Duke John had now reached the summit of his ambition. He set himself to win over adherents, so that no one might be tempted to call to mind the fact that his throne was usurped. He was amiable and obliging alike to the nobles, the ecclesiastics, and the people; and the popularity which he enjoyed seemed daily to increase. ‘Certainly,’ people said, ‘he means loyally to carry out the will of his father.’[[502]] But the joy and the popularity did not last long. It was soon perceived that he was giving full play to his hatred of Erick, whom he called his most deadly enemy. He spared his life, indeed, at the entreaty of the queen, widow of the late king, but he made him suffer all the horrors of the most rigorous imprisonment. The unhappy prince had to endure in his own body shameful treatment at the hands of his keepers and of those whom he had displeased in the course of his reign. One day a man more mad and more cruel than himself, Olaf Gustavsson, had a violent altercation with him in the prison, and left him lying in his blood. ‘God knows,’ wrote Erick to his brother John (March 1, 1569), ‘what inhuman tortures I am forced to endure—hunger and cold, infection and darkness, blows and wounds. Deliver me from this misery by banishment. The world is surely large enough to allow of the hatred between brothers being mitigated by the distance of places and of countries.’[[503]] But nothing could appease his enemy, his brother. At first he had allowed him to see his wife and his children, which was a great pleasure to the unhappy man; but this consolation was afterwards refused him. They gave him neither paper nor ink, and in the long hours of his captivity he used to write with water blackened with charcoal on the margins of the books which he was permitted to read. On these he left, in particular, an eloquent defence of his cause.
Other motives also came into action to destroy the premature popularity of John III. With the life of Burrey and the prison of Erick the Calvinistic period in Sweden was over; with the accession of the new king the popish period began. Sweden presented at this time an example of the manner in which Rome proceeds to bring back to her feet a people that had departed from her. John took delight in the pomp of the Romish worship, and his wife, a Polish princess, was a decided and zealous Roman Catholic. Although she did not belong to that fanatical, barren, and superstitious ultramontanism which is not even a religion, she firmly believed that outside the pale of her own Church there was no salvation. But her faith was sincere. She had no wish that conversions should be effected by force; nevertheless she was convinced that the best of all good works was to extend as widely as possible the domain of the pope. She had for her confessor a Jesuit, named John Herbest; and the work of darkness, of which this man was one of the principal agents, was carried on in a Jesuitical manner. The king began by listening without objection to the assertions of his courtiers that a moderate Catholicism, a middle stand-point between Popery and Lutheranism, would be the best religion. John thought so. He consequently published in 1571 an ordinance purporting that as Anschar had in the ninth century introduced true Christianity, they must abide by it, and must preach good works, as giving salvation equally with faith. At the same time exorcism at baptism, tapers on the altar, the sign of the cross, the elevation of the host, and the multiplicity of altars were re-established. The archbishop, Lawrence Petersen, offered no opposition to this ordinance, either from weakness of age or of character, from dread of Calvinism, or from fear of the king. His brother Olaf would have been more vigilant and more steadfast. Further steps were soon taken. The queen, at the suggestion of Cardinal Hosius, implored the king to re-establish the dignity of the priest and the sacrifice of the mass.[[504]] On the death of the archbishop, in 1573, John III. named as his successor Lawrence Gothus, a man who being always willing to yield could not fail to be an excellent instrument for the accomplishment of the purposes of Rome. The king caused to be drawn up seventeen articles, which sanctioned the intercession of the saints, prayers for the dead, the re-establishment of convents and of all the ancient ceremonies. The archbishop signed them; and as soon as this pledge was obtained, the ceremony of the consecration was performed with much pomp. On this occasion reappeared the mitre, the episcopal staff, the great cope called pluvial, and the holy oil for the |Romanism In The Ascendent.| anointing of the prelate. Henceforth, Catholicism was in the ascendent. John had his son Sigismund brought up in the strictest Romanism, in the hope of thus opening the way for him to the throne of Poland, which Cardinal Hosius had promised him. Two Jesuits, Florentius Feyt and Lawrence Nicolaï, sent by the famous society with which the king was in correspondence, arrived at Stockholm in 1576, and gave themselves out for Lutheran ministers. They ingratiated themselves amiably and adroitly, says one of them, with the Germans, and this at first more easily than with the Swedes.[[505]] They paid visits to the pastors and conversed with them on all manner of subjects for the purpose of gaining them over. They spoke Latin with ease and elegance, so that the good Swedish pastors, who were unlettered men, were filled with admiration, and promised them their co-operation.[[506]] Feyt, in a college at Stockholm, newly founded by the king, and Nicolaï, at the university of Upsala, spread out their nets, and by lectures, sermons, disputations, and conversation, they succeeded in bringing back to the abandoned faith now one and now another, thus drawing after them a goodly number of souls.[[507]]
The cardinal lavished his instructions upon them. ‘Let them avoid creating any scandal,’ he wrote to the Jesuit confessor of the queen; ‘let them extol faith to the skies; let them declare that works without faith are profitless; let them preach Christ as the only mediator and His sacrifice on the cross as the only sacrifice that saves.’[[508]] The main point was to get the Swedes to re-enter the Roman pale by giving them to understand that nothing was preached there but the doctrines of the Gospel. This once accomplished, some means would certainly be found of again setting meritorious works by the side of faith, the Virgin Mary by the side of Christ as intercessor, and the sacrifice of the mass by the side of the sacrifice of |Proceedings Of The Jesuits.| Calvary. The king commanded all the pastors to attend the lectures of these Jesuits, passing themselves off as Lutherans. These men quoted the writings of the reformers, but at the same time confuted them, and endeavored to show that they contradicted one another. The king was sometimes present at these disputations, and even took part in them. He spoke against the pope, and thus gave the foreign theologians a pretext for making a clever apology for the Roman court. The reverend fathers, moreover, were not particular. They gained over a secretary of the king, named Johan Henrikson, who was living with a woman whose husband he had killed. Father Lawrence, in the first instance, gave absolution to these two wretched people; and afterwards a dispensation to marry. This convert, after having again been an accomplice in crimes, died from drunkenness. In a short time, other Romish priests arrived in Sweden, and were placed in various churches. At the instigation of these missionaries of the pope, many young Swedes were sent abroad, to Rome, to Fulda, and to Olmutz, to be educated there in Jesuit colleges at the expense of the state. Many Roman Catholic books were translated, especially the catechism of the Jesuit Canisius; and these were distributed in large numbers among the people.[[509]] Cardinal Hosius did not fail to write to the queen that she should by no means be disheartened nor slacken in her efforts to bring about the conversion of the king.[[510]] At the same time he wrote to the king entreating him to become a true Catholic. ‘If there be any scruple in your majesty’s mind,’ said he, ‘there is nothing upon earth I desire more than with God’s help to remove it.’[[511]]
The queen and her connections at length prevailed upon the king to take one step towards the pope. Count Pontus de la Gardie set out for Rome, with instructions to request the pontiff, on the part of John III., to appoint prayers to be made throughout the world for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in the North; to propose his own return and that of his people into the Roman Church, upon condition nevertheless that the ecclesiastical estates which were in the hands of the king and of the nobles should remain there, that the king should be acknowledged head of the Swedish Church, that mass should be allowed to be said partly in Swedish, that the cup should be received by the laity, and that marriage should be permitted to the priests, although they ought to be exhorted to celibacy. The court of Rome, without accepting these conditions, left the negotiations open, in hope of getting more another time.[[512]] The king, desirous of giving the pontiff a mark of his zeal, caused to be composed and printed, in 1576, under the direction of the Jesuits, a new liturgy almost entirely Roman in character; and in the following year he began to persecute those who refused to accept it. Cardinal Hosius now gave thanks to God for the conversion of this prince (October, 1577.)
Fratricide.
This same prince, who now bowed down his head under the yoke of the pope, signalized this year (1577) by the perpetration of one of those crimes which reveal an unnatural heart, a man devoid of feeling. His unhappy brother, although now rendered completely powerless and reduced to a state of the deepest wretchedness, gave him some uneasiness. Among the people there had been movements in his favor. Mornay had been accused of aiming at the restoration of Erick, and on this charge had been put to death on August 21, 1574. It had been openly said that it would be better for one man alone to suffer than for so many to perish in his cause. In January, 1577, the king wrote to Andersen of Bjurum, commander at Oerbyhus, to which place the ex-king had been recently removed. Here is the order given by a brother for the death of a brother; a document such as is not to be found elsewhere in history. It appears that John recollected his brother’s cleverness and energy, which qualities, however, must surely have been diminished by his imprisonment. ‘In case there should be any danger whatsoever, you are to give King Erick a draught of opium or of mercury strong enough to ensure his death within a few hours. If he should positively refuse to take it, you are to have him bound to his seat and open veins in his hands and feet till he die. If he should resist and render it impossible to bind him, you are to place him by force upon his bed, and then smother him with the mattress or with large cushions.’[[513]] John III., however, did an act of mercy at the same time. He ordered that, before putting his brother to death, a priest should be sent to the Calvinist Erick, at whose hands he should receive the sacrament. What tender concern for his salvation!
The secretary Henrikson, the man who had killed the husband of the woman with whom he lived, consequently arrived at the castle of Oerbyhus accompanied by a chamberlain and the surgeon-major Philip Kern. The latter had prepared the poison, and the three men brought it with them. On Sunday, February 22, the priest presented himself to do his duty. After an interval of two days, the poison was served up to the unfortunate prince in a soup. He took it quite unsuspiciously and died in the night (two o’clock A.M.), February 26, at the age of forty-four.[[514]] The deposed king had certainly committed a crime when he wounded with a dagger Nils Sture, whose intention he believed was to snatch from him his crown. But at the spectacle of this cold-blooded poisoning, directed in an ordinance with such minute details, and effected in so cowardly a manner, we feel the shudder of horror aroused by great crimes. John then wrote to Duke Charles that their brother had died after a short illness, of which he, the king, had been informed too late. Charles understood what this meant, and he expressed his grief at the unworthy manner in which King Erick had been buried. ‘He was nevertheless,’ wrote Charles, ‘king of Sweden, crowned and anointed; and whatever the evil into which he may have fallen, which may God forgive him! in the course of his reign he did many good deeds worthy of a brave man.’[[515]] Swedish refugees in various places lamented his tragic end, and even called upon France to avenge it by placing his heir upon the throne.[[516]]
After Erick’s death, the fratricide king continued his progress towards popery. The clever Jesuit, Antoine Possevin, who made his appearance as envoy from the emperor, but who was in fact a legate of the pope, arrived in Sweden, for the purpose of getting the king and the kingdom to decide on making a frank submission to Rome.[[517]] The king had an interview with him in the convent of Wadstena, and was formally but secretly received by this reverend father into the communion of the Roman Church. While pardoning his sins, the Jesuit imposed on him the penance of fasting every Wednesday, because it was on this day that he had caused his brother to be poisoned.[[518]] The influence of this Jesuit was at the same time felt throughout the Church. Orders were given to withdraw from the psalms all the passages against the pope, to exclude Luther’s catechism from the schools, and to submit to the canonical laws of Rome, an extract from which was published. Martin Olaï, bishop of Linkoping, having called the pope Antichrist, appeared publicly in the cathedral, and before the altar was stripped of his pontifical decorations. His diocese was given to Caroli, ordinary of Calmar, a former courtling of Erick’s, a treacherous man, who had driven the king to the murder of Sture. At the same time Jesuits were entering the kingdom under various names and various dress; and believing that the time for cautious proceedings was past, they preached vigorously against evangelical doctrine, which they called heretical, so that it began to be said among the common people that these men could do nothing but curse and bark. The district entrusted to the government of Duke Charles was the only one that was protected from this Romish invasion.[[519]]
Suddenly the tide ceased flowing and seemed to turn back towards the fountain-head. John III. had cast his eyes upon the duchies of Bari and Rossano, in the kingdom of Naples, believing that his wife, as the daughter of Bona Sforzei, had some title to them. But the pope had taken a course opposed to his interests; and he had likewise sacrificed Sweden in a treaty, which had been concluded through his mediation, between Russia and Poland. At the same time the principles of freedom which Protestantism had made current, especially in opposition to the lordship of the priestly class, had so deeply entered into men’s minds that the practices, the artifices, and the impudence of the Jesuits appeared revolting to the townsmen, and were stirring up in the whole nation a spirit of resistance to the encroachments of the papacy. At |Death Of Queen Catherine.| length, in 1583, Queen Catherine, who had been the soul of the popish reaction, died; and the king having married again, his second wife, Gunila, declared herself heartily against Rome.
At this time the tide, which ever rising had borne along with it into Sweden the rites and the doctrines of Rome, was succeeded by the ebb, which as it retired swept away successively every thing which the rising waters had deposited on these northern shores. The pastor of Stockholm, who had become a Catholic, was deprived; the Jesuits were driven out of the kingdom, and the posts which they held in the college of Stockholm were given to their adversaries. Public opinion energetically declared itself against the adherents of the pope; and the king, turning from one wrong course to another, began to persecute them, although he still retained his liturgy. He died in 1592, and his son Sigismund, a zealous papist, who, since 1587, had been king of Poland, now returning to Sweden, began to oppress Protestantism. His uncle, Duke Charles of Sudermania, an intelligent and enterprising prince, who was not only opposed to popery, but had a leaning towards the Protestant side, put himself at the head of this party. Sigismund was obliged to leave Sweden, and Charles became first administrator of the kingdom and ultimately king.[[520]]