Johannes Messenius

John Messenius (* 1579 in Motala, Sweden; † 1636 in Oulu, Finland) was a Swedish writer and historian.

He learned in Braunsberger Jesuit seminary of the Lyceum Hosianums, but confessed after his return to Sweden at the beginning of the 17th century to the Lutheran faith.

From 1609 to 1613 Messenius worked as a professor of law and politics at the University of Uppsala. He was a good and popular teacher, but he did not like his authoritarian colleague, Prof. John Rudbeckius. Due to the dispute with this Messenius had to leave his chair.

In 1616 Messenius was accused of membership in a secret Jesuit Order and illegal connections to the Catholic Poles, for which he was sentenced to a prison term of 20 years.

During his imprisonment in the castle of the northern Finnish city of Kajaani Messenius wrote his most important, 20 - part work Scondia illustrata, with whom he wanted to explain, ancient records and legends critical to determine the true image about the story.

In the prisoners cell of Messenius also the work Rimkronika was om och Finland concerning inbyggare (Eng. " rhymed chronicle about Finland and its people " ), which made the author for the first historian of Finland. Similar chronicles, on the nature of the Swedish medieval small rhyme chronicles, Messenius also wrote about the city of Stockholm, the mid Swedish dala.

John Messenius died shortly after his long captivity in Oulu. In the cathedral of the same city there is a painting (probably by Cornelius Arendtz ) from him, and the Finnish cities of Kajaani and Helsinki have honored his memory by naming a street after him.

• Historian
• Swede
• Born in 1579
• Died in 1636
• Man