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2. THE FIRST REFORMERS. 189
have worked quietly as schoolmaster (ludi magister) at
Upsala. Olaus returned to his cathedral city in 1519, and
was ordained deacon in 1520. He accompanied his
bishop, Mathias Gregorii, to Stockholm for the corona
tion of King Christian II. He was a witness of the
massacre in which the two bishops suffered, and describes
it in some well-known pages in his chronicle.1
Mathias was the first executed, and Olaus remarked that
no man had done so, much for King Christian as Bishop
Mats, and that without him he would never have suc
ceeded in forcing his will upon Sweden, and that this was
his reward. It is said that Olaus was in some danger him
self, but was supposed by some of the by-standers to be a
German. He was, however, soon to be the best known
man in Stockholm, for Gustaf took both the friends with
him to that city, where the experienced Laurentius Andreae
became his chancellor. Olaus, in 1524, became secretary
to the city council of Stockholm, where his knowledge of
Germany was at once valuable. He left memoirs of city
affairs, besides his larger chronicle, which are very valu
able as records of the inner life of the community. At the
same time the king appointed Michael Langerben, another
Wittenberg student, to the pastorate of Stockholm. Thus
the promoters of reform leapt at once to a prominent
position in the capital, and were known to be under royal
patronage.
A certain check to their influence was, indeed, for a
time given by the excesses of two Anabaptist preachers from
Holland, Rink and Knipperdolling, to which Olaus and
Langerben seemed to have given too much countenance.
The king was absent; but, on his return, he showed his
anger at the riot and iconoclasm which had taken place,
and exiled the Dutch preachers. From this incident
(coupled with the even worse experience of Germany) we
may trace the abhorrence of Swedish Lutheran orthodoxy
against the rougher and wilder forms of Protestant
enthusiasm.
1
Svenska Chronica in Scr. rer. Suec., I., pp. 346-7. The
passage is one of those printed by Ad. Noreen and E. Meyer in
Valda stycken af Svenska Forfattare, pp. 19-23, Stockholm,
1907. See above p. 179.
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