Recension av Latin Letters from Clergymen in the Province of Scania in the Seventeenth Century

Johanna Svensson's Ph.D. dissertation provides editions and studies of sixty-four letters, twenty testimonials and four other documents in Latin, among them a long poetic lament on the Peace of Roskilde in 1658. All these documents are found in a seventeenth-century notebook kept in Lund University Library. The compiler was the vicar of Barkåkra, Frans Leche (1614?-1685), or perhaps his son. The documents give valuable insights into Church life in seventeenth-century Scania: practices in connection with baptisms, weddings etc.; the use of testimonials; and the education and ideals of Danish Lutheran clergymen. The editions are reliable and provided with English translations throughout. The author has a happy ability to understand the people she writes about and present them with sympathy, without becoming sentimental or subjective.