HELGESEN, POVL

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 221 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG

HELGESEN, POVL ,1 Danish humanist, was born at Varberg
in Halland about 1480, of a Danish father and a Swedish mother.
Helgesen was educated first at the Carmelite monastery of
his native place and afterwards at another monastery at Elsinore,
where he devoted himself to humanistic studies and adopted

Erasmus

ERASMUS, DESIDERIUS (1466–1536)

as his model. None had a keener eye for the abuse-
of the Church; long before the

appearance

APPEARANCE (from Lat. apparere, to appear)

of Luther, he
denounced the ignorance and immorality of the clergy, and, as
lector at the university of Copenhagen, gathered round him a
band of

young

enthusiasts, the future leaders of the Danish
Reformation. But Helgesen desired an orderly, methodical,
rational reformation, and denounced Luther, whose ablest
opponent in Denmark he subsequently became, as a hot-headed
revolutionist. Christian II. was also an object of Helgesen's
detestation, and so boldly did he oppose that monarch's

measures

MEASURES

1 He wrote his name Heliae or Eliae.
that, to save his life, he had to flee to Jutland. Under Frederick I. (15231533) he returned to Copenhagen and resumed his chair at the university, becoming soon afterwards provincial of the Carmelite Order for Scandinavia. But like all moderate men in a time of crisis, Helgesen could gain the confidence of neither party, and was frequently attacked as bitterly by the Catholics as by the Protestants. From 1530 to 1533 he and the

Protestant

PROTESTANT

champion Hans Tausen exhausted the whole vocabulary of vituperation in their fruitless polemics. In October 1534, however, Helgesen issued an eirenicon in which he attempted to reconcile the two contending confessions. After that every trace of him is lost. For a long time he was unjustly regarded as a turn-coat, but he was too superior to the prejudices of his age to be understood by his contemporaries. His ideal was a moral internal reformation of the Church on a rational basis, conducted not by ill-informed fanatics, but by an enlightened and well-educated clergy; and. from this standpoint he never diverged. Helgesen was indisputably the greatest master of style of his age in Denmark, and as a historian he also occupies a prominent position. He always endeavours to probe down to the very soul of things, though his passionate nature made it very difficult for him to be impartial. His

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

works are Danmark's Kongers Historie and Skibby Kroniken.
See Ludwig Schmitt, Der Karmeliter Paulus Melia (Freiburg, 1893) ; Danmarks Riges Historie (Copenhagen, 1897-1905), vol. iii.

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