However, the spirit which God gives a child often overcomes the greatest obstacles. The men who are self-made without assistance from others are usually those who exert the most powerful influence on their contemporaries. In John Tausen there was a strong bent for study;[[215]] and God never wills the end without providing the means. At the distance of five or six miles from the village was Odensee, an ancient town of which Odin was the reputed founder, and which at least bore his name; and in this town was a school attached to the cathedral. John was placed here by his parents; and being poor, like Luther, he gained his living like him, by singing with other boys from door to door before the houses of the rich folk of the town. He soon became distinguished among the scholars; and some years later, one Knud Rud, a holder of a fief of the crown, being in want of a tutor, took him into his family.[[216]]
The office of a teacher did not satisfy the lofty aspirations of Tausen. Theology, which concerns itself with God and with the destination of man, appeared to him to be above all the other sciences. He had also another reason for paying attention to it. The love for heavenly good was not yet kindled in his soul, but he was already anxious to hold a good position in the world. The clergy and the nobility were the only influential classes in Denmark; and, as Tausen was not of the noble class, he would fain be at least a priest. There was, in his neighborhood, at Antwerskov, a monastery of the Johannites, one of the richest in the kingdom. The prior Eskill, was not only a powerful prelate, but also perpetual counsellor of the crown. Tausen, impelled by ambition, begged for admission into this monastery, and he took his vows there in 1515. He was at this time twenty-one years of age, the same age as Luther when he entered the cloister. The Johannites and the Augustines followed the same rule. Tausen at once displayed intense eagerness to increase his knowledge, and especially to fit himself for preaching. He was a born preacher; he felt himself destined for public discourse. Aware of its importance in the church, he often exercised himself in preaching. There was pith in his discourses, and the prior, who was delighted to hear him, liked to think that this young orator would one day make his monastery illustrious. But a future of an altogether different character was in store for Tausen. He had a gift, but this gift was to be of service in raising up the church outside the pale of Roman Catholicism.
Tidings From Germany.
The studies to which the young man applied himself with a good conscience and without hypocrisy led him involuntarily to the recognition of various errors in the Romish doctrine; and his moral sense was at the same time offended by the empty babble and the corruption of the monks. In a little while other lights in addition to those of reading and reflection began to shine upon him. A new world, and one which diffused a brightness far and wide, was at this time created in Germany. Ships were frequently arriving from Lübeck in the ports of Fionia and Zealand, bringing strange tidings. The merchants who brought in these vessels told of a monk belonging to the same rule as Tausen, a man of rare moral purity, who was proclaiming with power a living and regenerative faith. A quickening breath proceeding from Saxony in this way touched the islands of Scandinavia. It imparted a new impulse to the susceptible, generous, and ambitious soul of Tausen. Conscious that he was surrounded by darkness he began to long after those regions of Germany which appeared to him to be illuminated with a living and divine light. He made known his wish to the prior; and the latter, believing that a residence in a foreign land would make his young friend more capable of adding reputation to his order; gave him the permission which he asked for, and added that he would himself pay the expenses of the journey out of the revenues of the monastery. ‘You may,’ said he, ‘attend a university, one only being excepted, that of Wittenberg.’[[217]] Louvain was recommended to him, a university distinguished for its attachment to the Roman doctrine.
Tausen At Wittenberg.
Tausen set out in 1517, a year memorable for the beginning of the Reformation, and betook himself to Louvain, cherishing the hope that some sparks from Wittenberg might have fallen there: but he found nothing but darkness. He pined for air, he could not breathe, and, anxious to be nearer to the town from which the light proceeded, he went to Cologne. But there too, as at Louvain, he found nothing but idle questionings of a barren scholasticism. Sick of these trifles, these inanities,[[218]] he felt a need more and more pressing of a pure doctrine and of solid studies. The works of Luther which found their way to Cologne were read there with as much eagerness as are the bulletins from a great army during a war. Tausen devoured them with the utmost eagerness. One day it was the ‘Asterisks,’ another it was the ‘Resolutions,’ a third, the discourse on ‘Excommunication,’ and then others besides. When he had done reading he would close the book with reverence, and think within himself, ‘Oh, what would it be to hear him myself!’ He was drawn by two opposing forces. The strict prohibition of his prior held him back; the living word of Luther was calling him. Should he go or not? His soul was agitated by a violent struggle. Should he choose night or day? Is it not written in the Scriptures that a man must be ready to sell all that he has that he may buy the truth? He no longer hesitated; and, disregarding the rash promise which he had made, he left the banks of the Rhine, in 1519, and betook himself to Wittenberg. He heard Luther, he heard Melanchthon; he was at Wittenberg at the time of the appearance of the ‘Appeal to the German Nobility;’ he was there when Luther burnt the pope’s bulls, and when the reformer set out for Worms to make his appearance before Charles V. The young Scandinavian, finding in the Gospel the truth and the peace which he had been so earnestly seeking, embraced with all his heart the cause of the Reformation. In October, 1521, he quitted Saxony and returned to his monastery, determined to diffuse in his native land the light which he had found at Wittenberg.[[219]]
Four years had elapsed since his departure, and there was a new state of things in Denmark. Luther’s writings had reached Copenhagen, and had been read there with avidity. Above all, Tausen found in his own country two men who seemed to be called to prepare the work of the Reformation. One of these men was Paul Eliæ, a native of Holland,[[220]] prior of a Carmelite monastery recently founded, the members of which were in general enlightened men who had some degree of sympathy with Luther. The other was a young nobleman, not intended for theology, named Peter Petit of Rosefontaine. He had already seen and heard Luther and Melanchthon before Tausen; and on his return to Copenhagen in 1519 he had determined to avail himself of all his family and social relations to influence other minds and gain them to the side of reform. The most important of the persons whom he persuaded to favor the Gospel was the King of Denmark himself.[[221]]
Christian II.
This prince, Christian II., who succeeded to the throne in 1513, at the age of thirty-two, as sovereign of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, was a man of extraordinary character. Endowed with a penetrating glance, he distinctly recognized the defects of the constitution of his realm, and the errors of his age; and he was capable of applying a remedy to them with a firm and bold hand. To lessen the oppressive power of the nobility and the clergy, to raise the condition of the townsmen and the peasantry, were the objects of his reign. But it must be confessed that self-interest was the mainspring of this enterprise. A friend to knowledge, to the sciences, to agriculture, commerce, and industry, he nevertheless took after his barbarian ancestors. He was cruel, and would go headlong to extremities. While still a youth, the extraordinary bodily exercises to which he devoted himself alarmed his masters; and his nightly practices, his excesses of every kind, were the talk among all classes. At a later time his swiftness of procedure and his faculty of command in war were admirable; and no less so in peace his power to secure obedience. When the health of his father began to fail, he gave proof of a power of attention to affairs of government of which no one had thought him capable. But this man of the North always retained the fierce temper of a savage, nor did he ever learn to subdue the evil dispositions which actuated him. In his fits of violence he had no regard for age, for virtue, or for greatness; and at the very time that he was contending against the despotism of castes, he was himself the greatest despot of all.[[222]]
Christian II., perceiving that in order to increase the power of the Scandinavian kingdom it was necessary to form great alliances, sought and obtained the hand of Isabella, sister of the Emperor Charles V. The princess, then fifteen years of age, arrived at Copenhagen in August, 1518, bringing with her a dower of 300,000 florins. The honors which she received on her entry into the capital were too much for her strength. While a bishop was delivering before her an interminable discourse, she turned pale, tottered, and fainted away, the first of her ladies in waiting catching her in her arms. The king showed great respect for her; but in the midst of royal fêtes and pomp, a sharp thorn of sorrow pierced the soul of the daughter of the Cæsars.