Latin Letters from Clergymen in the Province of Scania (Eastern Denmark - Southern Sweden) in the Seventeenth Century : A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentaries

Sammanfattning: This doctoral thesis comprises a critical edition of a previously unpublished manuscript from the late seventeenth century, which is housed in Lund University Library. The manuscript consists of copies of eighty-eight letters and other documents in Latin. The originals were, in most cases, written by country vicars from Scania, a Swedish province that until 1658 was part of Denmark. The identity of the collector is unknown, but many circumstances indicate that the texts may have been collected and copied by Frans Leche, vicar of Barkåkra in North-Western Scania. The collection contains numerous testimonials and invitations to weddings, christenings and churchings, but also letters and other texts that treat subjects such as the pastor’s Communion, a Lutheran pastor’s education and exemplary conduct and the Danish (Scanian?) feelings after the Treaty of Roskilde. Taken together, the texts give important glimpses of everyday clerical life in war-torn seventeenth-century Scania. In addition to the critical edition of the Latin text with introduction, English translation and commentaries, this thesis provides analyses of specific groups of letters or other documents and, in some cases, analyses of individual letters. These analyses are intended to highlight information that gives a clue to the clerical identity of the authors and recipients. The German church historian Thomas Kaufmann’s concept of the Lutheran confessional culture has provided an important analytical perspective. The collection shows that clergymen from the same region interacted with each other in many ways, forming close-knit professional networks, which were in many cases also family networks (clergymen often married daughters or widows of other clergymen). The clergymen took evident pride in their (classical) learning, which probably added to their cultural capital. Though written in the late seventeenth century, when wars were raging between Denmark and Sweden and Scania became Swedish, most of the texts treat the wars only in passing, possibly because the clergy adopted a strategy of caution. A poem on the Treaty of Roskilde shows, however, that there were probably clergymen who were far from politically indifferent.