to stain the glory of philosophy, to trample on the pride
of power; but itself was to bleed and suffer, and to go onwards, its streaming
wounds its badges of rank, and its "sprinkled raiment" its robe of honor.
Accordingly in France, though the movement early displayed itself, and once and
again enlisted in its support the greater part of the intelligence and genius
and virtue of the French people, France it never Protestantized. The state
remained Roman Catholic all along (for the short period of equivocal policy on
the part of Henry IV. is no exception); but the penalty exacted, and to this day
not fully discharged, was a tremendous one. The bloody wars of a century, the
destruction of order, of industry, and of patriotism, the sudden and terrible
fall of the monarchy amid the tempests of revolution, formed the price which
France had to pay for the fatal choice she made at that grand crisis of her
fate.
Let us turn eastward to Bohemia and Hungary. They were once
powerful Protestant centers, their proud position in this respect being due to
the heroism of Huss and Jerome of Prague. Sanctuaries of the Reformed faith, in
which pastors holy in life and learned in doctrine ministered to flourishing
congregations, rose in all the cities and rural districts. But these countries
lay too near the Austrian Empire to be left unmolested. As when the simoom
passes over the plain, brushing from its surface with its hot breath the flowers
and verdure that cover it, and leaving only an expanse of withered herbs, so
passed the tempest of Austrian bigotry over Bohemia and Hungary. The
Protestantism of these lands was utterly exterminated. Their sons died on the
battle-field or perished on the scaffold. Silent cities, fields untilled, the
ruins of churches and houses, so lately the abodes of a thriving, industrious,
and orderly population, testified to the thorough and unsparing character of
that zeal which, rather than that these regions should be the seat of
Protestantism, converted them into a blackened and silent waste. The records of
these persecutions were long locked up in the imperial archives; but the
sepulcher has been opened; the wrongs which were inflicted by the court of
Austria on its Protestant subjects, and the perfidies with which it was
attempted to cover these wrongs, may now be read by all; and the details of
these events will form part of the sad and harrowing pages that are to
follow.
The next theater of Protestantism must detain us a little. The
territory to which we now turn is a small one, and was as obscure as small till
the Reformation came and shed a halo around it, as if to show that there is no
country so diminutive which a great principle cannot glorify. At the mouth of
the Rhine is the little Batavia. France and Spain thought and spoke of this
country, when they thought and spoke of it at all, with contempt. A marshy flat,
torn from the ocean by the patient labor of the Dutch, and defended by mud
dykes, could in no respect compare with their own magnificent realms. Its
quaking soil and moist climate were in meet accordance with the unpoetic race of
which it was the dwelling-place. No historic ray lighted up its past, and no
generous art or chivalrous feat illustrated its present. Yet this despised
country suddenly got the start of both France and Spain. As when some obscure
peak touched by the sun flashes into the light, and is seen over kingdoms, so
Holland:, in this great morning, illumined by the torch of Protestantism,
kindled into a glory which attracted the gaze of all Europe. It seemed as if a
more, than Roman energy had been suddenly grafted upon the phlegmatic Batavian
nature.
On that new soil feats of arms were performed in the cause of
religion and liberty, which nothing in the annals of ancient Italy surpasses,
and few things equal. Christendom owed much at that crisis of its history to the
devotion and heroism of this little country. Wanting Holland, the great battle
of the sixteenth century might not have reached the issue to which it was
brought; nor might the advancing tide of Romish and Spanish tyranny have been
stemmed and turned back.
Holland had its reward. Disciplined by its
terrible struggle, it became a land of warriors, of statesmen, and of scholars.
It founded universities, which were the lights of Christendom during the age
that succeeded; it created a commerce which extended to both hemispheres; and
its political influence was acknowledged in all the Cabinets of Europe. As the
greatness of Holland had grown with its Protestantism, so it declined when its
Protestantism relapsed. Decay speedily followed its day of power; but long
afterwards its Protestantism again began to return, and with it began to return
the wealth, the prosperity, and the influence of its better age.
We cross
the frontier and pass into Belgium. The Belgians began well. They saw the
legions of Spain, which conquered sometimes by their reputed invincibility even
before they had struck a blow, advancing to offer them the alternative of
surrendering their consciences or surrendering their lives. They girded on the
sword to fight for their ancient privileges and their newly-adopted faith; for
the fields which their skillful labor had made fruitful as a garden, and the
cities which their taste had adorned and their industry enriched with so many
marvels. But the Netherlanders fainted in the day of battle. The struggle, it is
true, was a sore one; yet not more so to the Belgians than to the Hollanders:
but while the latter held out, waxing ever the more resolute as the tempest grew
ever the more fierce, till through an ocean of blood they had waded to liberty,
the former became dismayed, their strength failed them in the way, and they
ingloriously sank down under the double yoke of Philip and of
Rome.
CHAPTER 2
Back to
Top
FORTUNES OF
PROTESTANTISM IN ITALY, SPAIN, AND BRITAIN.
Italy Shall Italy be a
Disciple of the Goth? Pride in the Past her Stumbling-block Spain The
Moslem Dominancy It Intensifies Spanish Bigotry Protestantism to be
Glorified in Spain by Martyrdom Preparations for ultimate Triumph England
Wicliffe Begins the New Times Rapid View of Progress from Wicliffe to Henry
VIII. Character of the King His Quarrel with the Pope Protestantism
Triumphs Scotland.
PROTESTANTISM crossed the Alps and essayed to gather round its standard the historic nations of Italy and Spain. To the difficulties that met it everywhere, other and peculiar ones were added in this new field. Unstrung by indolence, and enervated by sensuality, the Italians had no ear but for soft cadences, no eye but for aesthetic ceremonies, and no heart but for a sensual and sentimental devotion. Justly had its great poet Tasso, speaking of his native Italy, called it
And another of her poets, Guidiccioni. called upon her to shake off her corrupting and shameful languor, but called in vain
The new faith which demanded the homage of the
Italians was but little in harmony with their now strongly formed tastes and
dearly cherished predilections. Severe in its morals, abstract in its doctrines,
and simple and spiritual in its worship, it appeared cold as the land from which
it had come - a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness. Her pride
took offense. Was Italy to be a disciple of the Goth? Was she to renounce the
faith which had been handed down to her from early times, stamped with the
approval of so many apostolic names and sealed with the sanction of so many
Councils, and in the room of this venerated worship to embrace a religion born
but yesterday in the forests of Germany? She must forget all her past before she
could become Protestant. That a new day should dawn in the North appeared to her
just as unnatural as that the sun, reversing his course, should rise in that
quarter of the sky in which it is wont to set.
Nowhere had Christianity a
harder battle to fight in primitive times than at Jerusalem and among the Jews,
the descendants of the patriarchs. They had the chair of Moses, and they refused
to listen to One greater than Moses; they had the throne of David, to which,
though fallen, they continued to cling, and they rejected the scepter of Him who
was David's Son and Lord. In like manner the Italians had two possessions, in
which their eyes were of more value than a hundred Reformations. They had the
capital of the world, and the chair of St. Peter. These were the precious legacy
which the past had bequeathed to them, attesting the apostolicity of their
descent, and forming, as they accounted them, the indubitable proofs that
Providence had placed amongst them the fountain of the Faith, and the seat of
universal spiritual dominion. To become Protestant was to renounce their
birth-right. So clinging to these empty signs they missed the great substance.
Italy preferred her Pope to the Gospel.
When we cross the Pyrenees and
enter Spain, we find a people who are more likely, so one would judge, to give
Protestantism a sympathetic welcome. Grave, earnest, self-respectful, and
naturally devotional, the Spaniard possesses many of the best elements of
character. The characteristic of the Italy of that day was pleasure, of Spain we
should say it was passion and adventure. Love and song filled the one, feats of
knight-errantry were the cherished delights of the other. But, unhappily,
political events of recent occurrence had indisposed the Spanish mind to listen
to the teachings of Protestantism, and had made the maintenance of their old
orthodoxy a point of honor with that people. The infidel Saracen had invaded
their country, had reft from them Andalusia, the garden of Spain, and in some of
their fairest cities the mosque had replaced the cathedral, and the adoration of
Mohammed had been substituted for the worship of Christ. These national
humiliations had only tended to inflame the religious enthusiasm of the
Spaniards. The detestation in which they held the crescent was extended to all
alien creeds. All forms of worship, their own excepted, they had come to
associate with the occupancy of a foreign race, and the dominancy of a foreign
yoke. They had now driven the Saracen out of their country, and torn the
standard of the Prophet from the walls of Granada; but they felt that they would
be traitors to the sign in which they had conquered, should they renounce the
faith for the vindication of which they had expelled the hosts of the infidel,
and cleansed their land from the pollution of Islam.
Another circumstance
unfavorable to Spain's reception of Protestantism was its geographical
situation. The Spaniards were more remote from the Papal seat than the Italians,
and their veneration for the Roman See was in proportion to their distance from
it. They viewed the acts of the Pope through a halo which lent enchantment to
them. The irregularities of the Papal lives and the scandals of the Roman court
were not by any means so well known to them as to the Romans, and even though
they had been so, they did not touch them so immediately as they did the natives
of Italy.
Besides, the Spaniards of that age were much engrossed in other
matters. If Italy doted on her past, Spain was no less carried away with the
splendid future that seemed to be opening to her. The discovery of America by
Columbus, the scarce less magnificent territories which the enterprise of other
navigators and discoverers had subjected to her scepter in the East, the varied
riches which flowed in upon her from all these dependencies, the terror of her
arms, the luster of her name, all contributed to blind Spain, and to place her
in antagonism to the new movement. Why not give her whole strength to the
development of those many sources of political power and material prosperity
which had just been opened to her? Why distract herself by engaging in
theological controversies and barren speculations! Why abandon a faith under
which she had become great, and was likely to become greater still.
Protestantism might be true, but Spain had no time, and less inclination, to
investigate its truth. Appearances were against it; for was it likely that
German monks should know better than her own learned priests, or that brilliant
thoughts should emanate from the seclusion of Northern cells and the gloom of
Northern forests?
Still the Spanish mind, in the sixteenth century,
discovered no small aptitude for the teachings of Protestantism. Despite the
adverse circumstances to which we have referred, the Reformation was not without
disciples in Spain. If a small, nowhere was there a more brilliant band of
converts to Protestantism. The names of men illustrious for their rank, for
their scholarship, and for their talents, illustrate the list of Spanish
Protestants. Many wealthy burgesses also became converts; and had not the throne
and the priesthood both powerful combined to keep Spain Roman Catholic,
Protestantism would have triumphed. A single decade had almost enabled it to do
so. But the Reformation had crossed the Pyrenees to win no triumph of this kind.
Spain, like France, was too powerful and wealthy a country to become Protestant
with safety to Protestantism. Its conversion at that stage would have led to the
corruption of the principle: the triumph of the movement would have been its
undoing, for there is no maxim more certain than this, that if a spiritual cause
triumphs through material and political means, it triumphs at the cost of its
own life. Protestantism had entered Spain to glorify itself by
martyrdom.
It was destined to display its power not at the courts of the
Alhambra and Escurial, but on the burning grounds of Madrid and Seville. Thus in
Spain, as in many other countries, the great business of Protestantism in the
sixteenth century was the origination of moral forces, which, being deathless,
would spread and grow from age to age till at length, with silent but
irresistible might, the Protestant cause would be borne to sovereignty. It
remains that we speak of one other country.
England had it very much in her option, on almost all
occasions, to mingle in the movements and strifes that agitated the nations
around her, or to separate herself from them and stand aloof. The reception she
might give to Protestantism would, it might have been foreseen, be determined to
a large extent by considerations and influences of a home kind, more so than in
the case of the nations which we have already passed in
review.
Providence had reserved a great place for Britain in the drama of
Protestantism. Long before the sixteenth century it had given significant
pledges of the part it would play in the coming movement. In truth the first of
all the nations to enter on the path of Reform was England.
When the time
drew nigh for the Master, who was gone fourteen hundred years before into a far
country, to return, and call His servants to account previously to receiving the
kingdom, He sent a messenger before Him to prepare men for the coming of that
"great and terrible day." That messenger was John Wicliffe. In many points
Wicliffe bore a striking resemblance to the Elijah of the Old Dispensation, and
John the Baptist of the New; and notably in this, that he was the prophet of a
new age, which was to be ushered in with terrible shakings and revolutions. In
minor points even we trace a resemblance between Wicliffe and the men who filled
in early ages a not dissimilar office to that which he was called to discharge
when the modern times were about to begin. All three are alike in the startling
suddenness of their appearance. Descending from the mountains of Gilead, Elijah
presents himself all at once in the midst of Israel, now apostate from Jehovah,
and addresses to them the call to "Return." From the deserts of Judah, where he
had made his abode till the day of his "showing unto Israel," John came to the
Jews, now sunk in traditionalism and Pharasaic observances, and said, "Repent."
From the darkness of the Middle Ages, without note of warning, Wicliffe burst
upon the men of the fourteenth century, occupied in scholastic subtleties and
sunk in ceremonialism, and addressed to them the call to
"Reform."
"Repent," said he, "for the great era of reckoning is come.
There cometh one after me, mightier than I. His fan is in His hand, and He will
throughly purge His floor, and gather the wheat into the garner; but the chaff
He will burn with unquenchable fire."
Even in his personal appearance
Wicliffe recalls the picture which the Bible has left us of his great
predecessors. The Tishbite and the Baptist seem again to stand before us. The
erect and meager form, with piercing eye and severe brow, clad in a long black
mantle, with a girdle round the middle, how like the men whose raiment was of
camel's hair. and who had a leathern girdle upon their loins, and whose meat was
locusts and wild honey!
In the great lineaments of their character how
like are all the three! Wicliffe has a marked individuality. No one of the
Fathers of the early Church exactly resembles him. We must travel back to the
days of the Baptist and of the Tishbite to find his like austere,
incorruptible, inflexible, fearless. His age is inconceivably corrupt, but he is
without stain. He appears among men, but he is not seen to mingle with them.
Solitary, without companion or yoke-fellow, he does his work alone. In his hand
is the axe: sentence has gone forth against every corrupt tree, and he has come
to cut it down.
Beyond all doubt Wicliffe was the beginning of modern
times. His appearance marked the close of an age of darkness, and the
commencement of one of Reformation. It is not more true that John stood on the
dividing line between the Old and New Dispensations, than that the appearance of
Wicliffe marked a similar boundary. Behind him were the times of ignorance mid
superstition, before him the day of knowledge and truth. Previous to Wicliffe,
century succeeded century in unbroken and unvaried stagnancy. The yearn
revolved, but the world stood still. The systems that had climbed to power
prolonged their reign, and the nations slept in their chains. But since the age
of Wicliffe the world has gone onward in the path of progress without stop or
pause. His ministry was the fountain-head of a series of grand events, which
have followed in rapid succession, and each of which has achieved a great and
lasting advance for society. No sooner had Wicliffe uttered the first sentence
of living truth than it seemed as if a seed of life, a spark of fire had been
thrown into the world, for instantly motion sets in, in every department and the
movement of regeneration, to which a the first touch, incessantly works its
lofty platform of the sixteenth century. War and 1etters, the ambition of
princes and the blood of martyrs, pioneer its way to its grand development under
Luther and Calvin.
When Wicliffe was born the Papacy had just passed its
noon. Its meridian glory had lasted all through the two centuries which divided
the accession of Gregory VII. (1073) from the death of Boniface VIII. (1303).
This period, which includes the halcyon days of Innocent III., marks the epoch
of supremest dominancy, the age of uneclipsed splendor, which was meted out to
the Popes. But no sooner had Wicliffe begun to preach than a wane set in of the
Papal glory, which neither Council nor curia has ever since been able to arrest.
And no sooner did the English Reformer stand out in bold relief before the world
as the opponent of Rome, than disaster after disaster came hurrying towards the
Papacy, as if in haste to weaken and destroy a power which stood between the
world entrance of the new age.
Let us bestow a moment on the
consideration of this series of calamities to Rome, but of emancipation to the
nations. At the distance of three centuries we see continuous and systematic
progress, where the observer in the midst of the events may have failed to
discover aught save confusion and turmoil. First came the schism of the Popes.
What tremendous loss of both political influence and moral prestige the schism
inflicted on the Papacy we need not say. Next came the deposition of several
Popes by the Council of Pisa and Constance, on the ground of their being
notorious malefactors, leaving the world to wonder at the rashness of men who
could thus cast down their own idol, and publicly vilify a sanctity which they
professed to regard as not less immaculate than that of God.
Then
followed an outbreak of the wars which have raged so often and so furiously
between Councils and the Popes for the exclusive possession of the
infallibility. The immediate result of this contest, which was to strip the
Popes of this superhuman prerogative and lodge it for a time in a Council, was
less important than the inquiries it originated, doubtless, in the minds of
reflecting men, how far it was wise to entrust themselves to the guidance of an
infallibility which was unable to discover its own seat, or tell through Whose
mouth it spoke. After this there came the disastrous campaigns in bohemia. These
fruitless wars gave the German nobility their first taste of how bitter was the
service of Rome. That experience much cooled their ardor in her cause, and
helped to pave the way for the bloodless entrance of the Lutheran Reformation
upon the stage a century afterwards.
The Bohemian campaigns came to an
end, but the series of events pregnant with disaster to Rome still ran on. Now
broke out the wars between England and France. These brought new calamities to
the Papacy. The flower of the French nobility perished on the battle-field, the
throne rose to power, and as a consequence, the hold the priesthood had on
France through the barons was loosened. Yet more, Out of the guilty attempt of
England to subjugate France, to which Henry V. was instigated, as we have shown,
by the Popish primate of the day, came the Wars of the Roses.
These dealt
another heavy blow to the Papal power in Britain. On the many bloody
battle-fields to which they gave rise, the English nobility was all but
extinguished, and the throne, now occupied by the House of Tudor, became the
power in the country. Again, as in France, the Popish priesthood was largely
stripped of the power it had wielded through the weakness of the throne and the
factions of the nobility.
Thus with rapid and ceaseless march did events
proceed from the days of Wicliffe. There was not an event that did not help on
the end in view, which was to make room in the world for the work of the
Reformer. We see the mountains of human dominion leveled that the chariot of
Protestantism may go forward. Whereas at the beginning of the era there was but
one power paramount in Christendom, the Pope namely, by the end of it three
great thrones had arisen, whose combined authority kept the tiara in check,
while their own mutual jealousies and ambitions made them a cover to that
movement, with which were bound up the religion and liberties of the
nations.
Rome had long exercised her jurisdiction in Britain, but at no
time had that jurisdiction been wholly unchallenged. One mean king, it is true,
had placed his kingdom in the hands of the Pope, but the transaction did not
tend to strengthen the influence of the Papacy in England. It left a ranking
sense of shame behind it, which intensified the nation's resistance to the Papal
claims on after occasions. From the days of King John, the opposition to the
jurisdiction of Rome steadily increased; the haughty claims of her legates were
withstood, and her imposts could only at times be levied. These were hopeful
symptoms that at a future day, when greater light should break in, the English
people would assert their freedom.
But when that day came these hopes
appeared fated to be dashed by the character of the man who filled the throne.
Henry VIII. possessed qualities which made him an able coadjutor, but a most
formidable antagonist. Obstinate, tyrannical, impatient of contradiction, and
not unfrequently meeting respectful remonstrance with transports of anger, he
was as unscrupulous as he was energetic in the support of the cause he had
espoused. He plumed himself not less on his theological knowledge than on his
state-craft, and thought that when a king, and especially one who was a great
doctor as well as a great ruler, had spoken, there ought to be an end of the
controversy. Unhappily Henry VIII. had spoken in the great controversy now
beginning to agitate Christendom. He had taken the side of the Pope against
Luther. The decision of the king appeared to be the death-blow of the Protestant
cause in England.
Yet the causes which threatened its destruction were,
in the hand of God, the means of opening its way. Henry quarreled with the Pope,
and in his rage against Clement he forgot Luther. A monarch of passions less
strong and temper less fiery would have striven to avoid, at that moment, such a
breach: but Henry's pride and headstrongness made him incapable of temporizing.
The quarrel came just in time to prevent the union of the throne and the
priesthood against the Reformation for the purpose of crushing it. The political
arm misgave the Church of Rome, as her hand was about to descend with deadly
force on the Protestant converts. While the king and the Pope were quarrelling,
the Bible entered, the Gospel that brings "peace on earth" began to be preached,
and thus England passed over to the side of the Reformation.
We must
bestow a glance on the northern portion of the island. Scotland in that age was
less happily situated, socially and politically, than England. Nowhere was the
power of the Roman hierarchy greater. Both the temporal and spiritual
jurisdictions were in the hands of the clergy. The powerful barons, like so many
kings, had divided the country into satrapies; they made war at their pleasure,
they compelled obedience, and they exacted dues, without much regard to the
authority of the throne which they despised, or the rights of the people whom
they oppressed.
Only in the towns of the Lowlands did a feeble
independence maintain a precarious footing. The feudal system flourished in
Scotland long after its foundations had been shaken, or its fabric wholly
demolished, in other countries of Europe. The poverty of the nation was great,
for the soil was infertile, and the husbandry wretched. The commerce of a former
era had been banished by the distractions of the kingdom; and the letters and
arts which had shed a transient gleam over the country some centuries earlier,
were extinguished amid the growing rudeness and ignorance of the times. These
powerful obstacles threatened effectually to bar the entrance of
Protestantism.
But God opened its way. The newly translated Scriptures,
secretly introduced, sowed the seeds of a future harvest. Next, the power of the
feudal nobility was weakened by the fatal field of Flodden, and the disastrous
rout at the Solway. Then the hierarchy was discredited with the people by the
martyrdoms of Mill and Wishart. The minority of Mary Stuart left the kingdom
without a head, and when Knox entered there was not a baron or priest in all
Scotland that dared imprison or burn him. His voice rang through the land like a
trumpet. The Lowland towns and shires responded to his summons; the temporal
jurisdiction of the Papacy was abolished by the Parliament; its spiritual power
fell before the preaching of the "Evangel," and thus Scotland placed itself in
the foremost rank of Protestant countries.
CHAPTER 3
Back to
Top
INTRODUCTION OF
PROTESTANTISM INTO SWEDEN.
Influence of Germany on Sweden and Denmark
Planting of Christianity in Sweden A Mission Church till the Eleventh
Century Organized by Rome in the Twelfth Wealth and Power of the Clergy
Misery of the Kingdom Arcimbold Indulgences Christian II. of Denmark
Settlement of Calmar Christian II. Subdues the Swedes Cruelties He is
Expelled Gustavus Vasa Olaf and Lawrence Patersen They begin to Teach the
Doctrines of Luther They Translate the Bible Proposed Translation by the
Priests Suppression of Protestant Version Demanded King Refuses A
Disputation Agreed on.
IT would have been strange if the three kingdoms of
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, lying on the borders of Germany, had failed to
participate in the great movement that was now so deeply agitating their
powerful neighbor. Many causes tended to bind together the Scandinavian and the
German peoples, and to mould for them substantially the same
destiny.
They were sprung of the same stock, the Teutonic; they traded
with one another. Not a few native Germans were dispersed as settlers throughout
Scandinavia, and when the school of Wittenberg rose into fame, the Scandinavian
youth repaired thither to taste the new knowledge and sit at the feet of the
great doctor of Saxony. These several links of relationship became so many
channels by which the Reformed opinions entered Sweden, and its sister countries
of Denmark and Norway. The light withdrew itself from the polished nations of
Italy and Spain, from lands which were the ancient seats of letters and arts,
chivalry, to warm with its cheering beam the inhospitable shores of the frozen
North.
We go back for a moment to the first planting of Christianity in
Sweden. There, although the dawn broke early, the coming of day tarried. In the
year 829, Anschar, the great apostle of the North, stepped upon the shores of
Sweden, bringing with him the gospel. He continued till the day of his death to
watch over the seed he had been the first to sow, and to promote its growth by
his unwearied labors. After him others arose who trod in his steps. But the
times were barbarous, the facilities for spreading the light were few, and for
400 years Christianity had to maintain a dubious struggle in Sweden with the
pagan darkness. According to Adam, of Bremen, the Swedish Church was still a
mission Church in the end of the eleventh century. The people were without fixed
pastors, and had only the teaching of men who limerated over the country, with
the consent of the king, making converts, and administering the Sacraments to
those who already had embraced the Christian faith. Not till the twelfth century
do we find the scattered congregations of Sweden gathered into an organized
Church, and brought into connection with the ecclesiastical institutions of the
West. But this was only the prelude to a subjugation by the great conqueror.
Pushing her conquests beyond what had been the Thule of pagan Rome, Rome Papal
claimed to stretch her scepter over the freshly-formed community, and in the
middle of the twelfth century the consolidation of the Church of Sweden was the
consolidation of the Church of Sweden was completed, and linked by the usual
bonds to the Pontifical chair.
From this hour the Swedish Church lacked
no advantage which organization could give it. The powerful body on the Seven
Hills, of which it had now become a humble member, was a perfect mistress in the
art of arranging. The ecclesiastical constitution framed for Sweden comprehended
an archiepiscopal see, established at Upsala, and six episcopal dioceses, viz.,
Linkoping, Skara, Strengnas, Westeras, Wexio, and Aabo. The condition of the
kingdom became that of all countries under the jurisdiction of Rome. It
exhibited a flourishing priesthood with a decaying piety. Its cathedral churches
were richly endowed, and fully equipped with deans and canons; its monkish
orders flourished in its cold Northern air with a luxuriance which was not
outdone in the sunny lands of Italy and Spain; its cloisters were numerous, the
most famous of them being Wadstena, which owed its origin to Birgitta, or
Bridget, the lady whom we have already mentioned as having been three times
canonized;[1] its clergy, enjoying
enormous revenues, rode out attended by armed escorts, and holding their heads
higher than the nobility, they aped the magnificence of princes, and even coped
with royalty itself. But when we ask for a corresponding result in the
intelligence and morality of the people, in the good order and flourishing
condition of the agriculture and arts of the kingdom, we find, alas that there
is nothing to show. The people were steeped in poverty and ground down by the
oppression of their masters.
Left without instruction by their spiritual
guides, with no access to the Word of God for the Scriptures had not as yet
been rendered into the Swedish tongue - with no worship save one of mere signs
and ceremonies, which could convey no truth into the mind, the Christian light
that had shone upon them in the previous centuries was fast fading, and a night
thick as that which had enwrapped their forefathers, who worshipped as gods the
bloodthirsty heroes of the Eddas and the Sagas, was closing them in. The
superstitious beliefs and pagan practices of old times were returning. The
country, moreover, was torn with incessant strifes. The great families battled
with one another for dominion, their vassals were dragged into the fray, and
thus the kingdom was little better than a chaos in which all ranks, from the
monarch downwards, struggled together, each helping to consummate the misery of
the other. Such was the condition in which the Reformation found the nation of
Sweden.[2]
Rome, though far
from intending it, lent her aid to begin the good work. To these northern lands,
as to more southern ones, she sent her vendors of indulgences. In the year 1515,
Pope Leo X. dispatched Johannes Angelus Arcimboldus, pronotary to the Papal See,
as legate to Denmark and Sweden, commissioning him to open a sale of
indulgences, and raise money for the great work the Pope had then on hand,
namely, the building of St. Peter's. Father Sarpi pays this ecclesiastic the
bitter compliment "that he hid under the prelate's robe the qualifications of a
consumate Genoese merchant." The legate discharged his commission with
indefatigable zeal. He collected vast sums of money in both Sweden and Denmark,
and this gold, amounting to more than a million of florins, according to
Maimbourg,[3] he sent to Rome, thus
replenishing the coffers but undermining the influence of the Papal See, and
giving thereby the first occasion for the introduction of Protestantism in these
kingdoms.[4]
The progress of the
religious movement was mixed up with and influenced by the state of political
affairs. The throne of Denmark was at that time filled by Christian II., of the
house of Oldenburg. This monarch had spent his youth in the society of low
companions and the indulgence of low vices. His character was such as might have
been expected from his education; he was brutal and tyrannical, though at times
he displayed a sense of justice, and a desire to promote the welfare of his
subjects. The clergy were vastly wealthy; so, too, were the nobles they owned
most of the lands; and as thus the ecclesiastical and lay aristocracy possessed
an influence that overshadowed the throne, Christian took measures to reduce
their power within dimensions more compatible with the rights of royalty. The
opinions of Luther had begun to spread in the kingdom ere this time, and the
king, quick to perceive the aid he might derive from the Reformation, sought to
further it among his people. In 1520 he sent for Martin Reinhard, a disciple of
Carlstadt, and appointed him Professor of Theology at Stockholm. He died within
the year, and Carlstadt himself succeeded him. After a short residence,
Carlstadt quitted Denmark, when Christian, still intent on rescuing the lower
classes of his people from the yoke of the priesthood, invited Luther to visit
his dominions. The Reformer, however, declined the invitation. In the following
year (1521) Christian II. issued an edict forbidding appeals to Rome, and
another encouraging priests to marry.[5] These Reforming measures,
however, did not prosper. It was hardly to be expected that they should, seeing
they were adopted because they accorded with a policy the main object of which
was to wrest the power of oppression from the clergy, that the king might wield
it himself. It was not till the next reign that the Reformation was established
in Denmark.
Meanwhile we pursue the history of Christian II., which takes
us back to Sweden, and opens to us the rise and progress of the Reformation in
that country. And here it becomes necessary to attend first of all to the
peculiar political constitution of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway. By the settlement of Calmar (1397) the union of the three kingdoms,
under a common sovereign, became a fundamental and irrevocable law. To secure
the liberties of the States, however, it was provided that each kingdom should
be governed according to its peculiar laws and customs. When Christian II.
ascended the throne of Denmark (1513), so odious was his character that the
Swedes refused to acknowledge him as their king, and appointed an administrator,
Steno Sturius, to hold the reins of government.[6] Christian waited a few
years to strengthen himself in Denmark before attempting the reduction of the
Swedes. At length he raised an army for the invasion of Sweden; his cause was
espoused within the kingdom by Trollius, Archbishop of Upsala, and Arcimboldus,
the Pope's legate and indulgence-monger, who largely subsidized Christian out of
the vast sums he had collected by the sale of pardons, and who moreover had
influence enough to procure from the Pope a bull placing the whole of Sweden
under interdict, and excommunicating Steno and all the members of his
government.[7] The fact that this
conquest was gained mainly by the aid of the priests, shows clearly the estimate
formed of King Christian's Protestantism by his contemporaries.
The
conqueror treated the Swedes with great barbarity. He caused the body of Steno
to be dug out of the grave and burned.[8] In want of money, and
knowing that the Senate would refuse its consent to the sums he wished to levy,
he caused them to be apprehended. His design, which was to massacre the
senators, was communicated to the Archbishop of Upsala, and is said to have been
approved of by him. The offense imputed to these unhappy men was that they had
fallen into heresy. Even the forms and delay of a mock trial were too slow for
the vindictive impatience of the tyrant. With frightful and summary cruelty the
senators and lords, to the number of seventy, were marched out into the open
square, surrounded by soldiers, and executed. At the head of these noble victims
was Erie Vasa, the father of the illustrious Gustavus Vasa, who became
afterwards the avenger of his father's death, the restorer of his country's
liberties, and the author of its Reformation.
Gustavus Vasa fled when his
sire was beheaded, and remained for some time in hiding. At length, emerging
from his place of security, he roused the peasantry of the Swedish provinces to
attempt the restoration of their country's independence. He defeated the troops
of Christian in several engagements, and after an arduous struggle he overthrew
the tyrant, received the crown of Sweden, and erected the country into an
independent sovereignty. The loss of the throne of Sweden brought after it to
Christian II. the loss of Denmark. His oppressive and tyrannical measures kept
up a smoldering insurrection among his Danish subjects; the dissatisfaction
broke out at last in open rebellion. Christian II. was deposed; he fled to the
Low Countries, where he renounced his Protestantism, which was a decided
disqualification in the eyes of Charles V., whose sister Isabella he had
married, and at whose court he now sojourned.
Seated on the throne of
Sweden (1523), under the title of Vasa I., Gustavus addressed himself to the
Reformation of his kingdom and Church. The way was paved, as we have already
said, for the Reformation of the latter, by merchants who visited the Swedish
ports, by soldiers whom Vasa had brought from Germany to aid him in the war of
independence, and who carried Luther's writings in their knapsacks, and by
students who had returned from Wittemberg, bringing with them the opinions they
had there imbibed. Vasa himself had been initiated into the Reformed doctrine at
Lubeck during his banishment from his native country, and was confirmed in it by
the conversation and instruction of the Protestant divines whom he gathered
round him after he ascended the throne.[9] He was as wise as he was
zealous. He resolved that instruction, not authority, should be the only
instrument employed for the conversion of his subjects. He knew that their minds
were divided between the ancient superstitions and the Reformed faith, and he
resolved to furnish his people with the means of judging between the two, and
making their choice freely and intelligently.
There were in his kingdom
two youths who had studied at Wittemberg under Luther and Melancthon, Olaf
Patersen and his brother Lawrence. Their father was a smith in Erebro. They were
born respectively in 1497 and 1499. They received the elements of their
education at a Carmelite cloister school, from which Olaf, at the age of
nineteen, removed to Wittemberg. The three years he remained there were very
eventful, and communicated to the ardent mind of the young Swede aspirations and
impulses which continued to develop themselves during all his after-life. He is
said to have been in the crowd around the door of the Castle-church of
Wittemberg when Luther nailed his Theses to it. Both brothers were eminent for
their piety, for their theological attainments, and the zeal and courage with
which they published "the opinions of their master amid the disorders and
troubles of the civil wars, a time," says the Abbe Vertot, "favorable for the
establishment of new religions."[10]
These two divines,
whose zeal and prudence had been so well tested, the king employed in the
instruction of his subjects in the doctrines of Protestantism. Olaf Patersen he
made preacher in the great Cathedral of Stockholm,[11] and Lawrence Patersen he
appointed to the chair of theology at Upsala. As the movement progressed,
enemies arose. Bishop Brask, of Linkoping, in 1523, received information from
Upsala of the dangerous spread of Lutheran heresy in the Cathedral-church at
Strengnas through the efforts of Olaf Patersen. Brask, an active and fiery man,
a politician rather than a priest, was transported with indignation against the
Lutheran teachers. He fulminated the ban of the Church against all who should
buy, or read, or circulate their writings, and denounced them as men who had
impiously trampled under foot ecclesiastical order for the purpose of gaining a
liberty which they called Christian, but which he would term "Lutheran," nay,
"Luciferian." The opposition of the bishop but helped to fan the flame; and the
public disputations to which the Protestant preachers were challenged, and which
took place, by royal permission, in some of the chief cities of the kingdom,
only helped to enkindle it the more and spread it over the kingdom. "All the
world wished to be instructed in the new opinions," says Vertot, "the doctrine
of Luther passed insensibly from the school into the private dwelling. Families
were divided: each took his side according to his light and his inclination.
Some defended the Roman Catholic religion because it was the religion of their
fathers; the most part were attached to it on account of its antiquity, and
others deplored the abuse which the greed of the clergy had introduced into the
administration of the Sacraments
. Even the women took part in these
disputes
all the world sustained itself a judge of controversy."[12]
After these
light-bearers came the Light itself the Word of God. Olaf Patersen, the pastor
of Stockholm, began to translate the New Testament into the tongue of Sweden.
Taking Luther's version, which had been recently published in Germany, as his
model, he labored diligently at his task, and in a short time "executing his
work not unhappily," says Gerdesius, "he placed, amid the murmurs of the
bishops, the New Testament in Swedish in the hands of the people, who now looked
with open face on what they had formerly contemplated through a veil."[13]
After the New
Testament had been issued, the two brothers Olaf and Lawrence, at the request of
the king, undertook the translation of the whole Bible. The work was completed
in due time, and published in Stockholm. "New controversies," said the king,
"arise every day; we have now an infallible judge to which we can appeal
them."[14]
The Popish clergy
bethought them of a notable device for extinguishing the light which the labors
of the two Protestant pastors had kindled. They resolved that they too would
translate the New Testament into the vernacular of Sweden. Johannes Magnus, who
had lately been inducted into the Archbishopric of Upsala, presided in the
execution of this scheme, in which, though Adam Smith had not yet written, the
principle of the division of labor was carried out to the full. To each
university was assigned a portion of the sacred Books which it was to translate.
The Gospel according to St. Matthew and the Epistle to the Romans were allotted
to the College of Upsala. The Gospel according to St. Mark, with the two
Epistles to the Corinthians, was assigned to the University of Linkoping; St.
Luke's Gospel and the Epistle to the Galatians to Skara; St. John's Gospel and
the Epistle to the Ephesians to Stregnen; and so to all the rest of the
universities. There still remained some portions of the task unappropriated;
these were distributed among the monkish orders. The Dominicans were to
translate the Epistle to Titus and that to the Hebrews; to the Franciscans were
assigned the Epistles of St. Jude and of St. James; while the Carthusians were
to put forth their skill in deciphering the symbolic writing of the
Apocalypse.[15] It must be confessed that
the leisure hours of the Fathers have often been worse employed.
As one
fire is said to extinguish another, it was hoped that one light would eclipse
another, or at least so dazzle the eyes of the beholders that they should not
know which was the true light. Meanwhile, however, the Bishop of Upsala thought
it exceedingly dangerous that men should be left to the guidance, of what he did
not doubt was the false beacon, and accordingly he and his associates waited in
a body on the king, and requested that the translation of Pastor Olaf should be
withdrawn, at least, till a better was prepared and ready to be put into the
hands of the people.
"Olaf's version, he said, "was simply the New
Testament of Martin Luther, which the Pope had placed under interdict and
condemned as heretical." The archbishop demanded further that "those royal
ordinances which had of late been promulgated, and which encroached upon the
immunities and possessions of the clergy, should, inasmuch as they had been
passed at the instigation of those who were the enemies of the old religion, be
rescinded."[16]
To this haughty
demand the king replied that "nothing had been taken from the ecclesiastics,
save what they had unjustly usurped aforetime; that they had his full consent to
publish their own version of the Bible, but that he saw no cause why he either
should revoke his own ordinances or forbid the circulation of Olaf's New
Testament in the mother tongue of his people."
The bishop, not liking
this reply, offered to make good in public the charge of heresy which he had
preferred against Olaf Patersen and his associates. The king, who wished nothing
so much as that the foundations of the two faiths should be sifted out and
placed before his people, at once accepted the challenge. It was arranged that
the discussion should take place in the University of Upsala; that the king
himself should be present, with his senators, nobles, and the learned men of his
kingdom. Olaf Patersen undertook at once the Protestant defense. There was some
difficulty in finding a champion on the Popish side. The challenge had come from
the bishops, but no sooner was it taken up than "they framed excuses and
shuffled."[17] At length Peter Gallus,
Professor of Theology in the College of Upsala, and undoubtedly their best man,
undertook the battle on the side of Rome.
CHAPTER 4
Back to
Top
CONFERENCE AT
UPSALA.
Programme of Debate Twelve Points Authority of the
Fathers Power of the Clergy Can Ecclesiastical Decrees Bind the Conscience?
Power of Excommunication The Pope's Primacy Works or Grace, which saves?
Has Monkery warrant in Scripture? Question of the Institution of the Lord's
Supper Purgatory Intercession of the Saints Lessons of the Conference
Conscience Quickened by the Bible produced the Reformation.
THAT the ends of the conference might be gained, the
king ordered a list to be made out beforehand of the main points in which the
Protestant Confession differed from the Pontifical religion, and that in the
discussion point after point should be debated till the whole programme was
exhausted. Twelve main points of difference were noted down, and the discussion
came off at Upsala in 1526. A full report has been transmitted to us by Johannes
Baazius, in the eighth book of his History of the Church of Sweden,[1] which we follow, being, so
far as we are aware the only original account extant. We shall give the history
of the discussion with some fullness, because it was a discussion on new ground,
by new men, and also because it formed the turning-point in the Reformation of
Sweden.
The first question was touching the ancient religion and the
ecclesiastical rites: was the religion abolished, and did the rites retain their
authority, or had they ever any?
With reference to the religion, the
Popish champion contended that it was to be gathered, not from Scripture but
from the interpretations of the Fathers. "Scripture," he said, "was obscure; and
no one would follow an obscure writing without an interpreter; and sure guides
had been given us in the holy Fathers." As regarded ceremonies and
constitutions, "we know," he said, "that many had been orally given by the
apostles, and that the Fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and others, had the
Holy Spirit, and therefore were to be believed in defining dogmas and enacting
institutions. Such dogmas and constitutions were, in fact,
apostolic."
Olaf replied that Protestants did not deny that the Fathers
had the Spirit, and that their interpretations of Scripture were to be received
when in accordance with Holy Writ. They only put the Fathers in their right
place, which was below, not above Scripture. He denied that the Word of God was
obscure when laying down the fundamental doctrines of the faith. He adduced the
Bible's own testimony to its simplicity and clearness, and instanced the case of
the Ethiopian eunuch whose difficulties were removed simply by the reading and
hearing of he Scriptures. "A blind man," he added, "cannot see the splendor of
the midday sun, but that is not because the sun is dark, but because himself is
blind. Even Christ said, 'My doctrine is not mine, but the Father's who sent
me,' and St. Paul declared that should he preach any other gospel than that
which he had received, he would be anathema. How then shall others presume to
enact dogmas at their pleasure, and impose them as things necessary to
salvation?"[2]
Question Second had
reference to the Pope and the bishops: whether Christ had given to them lordship
or other dominion save the power of preaching the Word and administering the
Sacraments? and whether those ought to be called ministers of the Church who
neglected to perform these duties?
In maintaining the affirmative Gallus
adduced the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, where it is written,
"But if he will not hear thee, tell it to the princes of the Church;" "from
which we infer," he said, "that to the Pope and prelates of the Church has been
given power to adjudicate in causes ecclesiastical, to enact necessary canons,
and to punish the disobedient, even as St. Paul excommunicated the incestuous
member in the Corinthian Church."
Olaf in reply said
"that we do
indeed read that Christ has given authority to the apostles and ministers, but
not to govern the kingdoms of the world, but to convert sinners and to announce
pardon to the penitent."
In proof he quoted Christ's words, "My kingdom
is not of this world."
"Even Christ," he said, "was subject to the
magistrate, and gave tribute; from which it might be surely inferred that he
wished his ministers also to be subject to kings, and not to rule over them;
that St. Paul had commanded all men to be subject to the powers that be, and
that Christ had indicated with sufficient distinctness the work of his ministers
when he said to St. Peter, 'Feed my flock.'" As we call no one a workman who
does not fabricate utensils, so no one is to be accounted a minister of the
Church who does not preach the Rule of the Church, the Word of
God.
Christ said not, "Tell it to the princes of the Church," but, "Tell
it to the Church." The prelates are not the Church. The apostles had no temporal
power, he argued, why give greater power to bishops now than the apostles had?
The spiritual office could not stand with temporal lordship; nor in the list of
Church officers, given in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, is
there one that can be called political or magisterial. Everywhere in the Bible
spiritual men are seen performing spiritual duties only.[3]
The next point
raised was whether the decrees of man had power to bind the conscience so that
he who shirked [4] them was guilty of
notorious sin?
The Romish doctor, in supporting the affirmative, argued
that the commands of the prelates were holy, having for their object the
salvation of men: that they were, in fact, the commands of God, as appeared from
the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, "By me princes decree
righteousness." The prelates were illuminated with a singular grace; they knew
how to repair, enlarge, and beautify the Church. They sit in Moses' seat; "hence
I conclude," said Gallus, "that the decrees of the Fathers were given by the
Holy Ghost, and are to be obeyed."
The Protestant doctor replied that
this confounded all distinction between the commands of God and the commands of
man; that it put the latter on the same footing in point of authority with the
former; that the Church was upheld by the promise of Christ, and not by the
power of the Pope; and that she was fed and nourished by the Word and
Sacraments, and not by the decrees of the prelates. Otherwise the Church was now
more perfect, and. enjoyed clearer institutions, than at her first planting by
the apostles; and it also followed that her early doctrine was incomplete, and
had been perfected by the greater teachers whom modern times had produced; that
Christ and his apostles had, in that case, spoken foolishly [5] when they foretold the
coming of false prophets and of Antichrist in the latter times. He could not
understand how decrees and constitutions in which there reigned so much
confusion and contradiction should have emanated from the Holy Ghost. It rather
seemed to him as if they had arrived at the times foretold by the apostle in his
farewell words to the elders of Ephesus, "After my departure there shall enter
in grievous wolves not sparing the flock."
The discussion turned next on
whether the Pope and bishops have power to excommunicate whom they please?[6] The only ground on which
Doctor Gallus rested his affirmative was the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's
Gospel, which speaks of the gift of the power of binding and loosing given to
St. Peter, and which the doctor had already adduced in proof of the power of the
prelates.
Olaf, in reply, argued that the Church was the body of Christ,
and that believers were the members of that body. The question was not touching
those outside the Church; the question was, whether the Pope and prelates had
the power of casting out of the Church those who were its living members, and in
whose hearts dwelt the Holy Ghost by faith? This he simply denied. To God alone
it belonged to save the believing, and to condemn the unbelieving. The bishops
could neither give nor take away the Holy Ghost. They could not change those who
were the sons of God into sons of Gehenna. The power conferred in the eighteenth
chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, he maintained, was simply declaratory; what the
minister had power to do, was to announce the solace or loosing of the Gospel to
the penitent, and its correction or cutting off to the impenitent. He who
persists in his impenitence is excommunicate, not by man, but by the Word of
God, which shows him to be bound in his sin, till he repent. The power of
binding and loosing was, moreover, given to the Church, and not to any
individual man, or body of men. Ministers exercise, he argued, their office for
the Church, and in the name of the Church; and without the Church's consent and
approval, expressed or implied, they have no power of loosing or binding any
one. Much less, he maintained, was this power of excommunication secular; it was
simply a power of doing, by the Church and for the Church, the necessary work of
purging out notorious offenders from the body of the faithful.
The
discussion next passed to the power and office of the Pope personally
viewed.
The Popish champion interpreted the words of Christ (Luke 22),
"Whosoever will be first among you," as meaning that it was lawful for one to
hold the primacy. It was, he said, not primacy but pride that was here
forbidden. It was not denied to the apostles, he argued, or their, successors,
to hold the principality in the government of the Church, but to govern
tyrannically, after the fashion of heathen kings; that history showed that since
the times of Pope Sylvester i.e., for twelve hundred years the Pope had
held, with the consent of emperors and kings, the primacy in the Church, and
that he had always lived in the bonds of charity with Christian kings, calling
them his dear sons; how then could his state of dominancy be displeasing to
Christ?
Doctor Olaf reminded his opponent that he had already proved that
the power conferred by Christ on the apostles and ministers of the Church was
spiritual, the power even to preach the Gospel and convert sinners. Christ had
warned them that they should meet, in the exercise of their office, bitter
opposition and cruel persecutions: how could that be if they were princes and
had servants to fight for them? Even Christ himself came not to be a ruler, but
a servant. St. Paul designated the office of a bishop, "work" and not
"dominion;" implying that there would be more onus than honor attending it.[7] The Roman dominancy, he
affirmed, had not flourished for twelve hundred years, as his opponent
maintained; it was more recent than the age of Gregory, who had stoutly opposed
it. But the question was not touching its antiquity, but touching its utility.
If we should make antiquity the test or measure of benignity, what strange
mistakes should we commit! The power of Satan was most ancient, it would hardly
be maintained that it was in an equal degree beneficent. Pious emperors had
nourished this Papal power with their gifts; it had grown most rapidly in the
times of greatest ignorance; it had taken at last the whole Christian world
under its control; when consummated it presented a perfect contrast to the gift
of Christ to St. Peter expressed in these words, "Feed my sheep." The many
secular affairs of the Pope did not permit him to feed the sheep. He compelled
them to give him not only their milk and wool, but even the fat and the blood.
May God have mercy upon his own Church.[8]
They came at length
to the great question touching works and grace, "Whether is man saved 'by his
own merits, or solely by the grace of God?"
Doctor Gallus came as near to
the Reformed doctrine on this point as it was possible to do without
surrendering the corner-stone of Popery. It must be borne in mind that the one
most comprehensive distinction between the two Churches is Salvation of God and
Salvation of man: the first being the motto on the Protestant banner, the last
the watchword of Rome. Whichever of the two Churches surrenders its peculiar
tenet, surrenders all. Dr. Gallus made appear as if he had surrendered the
Popish dogma, but he took good care all the while, as did the Council of Trent
afterwards, that, amid all his admissions and explanations, he should preserve
inviolate to man his power of saving himself. "The disposition of the pious
man," said the doctor, "in virtue of which he does good works, comes from God,
who gives to the renewed man the grace of acting well, so that, his free will
co-operating, he earns the reward promised; as the apostle says, 'By grace are
we saved,' and, 'Eternal life is the gift of God;' for," continued the doctor,
"the quality of doing good, and of possessing eternal life, does not flow to the
pious man otherwise than from the grace of God." Human merit is here pretty well
concealed under an appearance of ascribing a great deal to Divine grace. Still,
it is present man by working earns the promised reward.
Doctor Olaf in
reply laid bare the mystification: he showed that his opponent, while granting
salvation to be the gift of God, taught that it is a gift to be obtained only by
the sinner's working. This doctrine the Protestant disputant assailed by quoting
those numerous passages of Scripture in which it is expressly said that we are
saved by faith, and not by works; that the reward is not of works, but of grace;
that ground of glorying is left to no one; and that human merit is entirely
excluded in the matter of salvation; from which, he said, this conclusion
inevitably followed, that it was a vain dream to think of obtaining heaven by
purchasing indulgences, wearing a monk's cowl, keeping painful vigils, or going
wearisome journeys to holy places, or by good works of any sort.
The
next, point to be discussed was whether the monastic life had any foundation in
the Word of God?
It became, of course, the duty of Doctor Gallus to
maintain the affirmative here, though he felt his task a difficult one. He made
the best he could of such doubtful arguments as were suggested to him by "the
sons of the prophets," mentioned in the history of Samuel; and the flight at
times of Elijah and Elisha to Mount Carmel. He thought, too, that he could
discover some germs of the monastic life in the New Testament, in the company of
converts in the Temple (Acts 2); in the command given to the young man, "Sell
all that thou hast;" and in the "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." But
for genuine examples of monks and monasteries he found himself under the
necessity of coming down to the Middle Ages, and there he found no lack of what
he sought.
It was not difficult to demolish so unsubstantial a structure
as this. "Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New," Doctor Olaf affirmed,
"is proof or instance of the monastic life to be found. In the times of the
apostles there were no monks. Chrysostom, in his homily on the Epistle to the
Hebrews, says, 'Plain it is that the Church for the first 200 years knew nothing
of the monastic life. It began with Paulus and Antoniius, who chose such a life,
and had many solitaries as followers, who, however, lived without 'order' or
'vow,' till certain arose who, about A.D. 350, framed regulations for these
recluses, as Jerome and Cassian testify." After a rapid sketch of their growth
both in numbers and wealth, he concluded with some observations which had in
them a touch of satire. The words of Scripture, "Sell all that thou hast," etc.,
were not, he said, verified in the monks of the present day, unless in the
obverse. Instead of forsaking all they clutched all, and carried it to their
monastery; instead of bearing the cross in their hearts they embroidered it on
their cloaks; instead of fleeing from the temptations and delights of the world,
they shirked its labors, eschewed all acquaintanceship with the plough and the
loom, and found refuge behind bolted doors amid the silken couches, the groaning
boards, and other pleasures of the convent. The Popish champion was doubtless
very willing that this head of the discussion should now be departed
from.
The next point was whether the institution of the Lord's Supper had
been changed, and lawfully so?
The disputant on the Popish side admitted
that Christ had instituted all the Sacraments, and imparted to them their virtue
and efficacy, which virtue and efficacy were the justifying grace of man.[9] The essentials of the
Sacrament came from Christ, but there were accessories of words and gestures and
ceremonies necessary to excite due reverence for the Sacrament, both on the part
of him who dispenses and of him who receives it. These, Doctor Gallus affirmed,
had their source either from the apostles or from the primitive Church, and were
to be observed by all Christians. Thus the mass remains as instituted by the
Church, with significant rites and decent dresses.
"The Word of God,"
replied Olaf, "endures for ever; but," he added, "we are forbidden either to add
to it or take away from it. Hence it follows that the Lord's Supper having been,
as Doctor Gallus has admitted, instituted by Christ, is to be observed not
otherwise than as he has appointed. The whole Sacrament as well its mode of
celebration as its essentials is of Christ and not to be changed." He quoted
the words of institution, "This is my body" "take eat;" "This cup is the New
Testament in my blood" "drink ye all of it," etc. "Seeing," said he, "Doctor
Gallus concedes that the essentials of a Sacrament are not to be changed, and
seeing in these words we have the essentials of the Lord's Supper, why has the
Pope changed them? Who gave him power to separate the cup from the bread? If he
should say the blood is in the body, I reply, this violates the institution of
Christ, who is wiser than all Popes and bishops.
Did Christ command the
Lord's Supper to be dispensed differently to the clergy and to the laity?
Besides, by what authority has the Pope changed the Sacrament into a sacrifice?
Christ does not say, 'Take and sacrifice,' but, 'Take and eat.' The offering of
Christ's sacrifice once for all made a full propitiation. The Popish
priestling,[10] when he professes to offer
the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper, pours contempt upon the sacrifice of
Christ, offered upon the altar of the cross. He crucifies Christ afresh. He
commits the impiety denounced in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. He not only changes the essentials of the Lord's Supper, but he does so
for the basest end, even that of raking together [11] wealth and filling his
coffers, for this is the only use of his tribe of priestlings, and his
everlasting masses."
From masses the discussion passed naturally to that
which makes masses saleable, namely, purgatory.
Doctor Gallus held that
to raise a question respecting the existence of purgatory was to stumble upon
plain ground, for no religious people had ever doubted it. The Church had
affirmed the doctrine of purgatory by a stream of decisions which can be traced
up to the primitive Fathers. It is said in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew's
Gospel, argued Doctor Gallus, that the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be
forgiven, "neither in this world, neither in the world to come;" whence it may
be inferred that certain sins will be forgiven in the future world. Not in
heaven, for sinners shall not be admitted into it; not in hell, for from it
there is no redemption: it follows that this forgiveness is to be obtained in
purgatory; and so it is a holy work to pray for the dead. With this single
quotation the doctor took leave of the inspired writers, and turned to the Greek
and Latin Fathers. There he found more show of support for his doctrine, but it
was somewhat suspicious that it was the darkest ages that furnished him with his
strongest proofs.
Doctor Olaf in reply maintained that in all Scripture
there was not so much as one proof to be found of purgatory. He exploded the
fiction of venial sins on which the doctrine is founded; and, taking his stand
on the all-sufficiency of Christ's expiation, and the full and free pardon which
God gives to sinners, he scouted utterly a theory founded on the notion that
Christ's perfect expiation needs to be supplemented, and that God's free pardon
needs the sufferings of the sinner to make it available. "But," argued Doctor
Gallus, "the sinner must be purified by these sufferings and made fit for
heaven." "No," replied Doctor Olaf, "it is faith that purifies the heart; it is
the blood of Christ that cleanses the soul; not the flames of
purgatory."
The last point to be debated was "whether the saints are to
be invocated, and whether they are our defenders, patrons, and mediators with
God?" On this head, too, Doctor Gallus could appeal to a very ancient and
venerable practice, which only lacked one thing to give it value, the authority
of Scripture. His attempt to give it this sanction was certainly not a success.
"God," he said, "was pleased to mitigate the punishment of the Jews, at the
intercession of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then shut up in
limbo, and on the express footing of their merits." The doctor forgot to explain
how it happened that the merits which could procure remission of punishment for
others, could not procure for themselves deliverance from purgatory. But,
passing this, the Protestant respondent easily disposed of the whole case by
referring to the profound silence of Scripture touching the intercession of the
saints, on the one hand, and its very emphatic teaching, on the other, that
there is but one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.[12]
The conference was
now at an end. The stage on which this conference was conducted was an obscure
one compared with that of Wittemberg and Augsburg, and the parties engaged in it
were but of secondary rank compared with the great chiefs between whom previous
contests of a similar kind had been waged; but the obscurity of the stage, and
the secondary rank of the combatants, are the very reasons why we have given it
so prominent a place in our history of the movement. It shows us the sort of men
that formed the rank and the of the army of the Reformers. They were not
illiterate, sectarian, noisy controversialists far from it; they were men who
had studied the Word of God, and knew well how to wield the weapons with which
the armory of the Bible supplied them. In respect of erudition they were ahead
of their age. When we confine our attention to such brilliant centers as
Wittemberg and Zurich, and to such illustrious names as those of Luther and
Melancthon, of Zwingle and Ecolampadius, we are apt to be told, these were the
leaders of the movement, and we should naturally expect in them prodigious
power, and vast acquisitions; but the subordinates were not like these. Well, we
turn to the obscure theater of Sweden, and the humble names of Olaf and Lawrence
Patersen from the masters to the disciples - what do we find? Sciolists and
tame imitators? No: scholars and theologians; men who have thoroughly mastered
the whole system of Gospel truth, and who win an easy victory over the sophists
of the schools, and the dignitaries of Rome.
This shows us, moreover, the
real instrumentality that overthrew the Papacy. Ordinary historians dwell much
upon the vices of the clergy, the ambition of princes, and the ignorance and
brutishness of the age. All these are true as facts, but they are not true as
causes of the great moral revolution which they are often adduced to explain.
The vice and brutishness of all ranks of that age were in truth a protective
force around the Papacy. It was a state of society which favored the continuance
of such a system as the Church of Rome, which provided an easy pardon for sin,
furnished opiates for the conscience, and instead of checking, encouraged vice.
On the other hand, it deprived the Reformers of a fulcrum of enlightened moral
sentiment on which to rest their lever for elevating the world. We freely admit
the causes that were operating towards a change, but left to themselves these
causes never would have produced such a change as the Reformation. They would
but have hastened and perfected the destruction of the putrid and putrifying
mass, they never could have evoked from it a new and renovated order of things.
What was needed was a force able to restore conscience. The Word of God alone
could do this.
Protestantism in other words, evangelical Christianity
came down, and Ithuriel-like put forth its spear, touched the various forces at
work in society, quickened them, and drawing them into a beneficent channel,
converted what would most surely have been a process of destruction into a
process of Reformation.
CHAPTER 5
Back to
Top
ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN
SWEDEN.
The Battles of Religion More Fruitful than those of Kings
Consequences of the Upsala Conference The King adopts a Reforming Policy
Clergy Refuse the War-levy Conference respecting Ecclesiastical Possessions
and Immunities Secret Compact of Bishops A Civil War imminent Vasa
threatens to Abdicate Diet resolves to Receive the Protestant Religion
13,000 Estates Surrendered by the Romish Church Reformation in 1527
Coronation of Vasa Ceremonies and Declaration Reformation Completed in 1529
Doctrine and Worship of the Reformed Church of Sweden Old Ceremonies
Retained Death and Character of Gustavus Vasa Eric XIV. John The "Red
Book " Relapse A Purifying Fire.
IF "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than
War," we may say that Religion has her battles yet more glorious than those of
kings. They spill no blood, unless when the persecutor comes in with the stake,
they make no widows and orphans, they leave behind them as their memorials no
blackened cities and no devastated fields; on the contrary, the land where they
have been waged is marked by a richer moral verdure than that which clothes
countries in which no such conflicts have taken place. It is on these soils that
the richest blessings spring up. The dead that lie strewn over these
battle-fields are refuted errors and exploded falsehoods. Such battles are twice
blessed: they bless the victor, and they bless, in measure yet larger, the
vanquished.
One of these battles has just been fought in Sweden, and
Pastor Olaf was the conqueror. It was followed by great and durable consequences
to that country. It decided the king; any doubts that may have lingered in his
mind till now were cleared away, and he cast in his lot without reserve with
Protestantism. He saw plainly the course of policy which he ought to pursue for
his people's welfare, and he resolved at all hazards to go through with it. He
must reduce the overgrown wealth of the Church, he must strip the clergy of
their temporal and political power, and set them free for the discharge of their
spiritual functions in short, remodel his kingdom in conformity with the great
principles which had triumphed in the late disputation. He did not hide from
himself the immense obstacles he would encounter in prosecuting these reforms,
but he saw that till they were accomplished he should never reign in peace; and
sooner than submit to defeat in a matter he deemed vital, he would abandon the
throne.
One thing greatly encouraged Gustavus Vasa. Since the conference
at Upsala, the light of the Reformation was spreading wider and wider among his
people; the power of the priesthood, from whom he had most to fear, was
diminishing in the same proportion. His great task was becoming less difficult
every day; time was fighting for him. His coronation had not yet taken place,
and he resolved to postpone it till he should be able to be crowned as a
Protestant king. This was, in fact, to tell his people that he would reign over
them as a Reformed people or not at all. Meanwhile the projects of the enemies
of Protestantism conspired with the wishes of Gustavus Vasa toward that
result.
Christian II., the abdicated monarch of Denmark, having been sent
with a fleet, equipped by his brother-in-law, Charles V., to attempt the
recovery of his throne, Gustavus Vasa, knowing that his turn would come next,
resolved to fight the battle of Sweden in Denmark by aiding Frederick the
sovereign of that country, in his efforts to repel the invader. He summoned a
meeting of the Estates at Stockholm, and represented to them the common danger
that hung over both countries, and the necessity of providing the means of
defending the kingdom. It was agreed to lay a war-tax upon all estates, to melt
down the second largest bell in all the churches, and impose a tenth upon all
ecclesiastical goods.[1] The possessions of the
clergy, consisting of lands, castles, and hoards, were enormous. Abbe Vertot
informs us that the clergy of Sweden were alone possessed of more than the king
and all the Other Estates of the kingdom together. Notwithstanding that they
were so immensely wealthy, they refused to bear their share of the national
burdens. Some gave an open resistance to the tax; others met it with an evasive
opposition, and by way of retaliating on the authority which had imposed it,
raised tumults in various parts of the kingdom.[2] To put an end to these
disturbances the king came to Upsala, and summoning the episcopal chapter before
him, instituted a second conference after the manner of the first. Doctors Olaf
and Gallus were again required to buckle on their armor, and measure swords with
one another. The contest this time was respecting revenues and the exemption of
the prelates of the Church. Battle being joined, the king inquired, "Whence have
the clergy their prebends and ecclesiastical immunities?" "From the donation of
pious kings and princes," responded Dr. Gallus, "liberally bestowed, according
to the Word of God, for the sustentation of the Church." "Then," replied the
king, "may not the same power that gave, take away, especially when the clergy
abuse their possessions?" "If they are taken away," replied the Popish champion,
"the Church will fall,[3] and Christ's Word, that
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, will fail." "The goods of the
Church," said the king, "go into the belly of sluggards,[4] who know not to write or
preach any useful thing, but spend the hours, which they call canonical, in
singing canticles, with but small show of devotion. Since therefore," continued
the king, "it cannot be proved from Scripture that these goods are the absolute
property of the clergy, and since they manifestly do not further the ends of
piety, is it not just that they be turned to a better use, and one that will
benefit the Church?"
On this, Doctor Gallus held his peace. Thereupon,
the king ordered the archbishop to reply, but neither would he make answer. At
length the provost of the cathedral, George Turson, came forward, and began to
defend with great warmth the privileges of the clergy. "If any one," he said,
"dare take anything from the Church, it is at the peril of excommunication and
eternal damnation." The king bore the onset with great good-nature. He calmly
requested Turson, as a theologian, to handle the matter in a theological manner,
and to prove what he had maintained from Holy Scripture. The worthy provost
appears to have declined this challenge; for we find the king, in conclusion,
giving his decision to the following effect, namely, that he would give all
honor and all necessary and honest support to the pious ministers of the Church,
but to the sluggards of the sanctuary and the monastery he would give nothing.
To this the chapter made no reply, and the king took his departure for
Stockholm.[5]
The bishops,
however, were far from submitting quietly to the burdens which had been imposed
upon them. They met and subscribed a secret compact or oath, to defend their
privileges and possessions against all the attempts of the king. The deed, with
the names appended, was deposited in a sepulcher, where it was discovered
fifteen years afterwards.[6] An agitation of the
kingdom was organized, and vigorously carried out. The passions of the populace,
uninstructed for the most part, and attached to the old religion, were inflamed
by the calumnies and accusations directed against the king, and scattered
broadcast over the kingdom. Disorders and tumults broke out; more especially in
Delecarlia the most northern part of Sweden, where the ignorance of the people
made them an easy prey to the arts of the clerical agitators.[7] The country, at last, was
on the brink of civil war. Gustavus Vasa resolved that an end should be put to
this agitation. His chancellor, Lawrence Andersen, an able man and a Protestant,
gave him very efficient support in the vigorous measures he now adopted. He
summoned a meeting of the Estates of Sweden, at Vesteraas, June,
1527.
Gustavus addressed the assembled nobles and bishops, appealing to
facts that were within the knowledge of all of them, that the kingdom had been
brought to the brink of civil war, mainly through the factious opposition of the
clergy to their just share in the burdens of the State, that the classes from
whom this opposition came were by much the wealthiest in Sweden, that this
wealth had been largely acquired by unlawful exactions, and was devoted to
noxious uses; that the avarice of the bishops had reduced the nobles to poverty,
and their oppression had ground the people into slavery; that for this wealth no
adequate return was received by the State; it served but to maintain its
possessors in idleness and luxury; and that, unless the necessities of the
government were met, and the power of the throne upheld, he would resign the
crown and retire from the kingdom.[8]
This bold resolve
brought matters to a crisis. The Swedes could not afford to lose their
magnanimous and patriotic king. The debates in the Diet were long and warm. The
clergy fought stoutly for their privileges, but the king and his chancellor were
firm. If the people would not support him in his battle with the clergy,
Gustavus must lay down the scepter. The question, in fact, came to be between
the two faiths shall they adopt the Lutheran or retain the Popish? The monarch
did not conceal his preference for the Reformed religion, which he himself had
espoused. He would leave his subjects free to make their choice, but if they
chose to obey a clergy who had annihilated the privileges of the citizens, who
had devoured the wealth of the nobles, who were glutted with riches and swollen
with pride, rather than be ruled by the laws of Sweden, he had no more to say;
he would withdraw from the government of the realm.[9]
At length the Diet
came to a resolution, virtually to receive the Protestant religion. The day on
which this decision was come to is the most glorious in the annals of Sweden.
The Estates decreed that henceforward the bishops should not sit in the supreme
council of the nation; that the castles and the 13,000 estates which had been
given to the Church since the times of Charles Canut (1453) should be restored;
that of the castles and lands, part should be returned to the nation, and part
to those nobles from whose ancestors they had been wrested; and if, in the
interval, any of these donations had been sold, restitution must be made in
money. It is computed that from 13,000 to 20,000 estates, farms, and dwellings
passed into the hands of lay possessors. The bishops intimated their submission
to this decree, which so effectually broke their power, by subscribing their
names to it.[10]
Other articles were
added bearing more directly upon the Reformation of religion. Those districts
that adopted the Reformation were permitted to retain their ecclesiastical
property; districts remaining Popish were provided by the king with Protestant
ministers, who were paid out of the goods still left in possession of the Popish
Church. No one was to be ordained who was unwilling, or who knew not how, to
preach the pure Gospel. In all schools the Bible must be read, and the lessons
of the Gospel taught. The monks were allowed to reside in their monasteries, but
forbidden to beg; and safeguards were enacted against the accumulation of
property in a dead hand a fruitful source of evil in the past.[11] So far the Reformation of
Sweden had advanced in 1527. Its progress had been helped by the flight of the
Archbishop of Upsala and Bishop Brask from their native land. Deserted by their
generals, the soldiers of the ancient creed lost heart.
The coronation of
Gustavus Vasa had been delayed till the kingdom should be quieted. This having
been now happily effected, the monarch was crowned with great solemnity on the
12th of January, 1528, at Upsala, in presence of the whole Senate. It cost Vasa
no little thought beforehand how to conduct the ceremony, so as that on the one
hand it: might not be mixed up with the rites of the ancient superstition, nor,
on the other, lack validity in the eyes of such of his subjects as were still
Popish. He refrained from sending to Rome for investiture; he made three newly
ordained bishops Skara, Aabo, and Strengnas [12] perform the religious
rites; the Divine name was invoked; that part of the coronation oath was omitted
which bound the sovereign to protect "holy Church;" a public declaration, which
was understood to express the sentiments both of the king and of the Estates,
was read, and afterwards published, setting forth at some length the reciprocal
duties and obligations of each.
The declaration was framed on the model
of those exhortations which the prophets and high priests delivered to the Kings
of Judah when they were anointed. It set forth the institution of magistracy by
God; its ends, to be "a terror to evil-doers," etc.; the spirit in which it was
to be exercised, "in the fear of the Most High;" the faults the monarch was to
eschew riches, luxury, oppression; and the virtues he was to practice he was
to cultivate piety by the study of Holy Scripture, to administer justice, defend
his country, and nourish the true religion. The declaration concludes by
expressing the gratitude of the nation to the "Omnipotent and most benignant
Father, who, after so great a persecution and so many calamities inflicted upon
their beloved country, by a king of foreign origin, had given them this day a
king of the Swedish stock, whose powerful arm, by the blessing of God, had
liberated their nation from the yoke of a tyrant" "We acknowledge," continued
the declaration, "the Divine goodness, in raising up for us this king, adorned
with so many gifts, preeminently qualified for his great office; pious, wise, a
lover of his country; whose reign has already been so glorious; who has gained
the friendship of so many kings and neighboring princes; who has strengthened
our castles and cities; who has raised armaments to resist the enemy should he
invade us; who has taken the revenues of the State not to enrich himself but to
defend the country, and who, above all, has sedulously cherished the true
religion, making it his highest object to defend Reformed truth, so that the
whole land, being delivered from Popish darkness, may be irradiated with the
light of the Gospel."[13]
In the year
following (1529), the Reformation of Sweden was formally completed. The king,
however zealous, saw it wise to proceed by degrees. In the year after his
coronation he summoned the Estates to Orebrogia (Oerebro), in Nericia, to take
steps for giving to the constitution and worship of the Church of Sweden a more
exact conformity to the rule of the Word of God. To this Diet came the leading
ministers as well as the nobles. The chancellor Lawrence Andersen, as the king's
representative, presided, and with him was joined Olaf Patersen, the Pastor of
Stockholm. The Diet agreed on certain ecclesiastical constitutions and rules,
which they subscribed, and published in the tongue of Sweden. The bishops and
pastors avowed it to be the great end of their office to preach the pure Word of
God; they resolved accordingly to institute the preaching of the Gospel in all
the churches of the kingdom, alike in country and in city. The bishops were to
exercise a vigilant inspection over all the clergy, they were to see that the
Scriptures were read daily and purely expounded in the cathedrals; that in all
schools there were pure editions of the Bible; that proper care was taken to
train efficient preachers of the Word of God, and that learned men were provided
for the cities. Rules were also framed touching the celebration of marriage, the
visitation of the sick and the burial of the dead.
Thus the "preaching of
the Word" was restored to the place it undoubtedly held in the primitive Church.
We possess its pulpit literature in the homilies which have come down to us from
the days of the early Fathers. But the want of a sufficient number of qualified
preachers was much felt at this stage in the Reformed Church of Sweden. Olaf
Patersen tried to remedy the defect by preparing a "Postil" or collection of
sermons for the guidance of the clergy. To this "Postil" he added a translation
of Luther's larger Catechism for the instruction of the people. In 1531 he
published a "Missal," or liturgy, which exhibited the most important deviations
from that of Rome. Not only were many unscriptural practices in use among
Papists, such as kneelings, crossings, incensings, excluded from the liturgy of
Olaf, but everything was left out that could by any possibility be held to imply
that the Eucharist was a sacrifice the bloodless offering of Christ or that
a sacrificial character belonged to the clergy.
The Confession of the
Swedish Church was simple but thoroughly Protestant. The Abbe Vertot is mistaken
in saying that this assembly took the Augsburg Confession as the rule of their
faith. The Augustana Confessio was not then in existence, though it saw the
light a year after (1530). The Swedish Reformers had no guide but the Bible.
They taught; the birth of all men in a state of sin and condemnation; the
inability of the sinner to make satisfaction by his own works; the substitution
and perfect expiation of Christ; the free justification of the sinner on the
ground of His righteousness, received by faith; and the good works which flow
from the faith of the justified man.
Those who had recovered the lights
of truth, who had rekindled in their churches, after a long extinction, the lamp
of the Gospel, had no need, one should think, of the tapers and other
substitutes which superstition had invented to replace the eternal verities of
revelation. Those temples which were illuminated with the splendor of the Gospel
did not need images and pictures. It would seem, however, as if the Swedes felt
that they could not yet walk alone. They borrowed the treacherous help of the
Popish ritual.
Several of the old ceremonies were retained, but with new
explanations, to divorce them if possible from the old uses. The basin of holy
water still kept its place at the portal of the church; but the people were
cautioned not to think that it could wash away their sins: the blood of Christ
only could do that. It stood there to remind them of their baptism. The images
of the saints still adorned the walls of the churches not to be worshipped,
but to remind the people of Christ and the saints, and to incite them to imitate
their piety. On the day of the purification of the Virgin, consecrated candles
were used, not because there was any holiness in them, but because they typified
the true Light, even Christ, who was on that day presented in the Temple of
Jerusalem. In like manner, extreme unction was practiced to adumbrate the
anointing of the Holy Spirit; bells were tolled, not in the old belief that they
frightened the demons, but as a convenient method of convoking the people.[14] It would have been better,
we are disposed to think, to have abolished some of these symbols, and then the
explanation, exceedingly apt to be forgotten or disregarded, would have been
unnecessary. It is hard to understand how material light can help us the better
to. perceive a spiritual object, or how a candle can reveal to us Christ. Those
who tolerated remains of the old superstition in the Reformed worship of Sweden,
acted, no doubt, with sincere intentions, but it may be doubted whether they
were not placing hindrances rather than helps in the way of the nation, and
whether in acting as they did they may not be compared to the man who first
places a rock or some huge obstruction in the path that leads to his mansion,
and then kindles a beacon upon it to prevent his visitors from tumbling over
it.
Gustavus I. had now the happiness of seeing the Reformed faith
planted in his dominions, His reign was prolonged after this thirty years, and
during all that time he never ceased to watch over the interests of the
Protestant Church, taking care that his kingdom should be well supplied with
learned bishops and diligent pastors. Lawrence Patersen (1531) was promoted to
the Archbishopric of Upsala, the first see in Sweden, which he filled till his
death (1570). The country soon became flourishing, and yielded plenteously the
best of all fruit great men. The valor of the nobles was displayed on many a
hard-fought field. The pius and patriotic king took part in the great events of
his age, in some of which we shall yet meet him. He went to his grave in 1560.
[15] But the spirit he had
kindled in Sweden lived after him, and the attempts of some of his immediate
successors to undo what their great ancestor had done, and lead back the nation
into Popish darkness, were firmly resisted by the nobles.
The scepter of
Gustavus Vasa passed to his son, Eric XIV., whose short reign of eight years was
marked with some variety of fortune. In 1568, he transmitted the kingdom to his
brother John, who, married to a Roman Catholic princess, conceived the idea of
introducing a semi-Popish liturgy into the Swedish Church. The new liturgy,
which was intended to replace that of Olaf Patersen, was published in the spring
of 1576, and was called familiarly the "Red Book," from the color of its
binding. It was based upon the Missale Romanum, the object being to assimilate
the Eucharistic service to the ritual of the Church of Rome. It contained the
following passage: "Thy same Son, the same Sacrifice, which is a pure
unspotted and holy Sacrifice, exhibited for our reconciliation, for our shield,
shelter, and protection against thy wrath and against the terrors of sin and
death, we do with faith receive, and with our humble prayers offer before thy
glorious majesty." The doctrine of this passage is unmistakably that of
transubstantiation, but, over and above this, the whole of the new Missal was
pervaded by a Romanizing spirit. The bishops and many of the clergy were gained
over to the king's measures, but a minority of the pastors remained faithful,
and the resolute opposition which they offered to the introduction of the new
liturgy, saved the Swedish Church from a complete relapse into Romanism. Bishop
Anjou, the modern historian of the Swedish Reformation, says "The severity
with which King John endeavored to compel the introduction of his prayer-book,
was the testing fire which purified the Swedish Church to a clear conviction of
the Protestant principles which formed its basis." It was a time of great trial,
but the conflict yielded precious fruits to the Church of Sweden. The nation saw
that it had stopped too soon in the path of Reform, that it must resume its
progress, and place a greater distance between itself and the principles and
rites of the Romish Church; and a movement was now begun which continued
steadily to go on, till at last the topstone was put upon the work. The
Protestant party rallied every day. Nevertheless, the contest between King John
and the Protestant portion of his subjects lasted till the day of his death.
John was succeeded by his son, Sigismund, in 1592. On arriving from Poland to
take possession of the Swedish crown, Sigismund found a declaration of the
Estates awaiting his signature, to the effect that the liturgy of John was
abolished, and that the Protestant faith was the religion of
Sweden.
CHAPTER 6
Back to
Top
PROTESTANTISM IN
SWEDEN, FROM VASA (1530) TO CHARLES IX. (1604).
Ebb in Swedish
Protestantism Sigismund a Candidate for the Throne-His Equivocal Promise
Synod of Upsala, 1593 Renew their Adherence to the Augsburg Confession
Abjure the "Red Book" Their Measure of Toleration The Nation joyfully
Adheres to the Declaration of the Upsala Convocation Sigismund Refuses to
Subscribe The Diet Withholds the Crown He Signs and is Crowned His Short
Reign Charles IX. His Death A Prophecy.
SINCE the middle of the reign of Gustavus Vasa, the
liberties of the Reformed Church of Sweden had been on the ebb. Vasa, adopting
the policy known as the Erastian, had assumed the supreme power in all matters
ecclesiastical. His son John went a step beyond this. At his own arbitrary will
and pleasure he imposed a semi-Popish liturgy upon the Swedish clergy, and
strove, by sentences of imprisonment and outlawry, to compel them to make use of
it in their public services. But now still greater dangers impended: in fact, a
crisis had arisen. Sigismund, who made no secret of his devotion to Rome, was
about to mount the throne. Before placing the crown on his head, the Swedes felt
that it was incumbent on them to provide effectual guarantees that the new
monarch should govern in accordance with the Protestant religion. Before
arriving in person, Sigismund had sent from Poland his promise to his new
subjects that he would preserve religious freedom and "neither hate nor love"
any one on account of his creed. The popular interpretation put upon this
assurance expresses the measure of confidence felt in it. Our future sovereign,
said the Swedes, tells us that he will "hate no Papist and love no
Lutheran."
The nation was wise in time. The synod was summoned by Duke
Charles, the administrator of the kingdom in the absence of Sigismund, to meet
at Upsala on the 25th February, 1593, and settle ecclesiastical
affairs.
There were present four bishops, four professors of theology,
three hundred and six clergymen, exclusive of those who had not been formally
summoned. Duke Charles, and the nine members of council, many of the nobles, and
several representatives of cities and districts were also present at this synod,
although, with the exception of the members of council, they took no part in its
deliberations. The business was formally opened on the 1st March by a speech
from the High Marshal, in which, in the name of the duke and the council, he
welcomed the clergy, and congratulated them on having now at length obtained
what they had often so earnestly sought, and King John had as often promised
but only promised " a free ecclesiastical synod." He invited them freely to
discuss the matters they had been convoked to consider, but as for himself and
his colleagues, he added, they would abide by the Augsburg Confession of 1530,
and the ecclesiastical constitution of 1529, framed for them by Lawrence
Patersen, the late Archbishop of Upsala.
Professor Nicolas Olai was
chosen president, and the synod immediately proceeded to the all-important
question of a Confession. The Augsburg Confession was read over article by
article. It was the subject day after day of anxious deliberation; at last it
became evident that there existed among the members of synod a wonderful harmony
of view on all the points embraced in the Augustan Symbol, and that there was
really no need to frame a new formula of belief. Whereupon Bishop Petrus Jonmae,
of Strengnas, stood up and put to the synod and council the interrogatory, "Do
you adopt this Confession as the Confession of your faith, and are you resolved
to abide firmly by it, notwithstanding all suffering and loss to which a
faithful adherence to it may expose you?"
Upon this the whole synod arose
and shouted out, "We do; nor shall we ever flinch from it, but at all times
shall be ready to maintain it with our goods and our lives." "Then," responded
the president in loud and glad tones, "now is Sweden become as one man, and we
all of us have one Lord and God."
The synod having thus joyfully
completed its first great work, King John's liturgy, or the "Red Book," next
came up for approval or non-approval. All were invited to speak who had anything
to say in defense of the liturgy. But not a voice was lifted up; not one
liturgical champion stepped down into the arena. Nay, the three prelates who had
been most conspicuous during the lifetime of the former king for their support
of the Missal, now came forward and confessed that they had been mistaken in
their views of it, and craved forgiveness from God and the Assembly. So fell the
notorious "Red Book," which, during sixteen years, had caused strifes and
divisions in the Church, had made not a few to depart from "the form of sound
words," and embittered the last years of the reign of the man from whom it
proceeded.
We deem it incumbent to take into consideration three of the
resolutions adopted by this synod, because one shows the historic ground which
the Reformed Church of Sweden took up, and the other two form the measure of the
enlightenment and toleration which the Swedes had attained to.
The second
general resolution ran thus: "We further declare the unity and agreement of the
Swedish Church with the Christian Church of the primitive ages, through our
adoption of the Apostolic, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds; with the Reformed
Evangelical Church, through our adoption of the Augsburg Confession of 1530; and
with the preceding Reformation of the Swedish Church itself, through the
adoption of the ecclesiastical constitution established and held valid during
the episcopate of Laurentius Petri, and the concluding years of the reign of
King Gustavus I."
In the fourth resolution, over and above the
condemnation of the liturgy of King John, because it was "a stone of stumbling"
and "similar to the Popish mass," the synod adds its rejection of the "errors of
Papists, Sacramentarians, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and all other
heretics."
In the sixth resolution, the synod declares it to be "strictly
right that persons holding other forms of faith than the Lutheran should not be
permitted to settle in the kingdom;" nevertheless, having respect to the
requirements of trade and commerce, they grant this indulgence, but under
restriction that such shall hold no public religious meetings in their houses,
nor elsewhere, nor speak disrespectfully of the national creed.
It is
easy to pity, nay, it is easy to condemn this narrowness; but it is not so easy
to apportion due praise to the synod for the measure of catholicity to which it
had attained. Its members had repudiated the use of the stake for
conscience-sake; that was a great advance at this early period; if,
notwithstanding, they framed an edict that has the aspect of persecution, its
object was not to coerce the opinion of others, but to defend their own belief.
Plotters and foes abounded on every side; it behooved them to take measures to
guard against surprise, and as regards other points, fuller information would
have qualified their judgment on some of the opinions enumerated in their, list
of ostracized sects. But despite these defects, we find in their creed and
resolutions the pure and renovating breath of our common Protestantism. The
faces of these men are turned toward liberty. The molding principles of their
creed are those which generate noble characters and heroic actions. It scattered
among the Swedish people the germs of a new life, and from that hour dates their
resurrection to a nobler destiny. The spirit of the Upsala convocation embodied
itself in Duke Charles's illustrious son, it bore him in triumph into the very
heart of Papal Germany, it crowned his arms with victory in his Protestant
campaigns, and the echoes of the solemn declaration of the Estates in 1539 come
back upon us in battle-thunder from many a stricken field, and grandest and
saddest of all from the field of Lutzen.
The synod had done its work, and
now it made its appeal to the nation. Will the Swedish people ratify what their
pastors had done at Upsala?
Copies of the declaration and resolutions
were circulated through the kingdom. The sanction of the nation was universally
and promptly given. All ranks of persons testified their adherence to the
Protestant faith, by subscribing the Upsala Declaration. The roll of signatures
contained the names of Duke Charles, Gustavus, Duke of Saxony and Westphalia,
the grandson of Gustavus I., 14 councilors of State, 7 bishops, 218 knights and
nobles, 137 civil officials, 1,556 clergymen, the burgomasters of the thirty-six
cities and town's of the realm, and the representatives of 197 districts and
provinces. This extensive subscription is proof of an enthusiasm and unanimity
on the part of the Swedish people not less marked than that of the
synod.
One other name was wanted to make this signature-roll complete,
and to proclaim that the adoption of Protestantism by the Swedish people was
truly and officially a national act. It was that of King Sigismund. "Will he
subscribe the Upsala Declaration?" every one asked; for his attachment to the
Romish faith was well known. Sigismund still tarried in Poland, and was
obviously in no haste to present himself among his new subjects. The council
dispatched a messenger to solicit his subscription. The reply was an evasion.
This naturally created alarm, and the Protestants, forewarned, bound themselves
still more closely together to maintain their religious liberty. After
protracted delays the new sovereign arrived in Sweden on the 30th of September
the same year. The duke, the council, and the clergy met him at Stockholm, and
craved his subscription to the Upsala resolutions. Sigismund refused compliance.
The autumn and winter were passed in fruitless negotiations. With the spring
came the period which had been fixed upon for the coronation of the monarch. The
royal signature had not yet been given, and events were approaching a crisis.
The Swedish Estates were assembled in the beginning of February, 1594. The
archbishop, having read the Upsala Declaration, asked the Diet if it was
prepared to stand by it. A unanimous response was given in the affirmative, and
further, the Diet decreed that whoever might refuse to sign the declaration
should be held disqualified to fill any office, civil or ecclesiastical, within
the realm. Sigismund now saw that he had no alternative save to ratify the
declaration or renounce the crown. He chose the former. After some vain attempts
to qualify his subscription by appending certain conditions, he put his name to
the hated document. A Te Deum was sung in the cathedral the day following, and
on the 19th of February, King Sigismund was crowned. The struggle of Sweden for
its Reformation, which had lasted over twenty years, came thus at last to a
victorious close. Arcimbold, by the preaching of indulgences, and the political
conflicts to which this led, had ploughed up the soil; Olaf and Lawrence
Patersen came next, scattering the seed; then arose the patriotic Gustavus Vasa
to shield the movement. After a too early pause, during which new dangers
gathered, the movement was again resumed. The synod of the clergy met and
adopted the Augustan Confession as the creed of Sweden; their deed was accepted
by the Estates and the nation, and finally ratified by the signature of the
sovereign. Thus was the Protestant faith of the Swedish people surrounded with
all legal formalities and securities; to this day these are the formal
foundations on which rests the Reformed Church of Sweden.[1]
Only a few years
did Sigismund occupy the throne of Sweden. His government, in accordance with
the Upsala Declaration, partook too much of the compulsory to be either hearty
or honest; he was replaced in 1604 by Charles IX., the third son of Gustavus
Vasa. When dying, Charles is reported to have exclaimed, laying his hand upon
the golden locks of his boy, and looking forward to the coming days of conflict,
"Ille faciet."[2]
This boy, over whom
his dying sire uttered these prophetic words, was the future Gustavus Adolphus,
in whom his renowned grandfather, Gustavus Vasa, lived over again, with still
greater renown.
CHAPTER 7
Back to
Top
INTRODUCTION OF
PROTESTANTISM INTO DENMARK.
Paul Elia Inclines to Protestantism
Returns to Rome Petrus Parvus Code of Christian II. The New Testament in
Danish Georgius Johannis Johannis Taussanus Studies at Cologne Finds
Access to Luther's Writings Repairs to Wittemberg Returns to Denmark
Re-enters the Monastery of Antvorskoborg Explains the Bible to the Monks
Transferred to the Convent of Viborg Expelled from the Convent Preaches in
the City Great Excitement in Viborg, and Alarm of the Bishops Resolve to
invite Doctors Eck and Cochlaeus to Oppose Taussan Their Letter to Eck Their
Picture of Lutheranism Their Flattery of Eck He Declines the
Invitation.
IN tracing the progress of the Reformation in Sweden,
our attention was momentarily turned toward Denmark. Two figures attracted our
notice Arcimboldus, the legate-a-latere of Leo X., and Christian II., the
sovereign of the country. The former was busy gathering money for the Pope's
use, and sending off vast sums of gold to Rome; the latter, impatient of the
yoke of the priests, and envious of the wealth of the Church, was trying to
introduce the doctrines of Luther into Denmark, less for their truth than for
the help they would give him in making himself master in his own dominions.
Soon, however, both personages disappeared from the scene.
Arcimbold in
due time followed his gold-bags to Italy, and Christian II., deposed by his
subjects, retired to the court of his brother-in-law, Charles V. His uncle
Frederick, Duke of Holstein and Schleswig, succeeded him on the throne.[1] This was in 1523, and here
properly begins the story of the Reformation in Denmark.
Paul Elia, a
Carmelite monk, was the first herald of the coming day. As early as 1520 the
fame of Luther and his movement reached the monastery of Helsingfor, in which
Elia held the rank of provincial. Smitten with an intense desire to know
something of the new doctrine, he procured the writings of Luther, studied them,
and appeared heartily to welcome the light that now broke upon him. The abuses
of the Church of Rome disclosed themselves to his eye; he saw that a Reformation
was needed, and was not slow to proclaim his conviction to his countrymen. He
displayed for a time no small courage and zeal in his efforts to diffuse a
knowledge of the truth in his native land. But, like Erasmus of Holland, and
More of England, he turned back to the superstitions which he appeared to have
left. He announced the advent of the heavenly kingdom, but did not himself enter
in.[2]
Among the early
restorers of the Gospel to Denmark, no mean place is due to Petrus Parvus.
Sprung of an illustrious stock, he was not less distinguished for his virtues.
Attracted to Wittemberg, like many of the Danish youth, by the fame of Luther
and Melancthon, he there heard of a faith that brings forgiveness of sin and
holiness of nature, and on his return home he labored to introduce the same
gracious doctrine into Denmark.[3]
Nor must we pass
over in silence the name of Martin, a learned man and an eloquent preacher, who
almost daily in 1520 proclaimed the Gospel from the cathedral pulpit of Hafnia
(Copenhagen) in the Danish tongue to crowded assemblies.[4] In 1522 came the
ecclesiastical and civil code of Christian II., of which we have already spoken,
correcting some of the more flagrant practices of the priests, forbidding
especially appeals to Rome, and requiring that all causes should be determined
the courts of the country. In the year following (1523) the king fled, leaving
behind him a soil which had just begun to be broken up, and on which a few
handfuls of seed had been cast very much at random.
In his banishment,
Christian still sought opportunities of promoting the best interests of the land
which had driven him out. One is almost led to think that amid all his vices as
a man, and errors as a ruler, he had a love for Lutheranism, for its own sake,
and not simply because it lent support to his policy. He now sent to Denmark the
best of all Reformers, the Word of God. In Flanders, where in 1524 we find him
residing, he caused the New Testament to be translated into the Danish tongue.
It was printed at Leipsic, and issued in two parts the first containing the
four Gospels, and the second the Epistles. It bore to be translated from the
Vulgate, although the internal evidence made it undoubted that the translator
had freely followed the German version by Luther, and possibly by doing so had
the better secured both accuracy and beauty.[5] The book was accompanied
with a preface by the translator, Johannis Michaelis, dated Antwerp, in which he
salutes his "dear brethren and sisters of Denmark, wishing grace and peace to
them in God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ." He bids them not be scared,
by the bulls and other fulmination's of the Vatican, from reading what God has
written; that the object of Rome is to keep them blindfolded, that they may
believe implicitly all the fables and dreams she chooses to tell them. God, he
says, has sent them, in great mercy, the Light by which they may detect the
frauds of the impostor. "Grace and remission of sins," says he, "are nowhere
save where the Gospel of God is preached. Whoever hears and obeys it, hears and
knows that he is forgiven, and has the assurance of eternal life; whereas, they
who go to Rome for pardon bring back nothing but griefs, a seared conscience,
and a bit of parchment sealed with wax."[6] The priests stormed, but
the Bible did its work, and the good fruits appeared in the following
reign.
Frederick, the uncle of Christian, and Duke of Holstein and
Schleswig, was now upon the throne. A powerful priesthood, and an equally
powerful nobility attached to the Romish Church, had exacted of the new monarch
a pledge that he would not give admission to the Lutheran faith into Denmark;
but the Danish Bible was every day rendering the fulfillment of the pledge more
difficult. In vain had the king promised "not to attack the dignity and
privileges of the Ecclesiastical Estate,"[7] when the Scriptures were,
hour by hour, silently but powerfully undermining them.
A beginning was
made by Georgius Johannis. He had drunk at the well of Wittemberg, and returning
to his native town of Viborg, he began (1525) to spread the Reformed opinions.
When the Bishop of Viborg opposed him, the king gave him letters of protection,
which enabled him to set up a Protestant school in that city,[8] the first of all the
Protestant institutions of Denmark, and which soon became famous for the success
with which, under its founder, it diffused the light of truth and piety over the
kingdom.
After Johannis came a yet more illustrious man, who has earned
for himself the title of the "Reformer of Denmark," Johannis Taussanus. He was
born in 1494, in the country of Fionia; his parents were peasants. From his
earliest years the young Taussan discovered a quick genius and an intense thirst
for knowledge, but the poverty of his parents did not permit them to give him a
liberal education. Following the custom of his time he entered the Order of John
the Baptist, or Jerusalem Monks, and took up his abode in the monastery of
Antvorskoborg in Zealand.
He had not been long in the monastery when the
assiduity and punctuality with which he performed his duties, and the singular
blamelessness of his manners, drew upon him the eyes of the superior of the
order, Eskildus.[9] His parts, he found, were
equal to his virtues, and in the hope that he would become in time the ornament
of the monastery, the superior adjudged to the young Taussan one of those
bursaries which were in the gift of the order for young men of capacity who
wished to prosecute their studies abroad. Taussan was told that, he might select
what school or university he pleased, one only excepted, Wittemberg. That
seminary was fatally poisoned; all who drank of its waters died, and thither he
must on no account bend his course. But there were others whose waters no heresy
had polluted: there were Louvain, and Cologne, and others, all unexceptionable
in their orthodoxy. At any or all of these he might drink, but of the fountain
in Saxony he must not approach it, nor taste it, lest he become anathema. His
choice fell upon Cologne. He had been only a short while at that seat of
learning when he became weary of the futility's and fables with which he was
there entertained. He thirsted to engage in studies more solid, and to taste a
doctrine more pure. It happened at that time that the writings of Luther were
put into his hands.[10] In these he found what met
the cravings of his soul. He longed to place himself at the feet of the
Reformer. Many weary leagues separated Wittemberg from the banks of the Rhine,
but that was not the only, nor indeed the main, difficulty he had to encounter.
He would forfeit his pension, and incur the wrath of his superiors, should it be
known that he had gone to drink at the interdicted spring. These risks, however,
did not deter him; every day he loathed more and more the husks given him for
food, and wished to exchange them for that bread by which alone he felt he could
live. He set out for Witternberg; he beheld the face of the man through whom God
had spoken to his heart when wandering in the wilderness of Scholasticism, and
if the page of Luther had touched him, how much more his living
voice!
Whether the young student's sojourn here was known in his native
country we have no means of discovering; but in the summer of 1521, and about
the time that Luther would be setting out for the Diet of Worms, we find Taussan
returning to Denmark. His profiting at Wittemberg was very sufficiently attested
by a most flattering mark of distinction which was bestowed on him on his way
home. The University of Rostock conferred upon him the degree of Doctor in
Theology, an honor which doubtless he valued chiefly because it admitted him to
the privilege of teaching to others what himself had learned with joy of heart
at the feet of the Reformers.[11]
The monastery at
whose expense he had studied abroad had the first claim upon him; and some time
elapsed before he could teach publicly in the university. He brought back to the
monastery, which he again entered, the same beautiful genius and the same pure
manners which had distinguished him before his departure; but the charm of these
qualities was now heightened by the nameless grace which true piety gives to the
character, "As a lamp in a sepulcher," says one, "so did his light shine in the
midst of the darkness of that place."[12] It was not yet suspected
by his brethren that they had a Lutheran among them under the cloak of their
order, and Taussan took care not to put them upon the scent of the secret,
nevertheless, he began betimes to correct the disorders and enlighten the
ignorance of his fellow-monks evils which he now saw had their origin not so
much in the vices of the men as in the perversity of the institution.
He
would draw them to the Word of God, and opening to them in plain language its
true meaning, he would show them how far and fatally Rome had strayed from this
Holy Rule. At the Easter of 1524 he preached a sermon setting forth the
insufficiency of good works, and the need of an imputed righteousness in order
to the sinner's justification. "All the blind supporters of the Pontifical
superstition," says the historian, "were in arms against him."[13] The disguise was now
dropped.
There was one man whose wrath the sermon of the young monk had
specially roused, the prior of the convent, Eskildus, a bigoted upholder of the
ancient religion, and the person who had sent Taussan abroad, whence he had
brought back the doctrine, the preaching of which had converted his former
friend into his bitter enemy.
That he might not corrupt the monks, or
bring on the monastery of Antvorskoborg, which had preserved till this hour its
good name untarnished, the terrible suspicion of heresy, the prior formed the
resolution of transferring Taussan to the convent of Viborg, where a strict
watch would be kept upon him, and he would have fewer opportunities of
proselytizing under the rigorous surveillance which Prior Petri Jani was known
to exercise over those committed to his care. The event, however, turned out
quite otherwise. Shut up in his cell, Taussan communicated with the inmates of
the convent through the bars of his window. In these conversations he dropped
the seeds of truth into their minds, and the result was that two of the monks,
named Erasmus and Theocarius, were converted to the truth.[14]
The horror-struck
prior, foreseeing the perversion of his whole brotherhood should he retain this
corrupter a day longer in the monastery, again drove Taussan forth. If the prior
saved his convent by this step, he lost the city of Viborg, for it so happened
that about that time a rescript (1526) of King Frederick was issued, commanding
that no one should offer molestation to any teacher of the new doctrine, and
Taussan thus, though expelled, found himself protected from insult and
persecution, whether from the prior or from the magistrates of Viborg. By a
marvelous providence, he had been suddenly transferred from the monastery to the
city, from the cell to the vineyard of the Lord; from a little auditory,
gathered by stealth at his grated window, to the open assemblies of the
citizens. He began to preach. The citizens of Viborg heard with joy the Gospel
from his mouth. The churches of the city were opened to Taussan, and the crowds
that flocked to bear him soon filled them to overflowing.[15]
It was now the
bishop's turn to be alarmed. The prior in extinguishing the fire in his convent
had but carried the conflagration into the city; gladly would he have seen
Taussan again shut up in the monastery, but that was impossible. The captive had
escaped, or rather had been driven out, and was not to be lured back; the
conflagration had been kindled, and could not now be extinguished. What was to
be done? The bishop, Georgius Friis, had no preachers at his command, but he had
soldiers, and he resolved to put down these assemblies of worshippers by arms.
The zeal of the citizens for the Gospel, however, and their resolution to
maintain its preacher, rendered the bishop's efforts abortive. They bade
defiance to his troops. They posted guards around the churches, they defended
the open squares by drawing chains across them, and they went to sermon with
arms in their hands. At length there came another intimation of the royal will,
commanding the disaffected party to desist from these violent proceedings, and
giving the citizens of Viborg full liberty to attend on the preaching of the
Gospel.[16]
Foiled in his own
city and diocese, the Bishop of Viborg now took measures for extending the war
over the kingdom. The expulsion of Taussan from the convent had set the city in
flames; but the bishop had failed to learn the lesson taught by the incident,
and so, without intending it, he laid the train for setting the whole country on
fire. He convoked the three other bishops of Fionia (Jutland), the most ancient
and largest province of Denmark, and, having addressed them on the emergency
that had arisen, the bishops unanimously agreed to leave no stone unturned to
expel Lutheranism from Denmark. Mistrusting their own skill and strength,
however, for the accomplishment of this task, they east their eyes around, and
fixed on two champions who, they thought, would be able to combat the hydra
which had invaded their land. These were Doctors Eck and Cochlaeus. The four
bishops, Ivarus Munck, Stiggo Krumpen, Avo Bilde, and Georgius Friis, addressed
a joint letter, which they sent by an honorable messenger, Henry Geerkens, to
Dr. Eck, entreating him to come and take up his abode for one or more years in
Jutland, in order that by preaching, by public disputations, or by writing, he
might silence the propagators of heresy, and rescue the ancient faith from the
destruction that impended over it. Should this application be declined by Eck,
Geerkens was empowered next to present it to Cochlaeus.[17] Neither flatteries nor
promises were lacking which might induce these mighty men of war to renew, on
Danish soil, the battles which they boasted having so often and so gloriously
fought for Rome in other countries.
The letter of the four bishops, dated
14th of June, 1527, has been preserved; but the terms in which they give vent to
their immense detestation of Lutheranism, and their equally immense admiration
of the qualities of the man whom Providence had raised up to oppose it, are
hardly translatable. Many of their phrases would have been quite new to Cicero.
The epistle savored of Gothic rigor rather than Italian elegance.
The
eccentricities of their pen will be easily pardoned, however, if we reflect how
much the portentous apparition of Lutheranism had disturbed their imaginations.
They make allusion to it as that "Phlegethonian plague," that "cruel and
virulent pestilence,"[18] the "black contagion" of
which, "shed into the air," was "darkening great part of Christendom," and had
made "their era a most unhappy one." Beginning by describing Lutheranism as a
plague, they end by comparing it to a serpent; for they go on to denounce those
"skulking and impious Lutheran dogmatizers," who, "fearing neither the authority
of royal diets nor the terrors of a prison," now "creeping stealthily," now
"darting suddenly out of their holes like serpents," are diffusing among "the
simple and unlearned flock," their "desperate insanity," bred of "controversial
studies."[19]
From Lutheranism
the four bishops turn to Dr. Eck. Their pen loses none of its cunning when they
come to recount his great qualities. If Lutheranism was the plague that was
darkening the earth, Eck was the sun destined to enlighten it. If Lutheranism
was the serpent whose deadly virus was infecting mankind, Eck was the Hercules
born to slay the monster. "To thee," said the bishops, casting themselves at his
feet, "thou most eloquent of men in Divine Scripture, and who excellest in all
kinds of learning, we bring the wishes of our Estates. They seek to draw to
their own country the man who, by his gravity, his faith, his constancy, his
prudence, his firm mind, is able to bring back those who have been misled by
perverse and heretical teachers." Not that they thought they could add to the
fame of one already possessed of "imperishable renown, and a glory that will
last throughout the ages;" "a man to whom nothing in Divine literature is
obscure, nothing unknown;" but they urged the greatness of their need and the
glory of the service, greater than any ever undertaken by the philosophers and
conquerors of old, the deliverance even of Christianity, menaced with extinction
in the rich and populous kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. They go on to
cite the great deeds of Curtius and Scipio Africanus, and other heroes of
ancient story, and trust that the man they address will show not less devotion
for the Christian commonwealth than these did for the Roman republic. Their hope
lay in him alone "in his unrivalled eloquence, in his profound penetration, in
his Divine understanding." In saving three kingdoms from the pestilence of
Luther, he would win a higher glory and taste a sweeter pleasure than did those
men who had saved the republic.[20]
This, and a great
deal more to the same effect, was enough, one would have thought, to have
tempted Dr. Eck to leave his quiet retreat, and once more measure swords with
the champions of the new faith. But the doctor had grown wary. Recent encounters
had thinned his laurels, and what remained he was not disposed to throw away in
impossible enterprises, he was flattered by the embassy, doubtless, but not
gained by it. He left the Cimbrian bishops to fight the battle as best they
could.
CHAPTER 8
Back to
Top
CHURCH-SONG IN
DENMARK.
Paul Elia Opposes Harangues the Soldiery in the Citadel
Tumults The King summons a Meeting of the Estates at Odensee His Address to
the Bishops Edict of Toleration Church-Song Ballad-Poetry of Denmark
Out-burst of Sacred Psalmody Nicolaus Martin Preaches outside the Walls of
Malmoe Translates the German Hymns into Danish The Psalms Translated Sung
Universally in Denmark Nicolaus Martin Preaches inside Malmoe Theological
College Established there Preachers sent through Denmark Taussan Removed to
Copenhagen New Translation of the New Testament.
MEANWHILE the truth was making rapid progress in
Viborg, and throughout the whole of Jutland. The Gospel was proclaimed not only
by Taussan, "the Luther of Denmark" as he has been called, but also by George
Jani, or Johannis, of whom we have already made mention, as the founder of the
first Reformed school in Viborg, and indeed in Denmark.
The king was
known to be a Lutheran; so too was the master of his horse, Magnus Goyus, who
received the Communion in both kinds, and had meat on his table on Fridays. The
army was largely leavened with the same doctrine, and in the Duchies of Holstein
and Schleswig the Lutheran faith was protected by law. Everything helped onward
the movement; if it stopped for a moment its enemies were sure again to set it
in motion. It was at this time not a little helped by Paul Elia, the first to
sow the seeds of Lutheranism in Denmark, but who now was more eager to extirpate
than ever he had been to plant them. The unhappy man craved permission to
deliver his sentiments on Lutheranism in public. The permission was at once
granted, with an assurance that no one should be permitted to molest or injure
him. The master of the horse took him to the citadel, where at great length, and
with considerable freedom, he told what he thought of the faith which he had
once preached. His address fell upon attentive but not assenting ears. When he
descended from his rostrum he was met with a tempest of scoffs and threats. he
would have fallen a sacrifice to the incensed soldiery, had not a lieutenant,
unsheathing his sword, led him safely through the crowd, and dismissed him at
the gates of the fortress. The soldiers followed him with their cries, so long
as he was in sight, saying that "the monks were wolves and destroyers of
souls."
This and similar scenes compelled Frederick I. to take a step
forward. A regard for the tranquillity of his kingdom would suffer him no longer
to be neutral. Summoning (1527) the Estates of Denmark to Odensee, he addressed
them in Latin. Turning first of all to the bishops, he reminded them that their
office bound them to nourish the Church with the pure Word of God; that
throughout a large part of Germany religion had been purged from the old
idolatry; that even here in Denmark many voices were raised for the purgation of
the faith from the fables and traditions with which it was so largely mixed up,
and for permission to be able again to drink at the pure fountains of the Word.
He had taken an oath to protect the Roman and Catholic religion in his kingdom,
but he did not look on that promise as binding him to defend all "the errors and
old wives' fables" which had found admission into the Church. "And who of you,"
he asked, "is ignorant how many abuses and errors have crept in by time which no
man of sane mind can defend? " "And since," he continued, "in this kingdom, to
say nothing of others, the Christian doctrine, according to the Reformation of
Luther, has struck its roots so deep that they could not now be eradicated
without bloodshed, and the infliction of many great calamities upon the kingdom
and its people, it is my royal pleasure that in this kingdom both religions, the
Lutheran as well as the Papal, shall be freely tolerated till a General Council
shall have met."[1]
Of the clergy, many
testified, with both hands and feet, their decided disapproval of this speech;[2] but its moderation and
equity recommended it to the great majority of the Estates. A short edict, in
four heads, expressed the resolution of the Assembly, which was in brief that it
was permitted to every subject of the realm to profess which religion he
pleased, the Lutheran or the Pontifical; that no one should suffer oppression of
conscience or injury of person on that account; and that monks and nuns were at
liberty to leave their convents or to continue to reside in them, to marry or to
remain single.[3]
This edict the king
and Estates supplemented by several regulations which still further extended the
reforms. Priests were granted leave to marry; bishops were forbidden to send
money to Rome for palls; the election was to be in the power of the chapter, and
its ratification in that of the king; and, finally, the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction was restricted to ecclesiastical affairs.[4]
Another influence
which tended powerfully to promote the Reformation in Denmark was the revival of
church-song. The part which Rome assigns to her people in her public worship is
silence: their voices raised in praise are never heard. If hymns are ever sung
under the gorgeous roofs of her temples, it is by her clerical choirs alone; and
even these hymns are uttered in a dead language, which fails, of course, to
reach the understandings or to awaken the hearts of the people. The Reformation
broke the long and deep silence which had reigned in Christendom. Wherever it
advanced it was amid the sounds of melody and praise. Nowhere was it more so
than in Denmark. The early ballad-poetry of that country is among the noblest in
Europe. But the poetic muse had long slumbered there: the Reformation awoke it
to a new life. The assemblies of the Protestants were far too deeply moved to be
content as mere spectators, like men at a pantomime, of the worship celebrated
in their sanctuaries; they demanded a vehicle for those deep emotions of soul
which the Gospel had awakened within them. This was no mere revival of the
poetic taste, it was no mere refinement of the musical ear; it was the natural
outburst of those fresh, warm, and holy feelings to which the grand truths of
the Gospel had given birth, and which, like all deep and strong emotions,
struggled to utter themselves in song.
The first to move in this matter
was Nicolaus Martin. This Reformer had the honor to be the first to carry the
light of the Gospel to many places in Schonen. He had studied the writings of
Luther, and "drunk his fill of the Word,"[5] and yearned to lead others
to the same living fountain. The inhabitants of Malmoe, in 1527, invited him to
preach the Gospel to them. He obeyed the summons, and held his first meeting on
the 1st of June in a meadow outside the walls of the city. The people, after
listening to the Gospel of God's glorious grace, wished to vent their feelings
in praise; but there existed nothing in the Danish tongue fit to be used on such
an occasion. They proposed that the Latin canticles which the priests sang in
the temples should be translated into Danish. Martin, with the help of John
Spandemager, who afterwards became Pastor of Lund, in Schonen, and who "labored
assiduously for more than thirty years in the vineyard of the Lord,"[6] translated several of the
sacred hymns of Germany into the tongue of the people, which, being printed and
published, at Malmoe, formed the first hymn-book of the Reformed Church of
Denmark.
By-and-by there came a still nobler hymn-book. Francis Wormord,
of Amsterdam, the first Protestant Bishop of Lund, was originally a Carmelite
monk. During his residence in the monastery of Copenhagen or of Helsingborg, for
it is uncertain which, led by love of the truth, he translated the Psalms of
David into the Danish tongue. The task was executed jointly by himself and Paul
Elia, for, being a native of Holland, Wormord was but imperfectly master of the
Danish idiom, and gladly availed himself of the help of another. The book was
published in 1528, "with the favor and privilege of the king."[7] The publication was
accompanied with notes, explaining the Psalms in a Protestant sense, and, like a
hand-post, directing the readers eye to a Greater than David, whose sufferings
and resurrection and ascension to heaven are gloriously celebrated in these
Divine odes. The Psalms soon displaced the ballads which had been sung till
then. They were heard in the castles of the nobles; they were used in the
assemblies of the Protestants. While singing them the worshippers saw typified
and depicted the new scenes which were opening to the Church and the world, the
triumph even of Messiah's kingdom, and the certain and utter overthrow of that
of his rival.[8] Long had the Church's harp
hung upon the willows; but her captivity was now drawing to an end; the fetters
were falling from her limbs; the doors of her prison were beginning to expand.
She felt the time had come to put away her sackcloth, to take down her harp so
long unstrung, and to begin those triumphal melodies written aforetime for the
very purpose of celebrating, in strains worthy of the great occasion, her march
out of the house of bondage. The ancient oracle was now fulfilled: "The ransomed
of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs."
In particular the
Psalms of David may be said to have opened the gates of Malmoe, which was the
first of all the cities of Denmark fully to receive the Gospel. The first
Protestant sermon, we have said, was preached outside the walls in 1527. The
announcement of "a free forgiveness" was followed by the voices of the multitude
lifted up in Psalms in token of their joy. Louder songs re-echoed day by day
round the walls of Malmoe, as the numbers of the worshippers daily increased.
Soon the gates were opened, and the congregation marched in, to the dismay of
the Romanists, not in serge or sackcloth, not with gloomy looks and downcast
heads, as if they had been leading in a religion of penance and gloom, but with
beaming faces, and voices thrilling with joy, as well they might, for they were
bringing to their townsmen the same Gospel which was brought to the shepherds by
the angels who filled the sky with celestial melodies as they announced their
message. The churches were opened to the preachers; the praises uttered outside
the walls were now heard within the city. It seemed as if Malmoe rejoiced
because "salvation was come to it." Mass was abolished; and in 1529 the
Protestant religion was almost universally professed by the inhabitants. By the
king's direction a theological college was erected in Malmoe; Frederick I.
contributed liberally to its endowment, and moreover enacted by edict that the
manors and other possessions given aforetime to the Romish superstition should,
after the poor had been provided for, be made over for the maintenance of the
Protestant Gymnasium.[9]
This seminary
powerfully contributed to diffuse the light; it supplied the Danish Church with
many able teachers. Its chairs were filled by men of accomplishment and
eminence. Among its professors, then styled readers, were Nicolaus Martin, the
first to carry the "good tidings" of a free salvation to Malmoe; Andreas, who
had been a monk; Wornlord, who had also worn the cowl, but who had exchanged the
doleful canticles of the monastery for the odes of the Hebrew king, which he was
the first by his translation to teach his adopted countrymen to sing. Besides
those just named, there were two men, both famous, who taught in the College of
Malmoe Peter Lawrence, and Olaus Chrysostom, Doctor of Theology. The latter's
stay in Malmoe was short, being called to be first preacher in the Church of
Mary in Copenhagen.[10]
The king's interest
in the work continued to grow. The Danish Reformers saw and seized their
opportunity. Seconded by the zeal and assistance of Frederick, they sent
preachers through the kingdom, who explained in clear and simple terms the heads
of the Christian doctrine, and thus it came to pass that in this year (1529) the
truth was extended to all the provinces of Denmark. The eloquent Taussan, at the
king's desire, removed from Viborg to Copenhagen, where he exercised his rare
pulpit gifts in the Temple of St. Nicholas.
Taussan's removal to this
wider sphere gave a powerful impulse to the movement. His fame had preceded him,
and the citizens flocked in crowds to hear him. The Gospel, so clearly and
eloquently proclaimed by him, found acceptance with the inhabitants. The Popish
rites were forsaken no one went to mass or to confession. The entrance of the
truth into this city, says the historian, was signalized by "a mighty outburst
of singing." The people, filled with joy at the mysteries made known to them,
and the clear light that shone upon them after the long darkness, poured forth
their gratitude in thundering voices in the Psalms of David, the hymns of
Luther, and in other sacred canticles. Nor did Taussan confine himself to his
own pulpit and flock; he cared for all the young Churches of the Reformation in
Denmark, and did his utmost to nourish them into strength by seeking out and
sending to them able and zealous preachers of the truth.[11]
This year (1529), a
truly memorable one in the Danish Reformation, saw another and still more
powerful agency enter the field. A new translation of the New Testament in the
Danish tongue was now published in Antwerp, under the care of Christian Petri.
Petri had formerly been a canon, and Chancellor of the Chapter in Lurid; but
attaching himself to the fortunes of Christian II., he had been obliged to
become an exile. He was, however, a learned and pious man, sincerely attached to
the Reformed faith, which he did his utmost, both by preaching and writing, to
propagate. He had seen the version of the New Testament, of which we have made
mention above, translated by Michaelis in 1524, and which, though corrected by
the pen of Paul Elia, was deformed with blemishes and obscurities; and feeling a
strong desire to put into the hands of his countrymen a purer and more idiomatic
version, Petri undertook a new translation. The task he executed with success.
This purer rendering of the lively oracles of God was of great use in the
propagation of the light through Denmark and the surrounding regions.[12]
CHAPTER 9
Back to
Top
ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN
DENMARK.
The King summons a Conference Forty-three Articles of the
Protestants Agreement with the Augsburg Confession Romanist Indictment
against Protestants Its Heads In what Language shall the Debate take place?
Who shall be Judge? The Combat Declined at the Eleventh Hour Declaration
of Protestant Pastors Proclamation of the King Dissolution of the
Monasteries, etc.. Establishment of Protestantism Transformation undergone
by Denmark.
BUT the wider the light spread, and the more numerous
its converts became, the more vehemently did the priests oppose it. Their plots
threatened to convulse the kingdom; and Frederick I., judging an aggressive
policy to be the safest, resolved on another step towards the full establishment
of the Reformation in his dominions. In 1530 he summoned all the bishops and
prelates of his kingdom,[1] and the heads of the
Lutheran movement, to Copenhagen, in order that they might discuss in his own
presence, and in that of the Estates of the Realm, the distinctive articles of
the two faiths. The Protestants, in anticipation of the conference, drew up a
statement of doctrine or creed, in forty-three articles, "drawn from the pure
fountain of the Scriptures," and presented it to the king as the propositions
which they were prepared to maintain.[2] The Romanists, in like
manner, drew up a paper, which they presented to the king. But it was rather an
indictment against the Protestants than a summary of their own creed. It was a
long list of errors and crimes against the ancient faith of which they held
their opponents guilty! This was to pass judgment before the case had gone to
trial: it was to pass judgment in their own cause, and ask the king to inflict
the merited punishment. It was not for so summary a proceeding as this that
Frederick had summoned the conference.
Let us examine the heads of the
Protestant paper, mainly drawn up by Taussan, and accepted as the Confession of
the Danish Church. It declared Holy Scripture to be the only rule of faith, and
the satisfaction of Christ in our room the only foundation of eternal life. It
defined the Church to be the communion of the faithful, and it denied the power
of any man to cast any one out of that Church, unless such shall have first cut
himself off from the communion of the faithful by impenitence and sin. It
affirmed that the worship of God did not consist in canticles, masses, vigils,
edifices, shaven crowns, cowls, and anointings, but in the adoring of God in
spirit and in truth: that "the true mass of Christ is the commemoration of his
sufferings and death, in which his body is eaten and his blood is drunk in
certain pledge that through his name we obtain forgiveness of sins."[3] It goes on to condemn
masses for the living and the dead, indulgences, auricular confession, and all
similar practices. It declares all believers to be priests in Christ, who had
offered himself to the Father a living and acceptable sacrifice. It declares the
Head of the Church to be Christ, than whom there is no other, whether on earth
or in heaven, and of this Head all believers are members.[4]
This document,
bearing the signatures of all the leading Protestant pastors in the kingdom, was
presented to the king and the Estates of the Realm. It was already the faith of
thousands in Denmark. It struck a chord of profoundest harmony with the
Confession presented by the Protestants that same year at Augsburg.
The
Romanists next came forward. They had no summary of doctrine to present. The
paper they gave in was drawn up on the assumption that the faith of Rome was the
one true faith, which, having been held through all the ages and submitted to by
the whole world, needed no proof or argument at their hands. All who departed
from that faith were in deadly error, and ought to be reclaimed by authority.
What they gave in, in short, was not a list of Romish doctrines, but of
"Protestant errors," which were to be recanted, and, if not, to be
punished.
Let us give a few examples. The Romanists charged the
Protestants with holding, among other things, that "holy Church had been in
error these thirteen or fourteen centuries;" that "the ceremonies, fasts,
vestments, orders, etc., of the Church were antiquated and ought to be changed;"
that "all righteousness consisted in faith alone;" that "man had not the power
of free will;" and that "works did not avail for his salvation;" that "it was
impious to pray to the saints, and not less impious to venerate their bones and
relics;" that. "there is no external priesthood; " that "he who celebrates mass
after the manner of the Roman Church commits an abominable act, and crucifies
the Son of God afresh;" and that "all masses, vigils, prayers, alms, and
fastings for the dead are sheer delusions and frauds." The charges numbered
twenty-seven in all.[5]
The king, on
receiving the paper containing these accusations, handed it to John Taussan,
with a request that he and his colleagues would prepare a reply to it. The
article touching the "freedom of the will," which the Romanists had put in a
perverted light, Taussan and his co-pastors explained; but as regarded the other
accusations they could only plead guilty; they held, on the points in question,
all that the Romanists imputed to them; and instead of withdrawing their
opinions they would stand to them, would affirm over again "that vigils,
prayers, and masses for the dead are vanities and things that profit
nought."
This fixed the "state of the question" or point to be debated.
Next arose a keen contest on two preliminaries "In what language shall we
debate and who shall be judge?" The priests argued stoutly for the Latin, the
Protestants as strenuously contended that the Danish should be the tongue in
which the disputation should be carried on. The matter to be debated concerned
all present not less than it did the personal disputants, but how could they
determine on which side the truth lay if the discussion should take place in a
language they did not understand?[6]
The second point
was one equally hard to be settled: who shall be judge? The Protestants in
matters of faith would recognize no authority save that of God only speaking in
his own Word, although they left it to the king and the nobles and with the
audience generally to say whether what they maintained agreed with or
contradicted the inspired oracles. The Romanists, on the other hand, would
accept the Holy Scriptures only in the sense in which Councils and the Fathers
had interpreted them, reserving an appeal to the Pope as the ultimate and
highest judge. Neither party would yield, and now came the amusing part of the
business. Some of the Romanists suddenly discovered that the Lutherans were
heretics, schismatics, and low persons, with whom it would be a disgrace for
their bishops to engage in argument; while others of them, taking occasion from
the presence of the royal guards, cried out that they were overawed by the
military, and denied the free expression of their sentiments,[7] and that the king favored
the heretics. The conference was thus suddenly broken off; the king, the Estates
of the Realm, and the spectators who had gathered from all parts of the kingdom
to witness the debates, feeling not a little befooled by this unlooked-for
termination of the affair.[8]
Although the
Romanists had fought and been beaten, they could not have brought upon
themselves greater disgrace than this issue entailed upon them. The people saw
that they had not the courage even to attempt a defense of their cause, and they
did not judge more favorably of it when they saw that its supporters were
ashamed of it. Taussan and the other Protestant pastors felt that the hour had
come for speaking boldly out.
Setting to work, they prepared a paper
exhibiting in twelve articles the neglect, corruption, and oppression of the
hierarchy. This document they published all over the kingdom. It was followed by
a proclamation from the king, saying that, the "Divine Word of the Gospel"
should be freely and publicly preached, and that Lutherans and Romanists should
enjoy equal protection until such time as a General Council of Christendom
should meet and decide the question between them.
From that time the
Protestant confessors in Denmark rapidly increased in number. The temples were
left in great degree without worshippers, the monasteries without inmates, and
the funds appropriated to their support were withdrawn and devoted to the
erection of schools and relief of the poor. Of the monasteries, some were pulled
down by the mob; for it was found impossible to restrain the popular indignation
which had been awakened by the scandals and crimes of which report made these
places the scene. The monks marched out of their abodes, leaving their cloaks at
the door. Their hoards found vent by other and more useful channels than the
monastery; and the fathers found more profitable employments than those in which
they had been wont to pass the drowsy hours of the cell. Not a few became
preachers of the Gospel; and some devoted to handicraft those thews and sinews
which had run waste in the frock and cowl.
The tide was manifestly going
against the bishops; nevertheless they fought on, having nailed their colors to
the mast. They fed their hopes by the prospect of succor from abroad; and in
order to be ready to co-operate with it when it should arrive, they continued to
intrigue in secret, and took every means to maintain a brooding irritation
within the kingdom. Frederick, to whom their policy was well known, deemed it
wise to provide against the possible results of their intrigues and
machinations, by drawing closer to the Protestant party in Germany. In 1532 he
joined the league which the Lutheran princes had formed for their mutual defense
at Schmalkald.[9]
It is not easy
adequately to describe the change that now passed upon Denmark. A serene and
blessed light arose upon the whole kingdom. Not only were the Danes enabled to
read the Scriptures of the New Testament; in their own tongue, and the Psalms of
David, which were also often sung both in their churches and in their fields and
on their highways, but they had likewise numerous expounders of the Divine Word,
and preachers of the Gospel, who opened to them the fountains of salvation. The
land enjoyed a gentle spring. Eschewing the snares which the darkness had
concealed, and walking in the new paths which the light had discovered to them,
the inhabitants showed forth in abundance in their lives the fruits of the
Gospel, which are purity and peace.[10]
CHAPTER
10 Back to
Top
PROTESTANTISM UNDER CHRISTIAN III.,
AND ITS EXTENSION TO NORWAY AND ICELAND.
Scheme for Restoring the Old
Faith Abortive Unsuccessful Invasion of the Country by Christian II. Death
of the King Interregnum of Two Years Priestly Plottings and Successes
Taussan Condemned to Silence and Exile The Senators Besieged by an Armed Mob
in the Senate House Taussan given up Bishops begin to Persecute
Inundations, etc. Christian III. Ascends the Throne Subdues a Revolt
Assembles the Estates at Copenhagen The Bishops Abolished New Ecclesiastical
Constitution framed, 1547 Bugenhagen The Seven Superintendents Bugenhagen
Crowns the King Denmark Flourishes Establishment of Protestantism in Norway
and Iceland.
AN attempt was made at this time (1532) to turn the
flank of the Reformation. Jacob Ronnovius, the Archbishop of Roeschildien, a man
of astute but dangerous counsel, framed a measure, professedly in the interest
of the Gospel, but fitted to bring back step by step the ancient superstition in
all its power. His scheme was, in brief, that the Cathedral-church of
Copenhagen, dedicated to Mary, should be given to the Franciscans or to the
Friars of the Holy Ghost; that the mass and other rites should not be abolished,
but retained in their primitive form; that the offices and chantings should be
performed, not in the popular, but in the Latin tongue; that the altars and
other ornaments of the sacred edifices should not be removed; in short, that the
whole ritualistic machinery of the old worship should be maintained, while
"learned men" were, at the same time, to preach the Gospel in the several
parishes. This was a cunning device! It was sought to preserve the former
framework entire, in the firm hope that the old spirit would creep back into it,
and so the last state of the Danish people would be worse than the first. This
scheme was presented to the king. Frederick was not to be hoodwinked. His reply
put an effectual stop to the project of Ronnovius. It was the royal will that
the Edict of Copenhagen should remain in force. The archbishop had to bow; and
the hopes that the retrogades had built upon his scheme came to nothing.[1]
Scarcely had this
cloud passed, when danger showed itself in another quarter. The ex-King
Christian II., supported by his Popish allies in the Netherlands, and encouraged
by the clerical malcontents in Denmark, made a descent by sea upon the country
in the hope of recovering his throne. Discomfiture awaited the enterprise. As he
approached the Danish shore a storm burst out which crippled his fleet; and
before he could repair the damage it had sustained, he was attacked by the ships
of Frederick, and the engagement which ensued, and which lasted a whole day,
resulted in his complete rout. Christian was seized, carried to Soldenberg, in
the Isle of Alsen, shut up in a gloomy prison, and kept there till the death of
Frederick in 1533. [2]
So far the young
Reformation of Denmark had been wonderfully shielded. It had kept its path
despite many powerful enemies within the kingdom, and not a few active plotters
without. But now came a short arrest. On the 10th of April, 1533, Frederick I.,
now in his sixty-second year, died. The Protestants bewailed the death of "the
Good King." He was in the midst of his reforming career, and there was danger
that his work would be interred with him. There followed a troubled interregnum
of two years. Of the two sons of Frederick, Christian, the elder, was a
Protestant; the younger, John, was attached to the Romish faith. The Popish
party, who hoped that, with the descent of Frederick to the tomb, a new day had
dawned for their Church, began to plot with the view of raising John to the
throne. The Protestants were united in favor of Christian. A third party, who
thought to come in at the breach the other two had made for them, turned their
eyes to the deposed King Christian II., and even made attempts to effect his
restoration. The distracted country was still more embroiled by a revival of the
priestly pretensions. Frederick was in his grave, and a bold policy was all that
was needed, so the bishops thought, to hoist themselves and their Church into
the old place. They took a high tone in the Diet. They brow-beat the nobles,
they compelled restoration of the tithes, and they put matters in train for
recovering the cathedrals, monasteries, manors, and goods of which they had been
stripped. These successes emboldened them to venture on other and harsher
measures. They stretched forth their hand to persecute, and made no secret of
their design to extirpate the Protestant faith in Denmark.
Their first
blows were aimed at Taussan. The removal of that bold Reformer and eloquent
preacher was the first step, they saw, to success. He had long been a thorn in
their side. The manifesto which had been placarded over the whole kingdom,
proclaiming to all the negligence and corruption of the hierarchy, and which was
mainly his work, was an offense that never could be pardoned him. The bishops
had sufficient influence to get a decree passed in the Diet, condemning the
great preacher to silence and sending him into exile. He was expelled from the
Cathedral-church of Copenhagen, where he usually conducted his ministry; every
other church was closed against him; nay, not the pulpit only, the pen too was
interdicted. He was forbidden to write or publish any book, and ordered to
withdraw within a month from the diocese of Zealand. In whatever part of Denmark
he might take up his abode, he was prohibited from publishing any writing, or
addressing any assembly; nor could he discharge any ecclesiastical function; he
must submit himself in all things to the bishops.[3]
When rumors of what
was being enacted in the Diet got abroad, the citizens of Copenhagen rushed to
arms, and crowding into the forum filled it with tumult and loud and continued
outcries. They demanded that Taussan should be restored to them, and that the
Diet should refrain from passing any decree hostile to the Protestant faith,
adding that if harm shoal befall either the religion or its preacher, the
bishops would not be held guiltless. The Diet saw that the people were not in a
mood to be trifled with, and some of the senators made an effort to pacify them.
Addressing the crowd from the windows of the senate-house, they assured them
that they would take care that no evil should happen to Taussan, that no hostile
edict should pass the Diet, and that their Protestant customs and privileges
should in nowise be interfered with; and they exhorted them to go quietly to
their homes and attend to their own affairs. These words did not allay the fears
of the populace; the uproar still continued. The senators now got angry, and
shouting out with stentorian voice they threatened the rioters with punishment.
They were speaking to the winds. Their words were not heard; the noise that
raged below drowned them. Their gestures, however, were seen, and these
sufficiently indicated the irritation of the speakers. The fumes of the
"conscript Fathers" did but the more enrage the armed crowd. Raising their
voices to a yet louder pitch, the rioters exclaimed, "Show us Taussan, else we
will force the doors of the hall."
The senators, seized with instant
fear, restored the preacher to the people, who, forming a guard round him,
conducted him safely from the senate-house to his own home. Ronnovius,
Archbishop of Roeschildien, the prime instigator of the persecution now
commenced against the adherents of the Lutheran doctrine, had like to have fared
worse. He was specially obnoxious to the populace, and would certainly have
fallen a sacrifice to their wrath, but for the magnanimity of Taussan, who
restrained the furious zeal of the multitude, and rescued the archbishop from
their hands.
The prelate was not ungrateful for this generous act; he
warmly thanked Taussan, and even showed him henceforward a measure of
friendship. By-and- by, at the urgent intercession of the leading citizens of
Copenhagen, the church of their favorite preacher was restored to him, and
matters, as regarded religion, resumed very much their old course.[4]
The other bishops
were not so tolerant. On returning to their homes they commenced a sharp
persecution against the Protestants in their several dioceses. In Malmoe and
Veiis, the metropolitan Tobernus Billeus proscribed the preachers, who had
labored there with great success. These cities and some others were threatened
with excommunication. At Viborg the Romish bishop, George Frisius, left no stone
unturned to expel the Reformers from the city, and extinguish the Protestantism
which had there taken root and begun greatly to flourish. But the Protestants
were numerous, and the bold front which they showed the bishop told him that he
had reckoned without his host.[5] Not in the towns only, but
in many of the country parts the Protestant assemblies were put down, and their
teachers driven away. Beyond these severities, however, the persecution did not
advance. The ulterior and sterner measures to which these beginnings would most
assuredly have led, had time been given, were never reached. Denmark had not to
buy its Reformation with the block and the stake, as some other countries were
required to do. This, doubtless, was a blessing for the men of that generation;
that it was so for the men of the following ones we are not prepared to
maintain. Men must buy with a great price that; on which they are to put a
lasting value. The martyrs of one's kindred and country always move one more
than those of other lands, even though it is the same cause for which their
blood has been poured out.[6]
The calamities of
the two unhappy years that divided the decease of Frederick I. from the election
of his successor, or rather his quiet occupation of the throne, were augmented
by the rage of the elements. The waters of the sky and the floods of ocean
seemed as if they had conspired against a land already sufficiently afflicted by
the bitterness of political parties and the bigotry of superstitious zealots.
Great Inundations took place. In some instances whole towns were overflowed, and
many thousands of their inhabitants were drowned. "Ah!" said the adherents of
the old worship to the Protestants, "now at last you are overtaken by the Divine
vengeance. You have cast down the altars, defaced the images, and desecrated the
temples of the true religion, and now the hand of God is stretched out to
chastise you for your impiety."[7] It was unfortunate,
however, for this interpretation that these Inundations swallowed up the house
and field of Romanist and of Protestant alike. And, further, it seemed to
militate against this theory that the occurrence of these calamities had been
simultaneous with the apparent return of the country to the old faith. There
were not wanting those who regarded these events with a superstitious fear; but
to the majority they brought a discipline to faith, and a stimulus to effort. In
two years the sky again cleared over the Protestant cause, and also over the
country of Denmark. The eldest son of Frederick, whose hearty attachment to
Protestantism had already been sufficiently proved by his reforming measures in
Holstein and Schleswig, was elected to the throne (July, 1534), and began to
reign under the title of Christian III.
The newly-elected sovereign found
that he had first to conquer his kingdom. It was in the hands of enemies, the
bishops namely, who retired to their dioceses, fortified themselves in their
castles, and made light of the authority of the newly-elected sovereign.
Christopher, Count of Oldenburg, also raised the standard of revolt in behalf of
Christian II. The wealth of the religious houses, the gold and silver ornaments
of the cathedrals, and even the bells of the churches, coined into money, were
freely expended in carrying on the war against the king. Much labor and
treasure, and not a little blood, did it cost to reduce the warlike count and
the rebellious prelates.[8] But at last the task was
accomplished, though it was not till a whole year after his election that
Christian was able to enter on the peaceable possession of his kingdom. His
first step, the country being quieted, was to summon (1536) a meeting of the
Estates at Copenhagen. The king addressed the assembly in a speech in which he
set forth the calamities which the bishops had brought upon the nation, by their
opposition to the laws, their hatred of the Reformed doctrine, and their
ceaseless plottings against the peace and order of the commonwealth, and he laid
before the Diet the heads of a decree which he submitted for its adoption. The
proposed decree was, in brief, that the order of the episcopate should be for
ever abolished; that the wealth of the bishops should revert to the State; that
the government of the kingdom should be exclusively in the hands of laymen; that
the rule of the Church should be administered by a general synod; that religion
should be Reformed; that the rites of the Roman Church should cease; and that,
although no one should be compelled to renounce the Roman faith, all should be
instructed out of the Word of God; that the ecclesiastical revenues and
possessions, or what of them had not been consumed in the war just ended:,
should be devoted to the support of "superintendents" and learned men, and the
founding of academies and universities for the instruction of youth.
The
proposal of the king was received by the Diet with much favor. Being put into
regular form, it was passed; all present solemnly subscribed it, thus giving it
the form of a national and perpetual deed. By this "Recess of Copenhagen," as it
was styled, the Reformed faith was publicly established in Denmark.[9]
So far the work had
advanced in 1536. The insurrection of the bishops had been suppressed, and their
persons put under restraint, though the king magnanimously spared their lives.
The Romish episcopacy was abolished as an order recognized and sanctioned by the
State. The prelates could no longer wield any temporal jurisdiction, nor could
they claim the aid of the State in enforcing acts of spiritual authority
exercised over those who still continued voluntarily subject to them. The
monasteries, with some exceptions, and the ecclesiastical revenues had been
taken possession of in the name of the nation, and were devoted to the founding
of schools, the relief of the poor, and the support of the Protestant pastors,
to whom the cathedrals and churches were now opened. The work still awaited
completion; and now, in 1547, the crown was put upon it.
In this year,
also a memorable one in the annals of Denmark, the king called together all the
professors and pastors of his kingdom and of the two duchies, for the purpose of
framing a constitution for the Protestant Church. A draft, the joint labor, it
would appear, of the king and the theologians, of what scented the Scriptural
order, was drawn up.[10] A German copy was sent to
Luther for revision. It was approved by the Reformer and the other theologians
at Wittemberg, and when it was returned there came along with it, at the request
of the king, Bugenhagen (Pomeranus), to aid by his wisdom and experience in the
final settlement of this matter. The doctrine, discipline, and worship of the
Danish Protestant Church were arranged substantially in accordance with the
scheme of the king and his theologians, for the emendations of Wittemberg origin
were not numerous; and the constitution now enacted was subscribed not only by
the king, but also by two professors from each college, and by all the leading
pastors.[11]
The Popish bishops
having been removed from their sees, it was the care of the king, this same
year, to appoint seven Protestant bishops in their room. These were inducted
into their office by Bugenhagen, on the 7th of August, in the Cathedral-church
of Copenhagen, with the apostolic rite of the laying on of hands. Their work, as
defined by Bugenhagen, was the "oversight" of the Church, and their title
"superintendent" rather than "bishop."[12] When installed, each of
them promised that he would show fidelity to the king, and that he would use all
diligence in his diocese to have the Word of God faithfully preached, the
Sacraments purely administered, and the ignorant instructed in the principles of
religion. They further engaged to see that the youth gave attendance at school,
and that the alms of the poor were rightly distributed. The names and dioceses
of these seven superintendents were as follow: - Peter Palladius was appointed
to Zealand; Francis Wormord to Schonen; George Viborg to Funen; John Vandal to
Ripen; Matthew Lang to Arthusien; Jacob Scaning to Viborg; and Peter Thom to
Alborg. These were all men of piety and learning; and they continued for many
years hugely to benefit the Church and Kingdom of Denmark by their labors.[13]
In the above list,
as the reader will mark, the name of the man who was styled the Luther of
Denmark does not occur. John Taussan was appointed to the chair of theology in
the University of Roeschildien. It was judged, doubtless, that to train the
future ministry of the Church was meanwhile the most important work of all. He
discharged this duty four years. In 1542, on the death of John Vandal, he was
made superintendent of Ripen.[14] Of the three Mendicant
orders which had flourished in Denmark, some left the kingdom, others joined the
ranks of the people as handicraftsmen; but the majority, qualified by their
talents and knowledge, became preachers of the Gospel, and in a very few years
scarce a friar was there who had not renounced the habit, and with it the Romish
religion, and embraced the Protestant faith.[15]
This year (1547),
which had already witnessed so many events destined to mould the future of the
Danish people, was to be illustrated by another before it closed. In the month
of August, King Christian was solemnly crowned. The numerous rites without
which, it was believed in Popish times, no king could validly reign, and which
were devised mainly with a view to display the splendor of the Church, and to
insinuate the superiority of her Pontiff to kings, were on this occasion
dispensed with. Only the simple ceremony of anointing was retained. Bugenhagen
presided on the occasion. He placed on the king's head the golden crown, adorned
with a row of jewels. He put into his hands the sword, the scepter, and the
apple, and, having committed to him these insignia, he briefly but solemnly
admonished him in governing to seek the honor of the Eternal King, by whose
providence he reigned, and the good of the commonwealth over which he had been
set.[16]
The magnanimous,
prudent, and God-fearing king had now the satisfaction of seeing the work on
which his heart had been so greatly set completed. The powerful opposition which
threatened to bar his way to the throne had been overcome. The nobles had
rallied to him, and gone heartily along with him in all his measures for
emancipating his country from the yoke of the hierarchy, the exactions of the
monks, and the demoralizing influence of the beliefs and rites of the old
superstition. Teachers of the truth, as contained in the fountains of
inspiration, were forming congregations in every part of the kingdom. Schools
were springing up; letters and the study of the sacred sciences which had
fallen into neglect during the years of civil war began to revive. The
University of Copenhagen rose from its ruins; new statutes were framed for it;
it was amply endowed; and learned men from other countries were invited to fill
its chairs;[17] and, as the consequence of
these enlightened measures, it soon became one of the lights of Christendom. The
scars that civil strife had inflicted on the land were effaced, and the sorrows
of former years forgotten, in the prosperous and smiling aspect the country now
began to wear. In June, 1539, the last touch was put to the work of Reformation
in Denmark. At the Diet at Odensee, the king and nobles subscribed a solemn
bond, engaging to persevere in the Reformed doctrine in which they had been
instructed, and to maintain the constitution of the Protestant Church which had
been enacted two years before.[18]
Still further
towards the north did the light penetrate. The day that had opened over Denmark
shed its rays upon Norway, and even upon the remote and dreary Iceland. Norway
had at first refused to accept of Christian III. for its king. The bishops
there, as in Denmark, headed the opposition; but the triumph of Christian in the
latter country paved the way for the establishment of his authority in the
former. In 1537, the Archbishop of Drontheim fled to the Netherlands, carrying
with him the treasures of his cathedral.
This broke the hostile phalanx:
the country submitted to Christian, and the consequence was the introduction
into Norway of the same doctrine and Church constitution which had already been
established among the Danes.
Iceland was the farthest possession of the
Danish crown towards the north. That little island, it might have been thought,
was too insignificant to be struggled for; but, in truth, the powers of
superstition fought as stout a battle to preserve it as they have waged for many
an ampler and fairer domain. The first attempts at Reformation were made by
Augmund, Bishop of Skalholt. Dismayed, however, by the determined front which
the priests presented, Augmund abdicated his office, to escape their wrath, and
retired into private life.[19] In the following year
(1540) Huetsfeld was sent thither by the king to induct Gisser Enerson, who had
been a student at Wittemberg, into the See of Skalholt.[20] Under Enerson the work
began in earnest. It advanced slowly, however, for the opposition was strong.
The priests plotted and the mobs repeatedly broke into tumult. Day by day,
however, the truth struck its roots deeper among the people, and at last the
same doctrine and ecclesiastical constitution which had been embraced in Denmark
were received by the Icelanders;[21] and thus this island of
the sea was added to the domains over which the sun of the Reformation already
shed his beams, as if to afford early augury that not a shore is there which
this light will not visit, nor an islet in all the main which it will not clothe
with the fruits of righteousness, and make vocal with the songs of
salvation.
Book 11 Index
FOOTNOTES
VOLUME SECOND
BOOK TENTH
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 1
none
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 2
[1] Tasso, Sonnets.
[2] Guidiccioni, Sonnets.
[3] Shakspere, King John, act 2, scene 1.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 3
[1] See ante, vol. 1, bk. 3, chap. 5.
[2] See Svenska Kirkoreformationens Historia. I Tre Afdelningar. Af L. A. Anjou. Upsala, 1850 History of the Reformation in Sweden. In Three Divisions. By L. A, Anjou. Upsala, 1850.)
[3] Maimbourg, lib. 1, sec. 57.
[4] Gerdesius, tom. 1, p. 78; tom. 3, p. 277.
[5] See extracts by Gerdesius from the Code of Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws, by Christian, King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway Hist. Reform., tom. 3, pp. 347, 348.
[6] Gerdesius (Loccen. Hist. Suec., lib. 5, p. 169), tom. 3, p. 278. Sleidan, 4, 62.
[7] Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 282, 283.
[8] Sleidan, 4, 62.
[9] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 287.
[10] Ibid. (Vertot, ad ann. 1521, p. 175), tom. 3, 286.
[11] Ibid., tom. 3, p. 290.
[12] Vertot, ad ann. 1521, p. 175.
[13] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 291.
[14] Ibid., p. 291 (foot-note). The whole Bible in the Swedish language was published (folio) at Stockholm in 1541.
[15] Gerdesius (Puffendorf, l.c., p. 284), tom. 3, p. 292.
[16] Gerdesius (Vertot, l.c., pp. 60, 61), tom. 3, p. 293.
[17] "Episcopi moras nectere atque tergiversari." (Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 294.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 4
[1] Baazius, Invent. Eccles. Sueo-Goth.; Lincopiae, 1642.
[2] Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis habiti, ann. 1526, inter D. Petrum Galle et M. Olaum Petri.
[3] Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.
[4] "Praevaricator sit reus notoris peccati?" (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.)
[5] "Praedixisse vana de Pseudoprophetis," etc. (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.)
[6] "Liberum excommunicare quemcunque volunt? " (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.)
[7] "Plus oneris quam honoris." It is difficult to preserve the play upon the words in a translation.
[8] "Non pavit oves, sed lac et lanam, imo succum et sanguinem illis extraxit. Deus misereatur suae ecclesiae." (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.)
[9] "Dat (Christus) solus virtutem et efficacem Sacramentis, haec est gratia justificans hominem." (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis ex Baazio.)
[10] "Sacrificulus Papisticus." (Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis.)
[11] "Corradit opes. (Ibid.)
[12] Acta Colloquii Upsaliensis ex Baazio.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 5
[1] Baazius, Inventar., lib. 2, cap. 6, p. 203 - ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 300.
[2] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 300 (Verdot, l.c., pp. 68, 69; et Puffendorf, p. 288).
[3] "Si removerentur bona eccl. collabascit ipsa ecclesia." (Baazius, Inventar.)
[4] "Insumuntur in ventres pigros." (Ibid.)
[5] Baazius, Inventar., lib. 2, cap. [8, p. 206 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, pp. 301, 302.
[6] Puffendorf, l.c., p. 294; et Baazius, l.c., p. 222 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 306.
[7] Seckendorf, l.c., p. 267 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 303.
[8] Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 307 et seq.
[9] Vertot, 1.c., pp. 89, 90; Puffendorf, p. 296 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 309.
[10] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 311. As in some other countries, so in Sweden, the nobles showed fully as much zeal to possess the lands of the Romish Church, as to propagate the doctrines of the Reformed faith. We find the patriotic king rebuking them for their greed. In a letter written to the knights and nobles of Oestergotland, February, 1539, we find Gustavus addressing them in a mingled vein of indignation and satire, thus: "To take lands and dwellings from churches, chapters, and cloisters, that they were all prepared, with the greatest zeal, to do; and in that fashion, doubtless, they were all Christian and Reformed." But he complains that beyond this they had rendered the Reformed faith no assistance.
[11] Baazius, lib. 2, cap. 13, pp. 223, 224 ex Gerdesio.
[12] They were ordained by Bishop Petrus Magni, of Vesteraas. This helped to give them, and of course the king also, prestige in the eyes of the Romanists, inasmuch as it preserved their succession unbroken.
[13] Admonitio Publica ab Ordinibus Regni Suecici evulgata, et in Festo Coronationis Regiae Gustavi I, promulgata, A. 1528 ex Baazio, pp. 228-236.
[14] Forma Reformationis Ecclesiae Suecicae in Concilio Orebrogensi definita atque publicis Clericorum Suecicae subscriptionibus confirmata, et lingua patria publicata, A. 1529 ex Baazio, pp. 240-244.
[15] His tomb is to be seen in the Cathedral of Upsala. An inscription upon it informs us that he was born in 1490, and died in the seventieth year of his age, and in the fortieth of a glorious reign. He was equally great as a warrior, a legislator, a politician, and a Reformer. His great qualities were set off by a graceful person, and still further heightened by a commanding eloquence. "Two genealogical tables are engraved upon the tomb," says a traveler, "which trace his lineage from the ancient princes of the North, as if his great virtues did not reflect, rather than borrow, lustre upon the most conspicuous ancestry." (Coxe's Travels in Sweden and Denmark, vol. 4, pp. 132-134; Lond., 1787.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 6
[1] The two modern historians of the Church of Sweden, more especially during the period of the Reformation, are Dr. H. Reuterdahl, Archbishop of Upsala, and L. A. Anjou, Bishop of Wisby. To these writers we are indebted for the facts we have given, touching the establishment of Protestantism in Sweden under Duke Charles and King Sigismund. The titles of their works are as follow: Svenska Kyrkans Historia, af Dr. H. Reuterdahl; Lund, 1866 (History of the Swedish Church, by Dr. H. Reuterdahl; Lund, 1866). Svenska Kirkoreformationens Historia, af L. A. Anjou; Upsala, 1850 (History of the Reformation in Sweden, by L. A. Anjou; Upsala, 1850).
[2] Encyclop. Metrop., vol. 12, pp. 614-616; Lond., 1845.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 7
[1] Sleidan, bk. 4, p. 62.
[2] Olivar., Vita Pauli Elice ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, pp. 339, 340.
[3] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 342.
[4] Pantoppidan, Hist. Reform. Dan., p. 124 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 342.
[5] The title of the book was: Thette ere the Noye Testamenth paa Danske ret efter Latinen udsatthe, 1524, id est, Hoc est Novum Testamentum Danice ex Latine accurate expositum, 1524 (This is the New Testament in Danish, accurately translated from the Latin, 1524). Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 350.
[6] Olivar., Vita Pauli Elice, pp. 75, 76 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 352.
[7] Pantoppidan, p. 148 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 354.
[8] Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 81. Johannis became Bishop of Ottonburg (1537) under Christian III., and died in 1559. (Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 355.)
[9] Bib. Dan., l.c., p. 2 ex Gerdesioo tom. 3, p. 356.
[10] Bib. Dan., l.c., p. 3.
[11] Resenius, ann. 1521 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 356.
[12] Olivar., l.c., Bib. Dan., tom. 1, p. 5.
[13] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 357.
[14] Pantoppidan, Hist. Reform. Dan., p. 154. Bib. Dan., l.c., pp. 6, 7.)
[15] Bib. Dan., 1.c., pp. 9, 10.
[16] Olivar., Vita Pauli Eliae, pp. 110, 111; et Pantoppidan, Ann. Dan., p. 183 ex Gerdesio. tom. 3, p. 359.)
[17] Gerdesius, tom. 3. p. 359.
[18] "Phlegetonteam illam et credelem Lutheranae virulentiea pestem." (Epistola ad Jo. Eccium, 1527.)
[19] See the documents in extenso in Gerdesius Instrumentum Henr. Geerkens Datum a Cimbriae Episcopis, and Epistola ad Jo. Eccium. (Tom. 3, pp. 204-214.)
[20] Epistola ad Jo. Eccium Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 206.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 8
[1] Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 172 et seq.
[2] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 364.
[3] Pantoppidan, p. 175.
[4] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 365.
[5] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 366.
[6] Hemming, Epist. Dedicat. in Comment. in Ep. ad Ephes., p. 382, ann. 1564. Biblioth. Dan., tom. 9, p. 695 Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 367.
[7] Biblioth. Dan., tom. 9, p. 696. The title of the book was Psalmi Davidici, in Danicum translati et explicati a Francisco Wormordo, et impressi in monasterio S. Michaelis Rostochii, 1528. (Gerdesius, tom. 3, p, 367.)
[8] Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 368-370.
[9] Ibid., tom. 3, p. 371.
[10] Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 191. Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 371.
[11] Biblioth. Dan., tom. 1, p. 13 - Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 371, 372.
[12] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 374.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 9
[1] Olivar., Vita Pauli Elliae, p. 113 - Gerdes., tom. 3, p 375.
[2] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 376.
[3] "Veram Christi Missam esse Jesu Christi paenarum ac mortis commemorationem, in qua ejus corpus editur ac sanguis potatur in certum pignus," etc. (Confessio Hafniensis, 1530. art. 26. Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 377; et Mon. Antiq., p. 217.)
[4] Confessio Hafniensis Pontani, Hist. Dan., tom. 2, ab Huitfeldio, Chron. Danico, tom. 2, p. 1322.
[5] Articuli Pontificii in Comitis Hafniensibus 1530 exhibiti Gerdesius, tom. 3; Mon. Antiq., p. 231.
[6] Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 380, 381.
[7] Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 235.
[8] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 382.
[9] Seckendorf, lib. 3, sec. 31, p. 89. Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 241. Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 385, 386.
[10] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 386.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK TENTH- CHAPTER 10
[1] Pantoppidan, p. 253 Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 388-390.
[2] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 390.
[3] Pantoppidan, pp. 269, 270 Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 397.
[4] Pantoppidan, p. 277 Biblioth. Dan., tom 1, p. 23 et seq. Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 397, 398.
[5] Pantoppidan, p. 272.
[6] Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 399.
[7] Helvader, ann. 1532, pp. 92, 93. Paulus Orosius, Hist., lib. 7, cap. 37, p, 568 Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 390.
[8] Olivar., Vita Pauli Eliae pp. 142, 174 Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 402, 406.
[9] Cragius, Hist. Christ. III., lib. 4, p. 153; ed. Copenhagen, 1737 Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 406-408.
[10] Mosheim speaks of this plan as the sole work of Bugenhagen. This is a mistake. In the preface to the constitution, as given by Grammius in his edition of Cragius' History of Christian III., are these words: "Convocatis doctoribus et praedicatoribus ecclesiarum et Daniae Regno et Ducatibus suis, illud in mandatis dedit rex, ut ordinationem aliquam sacram conscriberent, de qua consultarent" (Having called together the doctors and preachers of the Church in the kingdom of Denmark and its duchies, the king gave it in command that they should subscribe a certain ecclesiastical order, respecting which they were to deliberate). Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 408.
[11] Cragius, in his History of Christian III. (pp. 170, 171), has preserved a list of the original subscribers. The list may be seen in Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 459.
[12] "Superintendentes dicti potius quam Episcopi." (Cragius, Hist., l.c., p. 169 Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 411.)
[13] Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 411, 412.
[14] Vita Taussani, in Biblioth. Dan., tom. 1, p. 25 Gerdesius, tom. 3, p. 412.
[15] Cragius, l.c., p. 172.
[16] Gerdisius, tom. 3, p. 410. Cragius says that Christian III. was the first king who inaugurated his reign with the rites of the Reformed religion. He is mistaken in this. The reader will recollect that Gustavas Vasa of Sweden (1528) was crowned in the same way. Varillas, in his History of Revolutions, complains that Pomeranus invented a new ceremony for the coronation of kings. (Pantoppidan, l.c., p. 312.)
[17] Among the learned foreigners who taught in the University of Copenhagen, Gerdesius specially mentions John Macabaeus or M'Alpine, of the Scottish clan M'Alpine, who had been a student at Wittemberg, and "a man of great learning and piety." (Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 416, 417. Vinding, Descript. Acad Hafniae, pp. 71-73.)
[18] Seckendorf, lib. 3, sec. 75, pp. 242, 243. Gerdesius, tom. 3, pp. 414, 415.
[19] Cragius, Annal. Christ., tom. 3, p. 203.
[20] Ibid., p. 218. Seckendorf, lib. 3, sec. 75, p. 242.
[21] Cragius, ad ann. 1548. Pantoppidan, ad ann. 1547 ex Gerdesio, tom. 3, p. 416.