Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. From the Upsala-möte to the death of Charles XII. The Great Kings and the Great Bishops (1592—1718 A.D.)
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;. RUDBECKIUS IN HIS DIOCESE. 283
of all Church goods, possessions and revenues. He kept
lists also of living persons, whether vicious or necessitous,
unworthy or worthy, and was careful to direct the charity
of others into good channels. He divided parishes and
created a number of chaplaincies or district churches, and
in all ways showed himself a good and laborious bishop.
But his energy was not confined to his diocese. He was
sent by the king to visit the continental provinces of
Esthonia and Livonia, which were in an almost heathen
condition, while polygamy and idolatry Were practised
almost openly. He went on this journey in 1627, but the
consistorium and the town council in Reval, the capital of
Livonia, so resisted him, on the grounds of their privileged
independence, that he could do but little. In Sweden itself
he attended all the seventeen Riksdagar that were held
during his episcopate.
I have said that he was a member of a strong family.
He was one of three brothers who survived the plague in
which their father died. One of them, Petrus, was pro
fessor at LTpsala, where he took part in the colloquy with
Forbes ; another, Jacob, was rector of the high school at
Stockholm. He had himself fifteen children by one wife,
of whom three became bishops, Nicolas of Vesteras,
Johannes of Narva and Petrus of Skara. Another, Olaus,
was a great botanist, famous in the history of the Univer
sity of Upsala, author of the wonderful Atlantica. His
son, another Olaus, was also an excellent botanist. The
elder Olaus reckoned that his grandfather s family had
increased to 397 persons in three generations.
32
Such a man naturally had the support of the king, and
he received much assistance in his great plans from him
and from the nobility ;
but his personality and individuality
were in the end too pronounced for co-operation with the
king in his plans for the reform of the Church. The king
saw the necessity of a stronger central government for the
Church, since every diocese had its own usages, cere-
33
Norlin :
Joh. Rudbeckius, p. 6 n.
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