Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. The Swedish Reformation under Gustaf Vasa and his sons Eric and John (1520—1592 A.D.)
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6. THE NEW BISHOPS AND ARCHBISHOP. ioi
Recess of Vesteras. The king himself found it possible to
prove his relationship to a number of families besides that
of the Stures, and where he claimed he was naturally re
garded as having a strong case. Many of the inmates of
the monasteries retired, more or less of their own free will,
and many married. Nevertheless, the suppression of the
monasteries went on with a comparative slowness, and the
two Birgittine houses of Vadstena and Nadendal in Fin
land, and the Cistercian nunnery of Skokloster, south of
Jonkoping, survived for a number of years after the death
of Gustaf, though in a state of decaying animation. Of
Vadstena we read that in 1544 the king issued a letter per
mitting the monks and nuns, if they wished it, to return to
a secular life. In the next year its chronicle ceased.
"
Yet
"
(says Anjou),
"
there were still eighteen sisters
left in the cloister in the beginning of King John s reign,
when, for a short time, it seems to have been again in
bloom, until the stronger protestantism of Charles anni
hilated ... in 1595 the last monastic establishment in
Sweden "
(Anjou: E. T., 234-4).
It should be added that a number of religious houses in
Stockholm and other towns became hospitals under the
government of the burgomaster and town council.
Hans Brask was satisfied with having made his protest
at Vesteras, and left the kingdom in the autumn of that
fateful year. He met Johannes Magni at Dantzig, but
they had no great love for one another, and were unable to
devise means for stemming the tide. Brask never re
turned to Sweden, though he wrote many letters to his
flock and to the king. His latter days were spent in the
monastery of Landa, in the diocese of Gnesen, in Poland,
where he died about 1538. Johannes, the archbishop-
elect, passed the rest of his life in Poland and Italy, par
ticularly at Rome. He was confirmed and consecrated
Archbishop of Upsala in 1533 (two years after the see was
filled by Laurentius Petri) in the last year of Clement
VIII., and died at Rome in 1544. His two books, the
History of the Kings of the Swedes and Goths and History
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