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Johannes Magnus' Historia De Omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque Regibus and Gostagus the Tyrant

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Johannes Magnus' Historia De Omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque Regibus and Gostagus the Tyrant Chapter 42 Johannes Magnus’ Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus and Gostagus the Tyrant Astrid M. H. Nilsson 1 Introduction Johannes Magnus, the last Catholic Archbishop of Uppsala in residence, was born in the Swedish city of Linköping in 1488.1 After studying abroad, he re- turned to Sweden as papal legate in 1523, with the intention of preventing the spread of Lutheranism. In the same year he was appointed Archbishop of Uppsala. After about three years, Johannes was sent to Poland to negotiate a mar- riage for the new king, Gustavus Vasa. He was to spend the remaining 20 years of his life away from Sweden, in Poland and later in Italy, while Lutheranism was gradually established in his home country. Johannes’ struggle to be sent back to Sweden as a papal legate to reinstate Catholicism is evident from his surviving letters, but it all came to nothing, and he died in Rome in 1544, after a short illness.2 The Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus (referred to from now on as the Historia de regibus), Johannes Magnus’ most important work, was completed in 1540. It was published posthumously by his brother and constant companion, Olaus Magnus, in Rome in 1554.3 The first edition of the work, which is referred to in this study, consists of 782 pages in folio, not count- ing the voluminous index or the appendix. It is divided into 24 books and cov- ers over 200 Swedish kings, from the sons of Noah to those of Johannes’ own 1 I thank Dr. David Bell for correcting my English. There is no full biography of Johannes’ life, but a shorter biography is found in Kurt Johannesson, Gotisk renässans (Uppsala, 1982), trans- lated and edited by James Larson, as The Renaissance of the Goths (Berkeley, 1991). In the following, page numbers enclosed in parentheses refer to the English edition (it is not only a translation) when there is a correspondence. See also Jules Martin, “Deux confesseurs de la foi au XVIe siècle: Joannes et Olaus Magnus”, L’université catholique, NS, 58 (1908), 353–76 for their adult pro-Catholic struggles. 2 Brita Larsson, Johannes Magnus’ Latin Letters (Lund, 1992), e.g. 87–91, 146, 151–2, 169–70. 3 Johannes Magnus, Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus (Romae, 1554). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004361553_043 512 Nilsson time. It is richly illustrated with woodcuts, mostly of kings. Johannes alternates between writing about the Goths, that is, the Swedish people, who stayed in Sweden and the part that allegedly left and eventually conquered Europe.4 The usual opinion of the Historia de regibus is that it is a highly unreliable source because much of it is thought to have been be invented by its author.5 One of the kings assumed by modern scholars to be fictional is the king I in- tend to discuss in this paper, King Gostagus. He is said to have ruled Sweden in the 7th century AD, but is usually not only identified as fictional, but also seen as a malicious portrait of King Gustavus Vasa, a contemporary of Johannes Magnus.6 The portrait is supposed to have been designed by the exiled arch- bishop because the king had broken with Rome and the Catholic Church in favour of Lutheranism. The fact that Gustavus confiscated Johannes’ property in Sweden and chose a new archbishop, Laurentius Petri, probably contributes to the opinion that our author constructed the portrait of Gostagus in order to denigrate the Swedish king. While the portrait of King Gostagus contains traits that remind one of Gustavus Vasa, there is more to it than that, which I hope to show here. I shall discuss the portrait of Gostagus as a general lesson about tyranny – as with many other historical writers of the era, Johannes expressly aimed to use his work to teach moral lessons – and show what can be taught in this particular lesson.7 I shall start by discussing the contents of the portrait and its place within the work, and proceed to some thoughts on the lesson provided. 4 The work was fundamental to the rise of Swedish Gothicism in the 17th century, Sweden’s “great era.” On Gothicism in general, see e.g. Josef Svennung, Zur Geschichte des Goticismus (Uppsala, 1967). 5 Johannesson, Gotisk renässans (see above n. 1), 106 (77); Gustav Löw, Sveriges forntid i svensk historieskrivning (Stockholm, 1908–10), 52, 55–6, 74 and 77; Josef Svennung, Från senantik och medeltid. Latinska texter av kulturhistoriskt intresse 2 (Lund, 2002 (1963)), 124–5. 6 Johannesson, Gotisk renässans (see above, n. 1), 172; Löw, Sveriges forntid, (see above, n. 5), 84–5; Svennung, Från senantik och medeltid (see above, n. 5), 124. 7 Magnus, Historia de regibus (see above, n. 3), 1–2. On history as a teacher for life, see e.g. Bernard Eric Jensen, “Using a Past. Magistra Vitae Approaches to History,” in Negotiating Pasts in the Nordic Countries, interdisciplinary studies in history and memory, edd. Anne Eriksen, Jon Vidar Sigurdsson (Lund, 2009), 205–37 and Rüdiger Landfester, Historia magistra vitae. Untersuchungen zur humanistischen Geschichtstheorie des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Genève, 1972), 131–64..
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