Arnold Johan Messenius was a Swedish enfant terrible and Rikshistoriograf who was condemned to death and executed under the reign of Christina, Queen of Sweden.
Background
Arnold was the son of the historian Johannes Messenius. He spent much of his youth in the fortress of Kajaneborg in Arctic Finland, where his father had been imprisoned on suspicion of being a Catholic and collaborating with the king of Poland Sigismund III Vasa and the Jesuits. His father was sentenced to death in July 1616, but the king changed the sentence to prison, probably for life.
Career
Early Messenius wrote during his imprisonment Scandia illustrata, a history of the Nordic countries in 14 volumes, which treated Sweden"s history from the deluge to Messenius" own time. Shortly after Messenius died, and the government offered his widow, Lucia Grothusen, 500 Swedish riksdaler for Scandia illustrata. However, she left the kingdom with the manuscripts.
Arnold had a restless adolescence.
In 1621, at the age of 14, the Swedish authorities locked him up in Uppsala in a boarding school run by Lutherans. He was forced to flee (1623) for being accused of what seems to be accidentally killing a classmate during a dispute and, after an adventurous escape through Norway and Denmark, he arrived in Gdańsk, where he was welcomed by his mother"s family.
He was pardoned by King Gustav II Adolf and in 1626 sent to Kexholm as a prisoner. He was pardoned 14 years later, in 1640 through Count Per Brahe, the governor of Swedish Finland and went to Stockholm to obtain employment in government service.
He was arrested in August at the Danish border and put in Stockholm jail.
The Councils instructed him to go to Poland and find the manuscript Scandia illustrata, left there by his mother after his father"s death. Messenius was able to fulfill this mission and found a number of curious Swedish documents. In 1645 he was appointed royal historian by Queen Christina, and peered, but he had not the talent of his father for history, nor his critical instinct, nor perseverance and hard work.
Subsequently in 1649 and 1650 he made connections with opposition leaders known as the "Messen conspiracy", and Swedish noblemen were alarmed.
Messenius wrote some satires on Axel Oxenstierna and accused Christina of serious misbehavior and being a Jezebel for which he was beheaded together with his 17-year-old son.
Views
In Sweden, the boy was brought to trial on charges of spying for Poland. The process, during which he was accused of defending his father, ended with the death sentence of Arnold Johan, as a traitor.