Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/658

 in all Sweden died for the old faith. A certain number of the clergy were deprived, but the bulk of them still went on; and their general condition may perhaps be gauged by the fact that in not a few cases they married their former housekeeper or mistress in order to legitimatise the children. The Bishops had lost much of their property, but were still comparatively well off; for many years the new Archbishop of Upsala, Laurentius Petri (called Nericius), consecrated in 1531, used to support some fifty students in Upsala, and Bishop Skytte of Âbo supported eight abroad.

Gustavus himself did all in his power to prevent changes being forced on a reluctant people. A synod held at Örebro in 1529, under the presidency of Laurentius Andreae, provided that a lesson from the Swedish Bible should be read daily in all cathedrals, and that evangelical preachers should be appointed to carry the new doctrines about the country; but the King was so careful to preserve the old ceremonies, or such of them as "were not repugnant to God's Word," that he roused no little indignation amongst the more extreme Reformers as having fallen away from the Gospel. In 1528 he issued an ordinance insisting upon the payment of the legal dues of the clergy. Ten years later, when the nobles seemed to have learned too well the lesson which he had given them in the despoiling of churches, he restrained and rebuked those whose religious zeal manifested itself only in the way of destruction. "After this fashion," he said, "every man is a Christian and evangelical." Yet he recognised no limits to his own power: "it behoveth us as a Christian monarch," he wrote to the commons of the northern province, "to appoint ordinances and rules for you; therefore must ye be obedient to our royal commands, as well in matters spiritual as temporal." In 1540, when Laurentius Andreae and Olaus Petri were put on their trial for treason in not having made known to the King a conspiracy, the existence of which they had learned in confession, the Archbishop was compelled to be their judge. They were condemned to death, and only obtained pardon by the payment of a large fine.

But although Gustavus ever denied that he was setting up a new Church in Sweden, the changes became more pronounced as time went on, both in doctrine and discipline. Olaus Petri was putting forth a continual stream of tracts and pamphlets in Swedish which reflected his own strict Lutheranism, and by degrees they had a considerable effect. The first Swedish service-book, Een Handbock pää Swensko, appeared in 1529; it was followed in 1530 by a hymn-book, and in 1531 by the first Swedish " Mass-book " (Ordo Missae Sueticae), the Eucharistie doctrine of which was the "Consubstantiation" of Luther's earlier days; all these were many times reprinted in subsequent years, though the use of the Latin service was by no means everywhere abolished. Gustavus himself gradually went further. He repudiated prayers for the dead, and confession; for instance, he refused on his deathbed to listen to the