Hans Svane
Encyclopedia
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
statesman and ecclesiastic, born at Horsens
Horsens
Horsens is a Danish city in east Jutland. It is the site of the council of Horsens municipality. The city's population is 53,807 and the Horsens municipality's population is 82,835 ....
, where his father, Hans Riber, was burgomaster
Burgomaster
Burgomaster is the English form of various terms in or derived from Germanic languages for the chief magistrate or chairman of the executive council of a sub-national level of administration...
.
His mother Anne was a daughter of the historian Hans Svaning
Hans Svaning
Hans Svaning was a Danish historian....
, whose name, subsequently altered to Svane, he adopted. At Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
Svane devoted himself to the study of Oriental languages, and between 1628 and 1635 completed his education abroad, at Franeker
Franeker
Franeker is one of the eleven historical cities of Friesland and capital of the municipality of Franekeradeel. It is located about 20 km west of Leeuwarden on the Van Harinxma Canal. As of 1 January 2006, it had 12,996 inhabitants. The city is famous for the Eisinga Planetarium from around...
in Friesland
Friesland
Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...
, Wittenberg
Wittenberg
Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. After seven years' residence abroad Svaning returned to occupy the chair of Oriental languages at the university of Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
. In 1646, finding promotion slow, he turned to theology and was "created" Dr theol. by his old patron Jesper Brochmand, now bishop of Sjælland, whom he succeeded in the metropolitan see of Denmark on January 26, 1655.
As a theologian he belonged to the severely orthodox Lutheran
Lutheran Orthodoxy
Lutheran orthodoxy was an era in the history of Lutheranism, which began in 1580 from the writing of the Book of Concord and ended at the Age of Enlightenment. Lutheran orthodoxy was paralleled by similar eras in Calvinism and tridentine Roman Catholicism after the...
school. His scholarship, despite the erudition of his commentary to the prophet Daniel in two huge folio volumes, is questionable. But in Latin and Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
he won distinction as a speaker, and his funeral orations in both languages were admired by his contemporaries. At the famous risdag of 1660 he displayed debating talent of a high order and played an important political role. It was Svaning who, at the opening of the rigsdag
Rigsdag
Rigsdagen was the name of the Parliament of Denmark from 1849 to 1953.Rigsdagen was Denmark's first parliament, and it was incorporated in the Constitution of 1849. It was a bicameral legislature, consisting of two houses, the Folketing and the Landsting. The distinction between the two houses was...
, proposed that only members of the council of state
Council of State
The Council of State is a unique governmental body in a country or subdivision thereoff, though its nature may range from the formal name for the cabinet to a non-executive advisory body surrounding a head of state. It is sometimes regarded as the equivalent of a privy council.-Modern:*Belgian...
should be entitled to fiefs and that all other estates should be leased to the highest bidder whatever his social station.
At a hint from the king he laboured to get the royal charter abolished and the elective monarchy
Elective monarchy
An elective monarchy is a monarchy ruled by an elected rather than hereditary monarch. The manner of election, the nature of the candidacy and the electors vary from case to case...
transformed into an hereditary monarchy
Hereditary monarchy
A hereditary monarchy is the most common type of monarchy and is the form that is used by almost all of the world's existing monarchies.Under a hereditary monarchy, all the monarchs come from the same family, and the crown is passed down from one member to another member of the family...
. The clerical deputies followed him in a serried band, as the burgesses followed Nansen, and the bishop's palace was one of the meeting-places for the camarilla
Camarilla
Camarilla may refer to:*Camarilla, an unofficial group of courtiers or favorites surrounding and influencing a king or ruler, specifically the two such groups prominent in German history....
which was privy to the absolutist designs of Frederick III
Frederick III of Denmark
Frederick III was king of Denmark and Norway from 1648 until his death. He instituted absolute monarchy in Denmark and Norway in 1660, confirmed by law in 1665 as the first in western historiography. He was born the second-eldest son of Christian IV of Denmark and Anne Catherine of Brandenburg...
. Throughout the session Svane was chairman of "the Conjoined Estates" in their attacks upon the nobility, his watchword being: "Equal rights for all and a free hand for the king." It was on his motion (Oct. 8) that the Commons agreed "to offer his majesty the crown as an hereditary crown," to which proposition the nobility acceded, under severe pressure, two days later. When, on the 13th, the three estates
Estates of the realm
The Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...
assembled at the castle, it was Svane's speech, as president of the estate of the clergy, which gave the solemnity its ultra-royalist character. He, too, quashed the timid attempt of the more liberal minded of the deputies to obtain a promise from the king of some sort of a constitution. In fact, excepting the king and queen, nobody contributed so powerfully to the introduction of absolutism into Denmark as the bishop of Copenhagen.
He was raised to the dignity of archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
, a title which no other Danish prelate has since borne, and as president of the academic consistory of the university (an office which was invented for and died with him) he took precedence of the rector magnificus. He was also created a royal councillor, an assessor of the supreme court and a member of the stats kollegiet or council of state. His elevation seems to have turned his head. The university suffered the most from his extravagant pretensions; and his quarrels with all the professors at last caused such a scandal that the king had to interfere personally. A bishop who was at the same time a privy councillor, a minister of state and a judge of the supreme court could have but little time for spiritual duties.
Yet Svane was not altogether neglectful of them. Especially noteworthy is his plan for the erection of a consistorial college for managing all the temporal affairs of the church, including education and poor relief, anticipating to some extent the modern ministries of education and public worship, which unfortunately was not adopted. Moreover, the privileges which he obtained for the clergy did much to increase the welfare and independence of the Danish Church
Church of Denmark
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, Church of Denmark or Danish National Church, is the state church and largest denomination in Denmark and Greenland...
in difficult times, while his representations to the king that Danish theology was not likely to be promoted by placing Germans over the heads of native professors bore good fruit.
See Detlev Gotthard Zwergius, Sjellandske clerisie (Copenhagen, 1754).