Hans Brask was born at Linköping, studied at Rostock and Rome, and became bishop of his native city in 1513. He was energetic, able, and the strongest defender of the old church in Sweden. He even set up a printing press at Söderköping to answer the Lutheran books coming from Germany.

When Olaus Petri, who had studied at Wittenberg, began preaching the gospel at Strängnäs in 1523, Brask demanded his punishment and asked Rome to sentence him to death.¹ He excommunicated anyone who read or sold evangelical books and called the Lutherans’ liberty “the liberty of Lucifer.”² When some deacons told him that they based their belief on the teaching of Paul, he lost his temper:

Better that Paul had been burnt than that he should thus be known and quoted by every body!² Hans Braskas reported by Merle d’Aubigné

Brask stood against King Gustavus Vasa, who needed the church’s wealth and favored the reformers. At the Diet of Västerås in 1527 the king broke the political power of the bishops and allowed the preaching of the gospel. Brask left Sweden that year, never to return, and died in exile at the monastery of Landa in Poland on July 30, 1538.

Catholic Opponents