Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- REFORMING THE NORTH
- Introduction
- 1 The North
- Part I Lord of the Northern World, 1513–1523
- 2 Preliminary
- 3 Christian II's Other Kingdom
- 4 A Conquest
- 5 Hubris
- 6 Insurrection
- 7 The King's Fall
- Part II Successors, 1523–1533
- Part III Civil War, 1533–1536
- Part IV The Settlement, 1536–1545
- 21 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Hubris
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- REFORMING THE NORTH
- Introduction
- 1 The North
- Part I Lord of the Northern World, 1513–1523
- 2 Preliminary
- 3 Christian II's Other Kingdom
- 4 A Conquest
- 5 Hubris
- 6 Insurrection
- 7 The King's Fall
- Part II Successors, 1523–1533
- Part III Civil War, 1533–1536
- Part IV The Settlement, 1536–1545
- 21 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the close of 1520 King Christian II ruled the greatest realm in northern Europe. His ambitions extended even beyond this enormous region. He meditated an expedition to Greenland, led by Søren Norby, to reestablish the old tie with Norway. From Greenland Norby might push on to the new world. Closer to hand the king had taken one of Lübeck's gates, but the free imperial city on the Trave remained tantalizingly out of reach. And his uncle Friedrich continued to sit brooding at Gottorp.
Over the next year the regime reshaped crown administration, issued a number of reforms, and undertook the instauration of a chaotic legal system. A new item pushed its way onto the royal agenda, church reform. As events in the Reich unfolded after 1517, reports reached Copenhagen, and were followed intently in some circles. A young Carmelite, Poul Helgesen, lectured on theology at the university after 1519, and found auditors open to church renewal. Helgesen was a severe critic of church abuses, and he condemned “the riches and indolence of certain spiritual persons.” “Nothing,” he wrote,
has contributed more to the fall of the church than the vanity and pride of certain noblemen, men who are such slaves of life's pleasures and licentiousness that they not only extinguish the innocence of life and the piety of the Christian religion, but completely despise them. What is sustained by power, violence, ostentation, pride, splendor, ambition, and human strength cannot long endure.
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- Information
- Reforming the NorthThe Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520–1545, pp. 89 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010