SWEDEN.
In Sweden, the efforts of the Jesuits against Protestantism, although no less active and vigorous, were less successful. John III., son of the heroic Gustavus Vasa, on ascending the throne, published a ritual, in which, to the great amazement and dismay of the Protestants, were to be found not only ceremonies, but even doctrines of the Church of Rome.[198] The Pope, apprised of this prince’s good disposition towards his Church, despatched to Stockholm in all haste and secrecy, as his legate, the famous Possevin, one of the cleverest and least scrupulous among the Jesuits. To obviate the difficulty of obtaining admission into the country and court of Sweden as Pope’s legate, Possevin, in passing through Prague, induced the widow of the emperor Maximilian to send him to Stockholm as her extraordinary ambassador. He assumed, in consequence, another name, a splendid costume, and girded himself with a sword, but, “to do penance in advance for these transient honours, he went the greatest part of the way on foot.”[199] Acting publicly as the envoy of the empress, he found means secretly to inform the king of his real name and mission, and had several conferences with him. The result was, that John was persuaded to make the Professio Fidei, according to the formula of the Council of Trent, promising at the same time to take measures, and to use all his endeavours, to induce the nation to follow in the same path, provided the Pope would second him by making certain concessions, the most essential of which were, that the sacramental cup should be administered to the laity, and mass performed in the language of the country. Possevin said that the Pope should be apprised of his majesty’s will, and asked him whether he would submit to his decision in this matter. John having answered in the affirmative, was absolved of his sins, and received the sacrament according to the Roman Catholic ritual.[200]
The Jesuit departed in high glee at his success, far surpassing his most sanguine hopes. He hastened to Rome, and assuming a privilege in use among ambassadors, he boasted of having achieved more than he had really done, assuring Gregory XIII. that Sweden and its king were at his Holiness’s mercy. He then laid before the Pope the conditions on which John had insisted, but Gregory, either too intolerant to make any concession, or considering it unnecessary to grant honourable terms to an enemy who threw himself at his feet, refused to listen to such proposals, and sent back the Jesuit to Stockholm, with letters to the king, in which he required the monarch to declare himself a Catholic without restriction.
This imperious conduct saved Sweden from falling back under the Popish rule. John, indignant at being held in so light account—indignant at the assurance of Possevin, who unceremoniously entered Stockholm and the court in the garb of his order as the Pope’s legate, and accompanied by other Jesuits, as if Sweden had already become a Roman Catholic country—moved by the remonstrances of the Protestant princes and divines, who, in the interval of Possevin’s departure and return, had entreated him to remain in their communion—dismissed the Pope’s ambassador, and returned to the Reformed worship.
The attempts of the Jesuits to convert Sweden to the Roman faith were revived with new vigour under John’s successor, Sigismond, the Polish king. Fortunately, Charles of Sandermania, the king’s uncle, headed the nation in its resistance to Sigismond’s Popish propensities; and although the Jesuits had the sad glory of plunging Poland and Sweden into a bloody war, the last-mentioned country remained Protestant.