The Danes had been as much offended as the Germans by the quackery of indulgences. They had opened their eyes and condemned this traffic and the religion which carried it on; but they had remained silent. This silence, however, was not that of indifference. There was perhaps in these northern nations more slowness than in those of the south; but they made up for this defect by greater reflectiveness, deeper convictions and stronger characters. Indignant that the court of Rome should look on them as a crowd of people born blind, doomed by their very nature to perpetual darkness, they were ere long to awake and proclaim their liberation.
It was Tausen who gave the signal for this awakening. He was all this time in the monastery of Antwerskow. His piety and his virtues diffused light there in the midst of the darkness of the age; but most of the monks, carried away by their vices and their hatred of the Gospel, endeavored to extinguish it. In vain he sought to lead them to the truth by kindly speech and by patient setting forth of the Gospel. He tried to catch them separately, to open to them the errors of the Romish religion and to show them how far they were removed from the way of salvation.[[255]] These representations were very unwelcome to the monks. Tausen resolved to avail himself of the approaching festival of Easter solemnly to call his hearers to the faith, even at the risk of an explosion. He obtained leave of the prince to preach on Good Friday, March 25, 1524. The young Johannite entered the pulpit determined to utter on this occasion all his thought without any reserve prompted by worldly prudence. He pointed out to his hearers that man is powerless; that his good works and pretended satisfactions are poverty itself.[[256]] He set forth the merits of Christ and all the greatness of this mystery; he urged them to condemn the depraved and profane life which they had hitherto lived, and to come to Christ who would cover them with his righteousness. The blow was struck.
This preaching gave rise to great excitement, and the audience were scandalized by a doctrine which appeared to them entirely new. All the monks, his superiors, blinded by papal superstition, thought only of how to get rid of such a heretic.[[257]] The prior had hardly patience to wait for the end. He was indignant that a young man to whom he had shown so much kindness had the audacity publicly to profess the doctrines of the reformer; and he saw with alarm his convent falling under suspicion of Lutheranism. He determined therefore to get rid of such a dangerous guest. He summoned Tausen into his presence, and after censuring him for his fault told him that he was very desirous of not inflicting on him a penalty too severe, and would therefore confine himself to sending him to the second house of the order, at Viborg, which he could enter under the surveillance of the provost Peter Jansen, until he had retrieved his errors. Tausen set out for his place of exile.
Tausen At Viborg.
Viborg, a very old town, is situated in the north of Jutland. The climate of the district is more inclement, the winds colder and more violent, the people more coarse and ignorant. The fiords with which the son of the peasant of Kiertminde had been familiar were there of larger extent, sometimes separated from the sea merely by a low line of sand, which in a storm seemed as if it must be swept away by the rush of the waters. But the young man had to encounter something ruder than the severe climate. According to the rules he was to be confined as a heretic in a prison the gates of which would never be opened. The prior of the monastery, however, when his prisoner arrived, was touched at seeing, instead of the terrible heretic that he looked for, a young man, gentle, intelligent, and amiable. His heart was won and he allowed him a good deal of liberty, particularly that of associating with the other monks. Could Tausen be silent? He knew well that if he spoke he would bring on himself fresh persecution. But how could he give up the hope of doing good to those about him? He remembered what Luther used to say; ‘When the apples are ripe they must be gathered; if we delay they spoil. The great point is to seize the opportunity.’ In tempore veni quod est omnium primum. It seemed to Tausen as if he were still reading those words which the good Wittenberg doctor had written in chalk over his fireplace—‘Who lets slip an hour lets slip a day.’[[258]]
Tausen therefore resolved not to lose a moment, and he resumed in the cloisters of Viborg the work which he had been doing in the cloisters of Antwerskow. He openly avowed there the doctrine of free salvation, of justification by grace. The astonished friars at first vigorously opposed the new-comer. Frequent discussions took place; and that monastery of the North, in which for so long a time a dead calm had prevailed, was agitated with great waves white with foam, like the sea on whose shores it stands. The prior at first shut his eyes. He hoped that Tausen would be brought back by himself and his monks to the doctrine of the church; but he was mistaken. Many of the monks were unsettled, and agitation was beginning in the town. One of the friars, whose name was Tœger, had his heart touched by the doctrine of Christ; and opening his mind privately to Tausen begged him to instruct him in the whole truth. The two friends, taking great precautions and carefully concealing themselves from their superiors, spent together many blessed hours in meditation on the Scriptures of God. But no long time elapsed before persecution broke out.[[259]]
Reform At Copenhagen.
Nor was it only in these remote and solitary regions that it was in preparation. The higher clergy began to discover that the neutrality of Frederick was as dangerous as the violence of Christian. The new king was to be crowned in his capital in the mouth of August, 1524, and the council of the kingdom was to assemble beforehand. This was the moment chosen by the prelates for settling that Denmark should remain faithful to the pope. Not one of the ecclesiastical members was missing at the convocation. Not only all the bishops, but many other dignitaries besides, mitred abbots, provosts and others, arrived at Copenhagen. The bishop of this town, Lago Urne, who was grieved to see around him the altars of Rome more and more forsaken, and masses for the dead and the money which the priests got by them daily falling off, pointed out to his colleagues that the opinions of Luther were fast gaining ground, that not only did the revenue of churchmen suffer thereby, but that their respect and authority even among the common people were undermined, and that these novel doctrines would ere long spread from the capital all over the kingdom. Thirty-six lords, members of the Council, were present on the occasion. They assembled on the 28th June, the eve of the festival of the Apostles Peter and Paul. ‘The bishops,’ said the terrified partisans of the papacy, ‘must oppose the Lutheran heresy with greater earnestness than they have done; whosoever teaches it must be punished by imprisonment or other inflictions (they had even proposed death); the dangerous writings which come in every day from Antwerp and other places must be proscribed: and there must be no kind of innovation until the council convoked by the pope decide on the matter.’ These resolutions were adopted by the members of the council, both lay and ecclesiastical; and the consequence was that the prohibited books were sought after and read with more eagerness than before.
What will the king do? Will he oppose or confirm these resolutions? He left the council free. But on the day fixed for his coronation, he arrived at Copenhagen accompanied by an evangelical minister who was appointed to discharge in his household the duties of chaplain. The spectacle of this humble pastor making his appearance in the midst of the royal pomp shocked the worldlings and sorely offended the bishops. When they saw the prince thus publicly reserving to himself, simply but decidedly, the free practice of evangelical religion, they were afraid that it would be no easy matter to deprive the people of the same freedom. They did not dare however to resist the king. The archbishop elect of Lund not having yet received consecration, Gustavus Troll, archbishop of Upsala, presided at the ceremony of consecration. The proceedings having been gone through without any disturbance, the bishops, discontented and restless, returned to their dioceses, resolved to do all they could to check what they called the progress of the mischief; and persecution on the part of the clergy was set down in the order of the day throughout the kingdom.[[260]]
Tausen In Prison.