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8. PRESBYTERIAN POLICY OF GUSTAF. 221
intendent. A council was occasionally to be summoned
by the king to deliberate on Church matters, consisting of
these various persons. Thus the authority of the bishops
seemed entirely to be set aside, and nothing apparently
remained for them but the duty of ordination. Norman
and his assistant, the ex-Dominican, Bishop Henry of
Vesteras, visited West Gothland, Vermland and East
Gothland, and Henry alone visited Smaland. The visita
tion was accompanied by a large confiscation of all valu
ables, except such as were supposed to be needed for the
altered form of worship. A recommendation of the use of
the new edition of the hand-book and Swedish mass of
Olaus Petri went hand in hand with this visitation. These
proceedings led to the very serious peasant revolt under
Nils Dacke in Smaland, where a civil war lasted for about
a year (1542 1543). The plan of superseding the regular
government of the Church was then gradually dropped,
though Norman was not publicly cashiered. Norman
appears to have been a good and able man, and a gentle
man, and, therefore, superior to some of the persons used
in England for similar work. But he had one great
defect : he never learnt Swedish, and, therefore, remained
always an outsider in the country, in the internal affairs of
which he was called to interfere so invidiously and so
minutely.
We possess Norman s
"
Church Order" both in Latin
and Swedish, issued in 1540 and i54i.
35
It is an interest
ing document, showing less of a reactionary spirit than we
might have suspected. It orders daily morning and even
ing prayers (Art. 2). It allows a daily mass, i.e., without
communicants, because all abuses cannot at once be re
moved (Art. 4). It lessens the number of saint days, but
preserves the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and
Pentecost, and those of the Purification, Annunciation and
35
The Latin was published by Otto Ahnfelt :
Tidskrift for
teologi, 1892, pp. 352-422, with notes and illustrations. See
Janne Romson : Om datering-en af Georg Norman s Svenska
Kyrko-ordning in K. H. Arsskrift, 1906, pp. 130-4.
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