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1592.]
His mission to Rome,
and postulates.
john and charles.
Papistical tendencies
abandoned.
1c5
at which the latter perished ; but his colleague
discharged his commission. John requested from
the Pope 9 that his holiness would institute prayers
throughout the whole world for the restoration of
the Catholic religion in the north, yet without
naming Sweden ; that the mass should be said
partly in Swedish ; that in the sacrament the cup
should be conceded to the laity ; that the bishops
should be judged by the king in capital cases and
accusations of treason ; that no claims should be
made on the Church estates which had been
confiscated ; that the college erected in Stockholm,
where already secret instructions in the Catholic
doctrines were given, might receive the papal
confirmation, and the teachers be for the present
exempted from wearing monks’ clothes ; that king
Gustavus, king Eric, and all of the nobility who
had died out of the communion of the Church,
might rest undisturbed in their graves ; that
priests’ marriages might be allowed, while celibacy
was encouraged ; that the king might, without sin,
participate in the worship of the heretics, until
by-and-by the Catholic creed should become dominant
iu the land. This result was prepared, it is stated,
by the restored dignity and splendour of divine
service, by the reception of several abolished
holy-days, by the introduction of confession and fasts,
by the restoration of the convents, which had been
begun, by the education of several noble Swedish
youths in Rome and Vienna, and the like.
The court of Rome was far from being disposed
to consent to such conditions. Meanwhile it kept
the negotiations open ; and the Jesuit Anthony
Pos-sevin was, under the name of imperial legate,
sent to Sweden, in order to work on the king’s
convictions. At Vadstena, in 1578, John is said to
have been secretly reconciled to the Catholic Church
in his presence Martin Olaveson, the bishop of
Linkoping, was, for having called the Pope
Anti-Christ, stripped of his episcopal robes publicly
before the altar of his own cathedral. The see,
with enlarged jurisdiction, fell to Peter Carlson,
ordinary of Calmar, formerly Eric’s flatterer, and
generally charged with having counselled the
murder of the Stures. All passages against the Pope
were expunged from the Psalms. Luther’s
Catechism was abolished in schools ; new silver shrines
were provided for relics of saints ; and an
abridgment of the canon law was drawn up for the
guidance of the Swedish Church2. A Catholic
was intended to fill the archiepiscopal chair, which
fell vacant again in the year 1579 3, and remained
four years unoccupied. Jesuits, under manifold
disguises, entered the kingdom. John designed
to employ them in the new university, removed
from Upsala to Stockholm. They became even
more coarse in their sermons, and Sigismund’s
own chaplains set them the example ; so that the
Council was obliged to moot a proposal, of
forbidding the Polish priests ’ from barking and banning
in the Swedish tongue,’ and of punishing the
Jesuits, ’ since among the people and the army
discourses were current, that they themselves would
remove such weeds out of the way, if it were not
done by the authorities.’ A multitude of Swedish
youths 4 were sent out of the country to be educated
in the Jesuits’ seminaries, and queen Catharine
Jagellonica bequeathed for this purpose by will
10,000 rix-dollars to that of Braunsberg in Prussia.
This princess, whose virtues even her foes could
not deny, died in 1583. The new archbishop, in
his funeral sermon, called her happy that she had
lived and died in the bosom of the Church which
alone gives salvation.
John’s zeal for Catholicism afterwards cooled,
and men already began to remark its abatement,
whereto the failure of those political calculations
connected with his conversion appears to have
contributed. Among other things he had solicited,
and by the mediation of the Pope hoped to obtain,
the dukedoms of Bari and Rossani, on which his
wife had claims from her mother Bona Sforzia 5.
This hope was as far from being fulfilled as the
promise of the Pope to labour for the advantage of
Sweden in the peace between Poland and Russia.
The peace was indeed concluded under the
mediation of Possevin, but confirmed the Polish claims
even to the Swedish possessions in Livonia. In no
long time we see John seceding from Rome, and
even persecuting the Catholics. Laurence Forss,
minister of Stockholm, who had become a Catholic,
was for that reason deposed with the same
contumelious ceremonies which had been already
applied to the bishop of Linkoping for having reviled
the Pope. The Jesuits were banished from the
realm, their college in Stockholm abolished, and
the chairs of instruction filled by their opponents.
By public proclamation all converts to the Catholic
Church were threatened with exile. The church
ceded to the Catholics in Stockholm was closed
(afterwards, however, they recovered it on the
intercession of Sigismund) ; and when the
crown-prince became king of Poland, his father warmly
exhorted him not to bind himself to obedience
(obedientia) towards the Pope. The king now
turned his thoughts to a junction with the Greek
Church, but he finally adhered to his own scheme
of religion, of which he considered his new Liturgy
the proper expression. The repugnancy of the
public towards this had in the mean time increased.
Already in 1576 the king complains that a
clergyman in the diocese of Skara, Master Maurice of
9 Quae rex Svetiae cupit a Summo Domino nostro
obtinean-tur, ut sine perturbatione Suetiae restituatur religio Catholiea.
Ex codice manuscr. chartaeeo in folio, bibliotbecEe Vaticana?,
N. 6218, p. 204 ad 208. Copy ill the Nordin Collections in the
Library of Upsala.
1 Messenius, vii. 41. xv. 137. iii. 60. He was enjoined to
fast every Wednesday, because on this day he had murdered
his brother.
2 Id. vii. 65.
3 Magnus Laurentius, nephew of both the last Catholic
archbishops, Joannes and Olaus Magnus, was destined thereto.
Afterwards Andrew Laurenceson(Biornram), formerly bishop
ofVexioe, was made archbishop, whom the king found still
more compliant to his views than his predecessor, who
towards the end had retracted, and is said to have died ofgrief.
4 Catervatim. Messenius.
5 Cum autem ille (rex) per suas litteras vestrae beatitudini
negotia sua Neapolitana commendet, vix est, quod ego de ea
re, quae justissima est quaeque admodum cordi est vestra
beatitudini, quidquam amplius scribam, cum prassertim non
semel ad illustrissimum cardinalem Comensem de tota re
scripserim. Possevin’s letter to pope Gregory XIII.
Stockholm, Oct. 9, 1579 ; copy in the Nordin Collections. For the
carrying of Sigismund’s election to the crown of Poland, the
claims of John upon these Neapolitan garrisons are ceded to
that kingdom, and those upon the payment of the dowry of
Catharine Jagellonica renounced, as well as upon the 125,000
rix-dollars, which John upon his marriage with her had lent
to the king of Poland. jEgidius Girs, Chronicle of king
John 111.
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