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Jesper Svedberg (1653–1735): Watcher on Sion's Walls
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
This remarkable man (father of an even more remarkable son, Emanuel Swedenborg) is familiar to students of Swedish church history through the works of Tottie,1 Annerstedt,2 Cornelius,3 Pleijel,4 and others, but now he makes himself known to us more intimately through his autobiography, published at long last, and edited by Dr. Gunnar Wetterberg, Librarian of Lund University.5 He tells us that, because “children like to have their ancestors' portraits and see what they were really like,”6 he undertook, in his old age, this “Jesper Svedberg's biography written by himself, truthfully and in detail, and read through annually and augmented, to remind himself of God's good and strange providence. Bequeathed to his children and descendents for the necessary instruction in how to traverse the world happily,—to whom may God give his grace!”7 He states, somewhat naïvely, “No one can know me better than I myself, especially since, with God's grace, I take sufficient care that self-love shall not blind me and lead me astray.”8 (In spite of which “sufficient care,” the work has been disrespectfully described as a biography “written by a onesided, enthusiastic, and uncritical admirer”9!) He made seven copies, one for each of his children, of which four are still extant. To one who has leafed through the 1100 folio pages of the Linköping MS, struggling hopelessly to decipher the faded script, with its peculiar spelling and sentence structure, Dr. Wetterberg's achievement seems nothing short of miraculous!
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1944
References
1 Tottie, Henry W., Jesper Svedbergs lif och verksamhet. 2 vols. (Upsala, 1885–1886).Google Scholar
2 Annerstadt, Claes, Upsala Universitets historia (Upsala, 1908–1909), II, parts 1 and 2.Google Scholar
3 Cornelius, C. A., Svenska Kyrkans historia efter Reformationen. 2 vols. (Upsala, 1886–1887).Google Scholar
4 Pleijel, Hilding, Der schwedische Pietismus in seinen Beziehungen zu Deutschland. (Lund, 1935)Google Scholar; Svenska Kyrkans historia, V: Karolinsk kyrkofromhet, pietism och herrnhutism, 1680–1772 (Stockholm, 1935).Google Scholar
5 Gunnar, Wetterberg, editor, Jesper Swedbergs lefwernes beskrifning (Lund, 1941), I: Text.Google Scholar
6 Ibid., 14–15.
7 Ibid., title-page.
8 Ibid., 5
9 Emil, , Kleen, A. G., Swedenborg:En lefnadsskildring, I, 3.Google Scholar
10 Wetterberg, 44.
11 Ibid.
12 This breakdown in the educational system was due mainly to the extreme poverty caused by the Thirty Years' War, and the wars of Charles X and Charles XI. During the reign of Christina, there was great interest in public education, and the school regulations of 1649, under the influence of Comenius, gave a strongly humanistic east to Swedish education. But as the wealth of the country was drained off into the foreign wars, it was the school system which was the heaviest loser.
13 Wetterberg, 126 ff.
14 Tottie, I, 39.
15 Wetterberg, 122 ff.
16 Fries, Ellen, Den svenska odlingens stormän: Olof Rudbeck d. ä., Urban Hjärne, Jesper Svedberg (Stockholm, 1901), 57.Google Scholar
17 Tottie, I, 75.
18 Wetterberg, 525.
19 Ibid., 182 f.
20 Ibid., 183.
21 Tottie, I, 28.
22 Wetterberg, 115.
23 Wetterberg 213.
24 Among them are the following (Cornelius I, 258), “Så är fullkommnadt, Jesu kär! Hvad om din död förkunnadt är.” “Löfver Gud i himmels hjöd.” “O Gode herde du Som gaf ditt lif för fåren.”
25 Pleijel, , Svenska Kyrkyans historia, V, 234.Google Scholar
26 Clay, Jehu Curtis, Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware (Philadelphia, 1835), 67.Google Scholar
27 Pleijel, Ibid., 239.
28 Ibid., 239 ff.
29 Rosendal, Gunnar, Rätte Lärare: Jesper Svedberg, Anders Nohrborg. Henric Schartau (Stockholm, 1932), 92.Google Scholar