Johannes Messenius
Johannes Messenius (* 1579 in Motala , Sweden , † 1636 in Oulu , Finland ) was a Swedish writer and historian .
life and work
He studied in the Braunsberg Jesuit seminary of the Lyceum Hosianum , but confessed to the Lutheran faith after his return to Sweden at the beginning of the 17th century .
From 1609 to 1613 Messenius was a professor of law and politics at the University of Uppsala . He was a good and popular teacher, but he didn't like his authoritarian colleague, Prof. Johannes Rudbeckius . Due to the dispute with this, Messenius had to leave his chair.
In 1616 Messenius was accused of secret membership in the Jesuit order and illegal connections with Catholic Poland, which is why he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
During his imprisonment in the castle of the northern Finnish city of Kajaani , Messenius wrote his most important, 20-part work Scondia illustrata, with which he wanted to critically explain old documents and legends in order to obtain an unadulterated picture of history.
The work Rimkronika om Finland och dess inbyggare ( Eng . ' Rhyming Chronicle of Finland and its Inhabitants'), which made the author Finland's first historian , was also created in Messenius' prison cell . Messenius wrote similar chronicles, in the style of the Swedish medieval rhyming chronicles, of the city of Stockholm and the central Swedish landscape of Dalarna .
Johannes Messenius died shortly after his long imprisonment in Oulu . There is a painting of him in the cathedral of the same city (probably by Cornelius Arendtz), and the Finnish cities of Kajaani and Helsinki have preserved his memory by naming a street after him.
literature
- Josef Höfer , Karl Rahner (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church (LThK) . Messenius, Johannes. Second, completely revised edition 1957–1968 (special edition 1986). tape 7 . Herder Verlag, Freiburg 1957, ISBN 3-451-20756-7 , p. 334 .
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Messenius, Johannes |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish writer and historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1579 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Motala , Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1636 |
| Place of death | Oulu , Finland |