Peder Pedersen Winstrup (30 April 1605 – 28 December 1679) was Bishop of
Lund
Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...
in
Scania
Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne (, ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden, provinces (''landskap'') of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conte ...
. Winstrup was bishop there during a period spanning both
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
sovereignty and periods of war when the land was contested. He was married to the Danish noblewoman, Dorothea von Andersen who was an influential person in her own right in Scania and known to be strongly pro-Danish.
Early life and education
Winstrup was born in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
, then the capital of
Denmark–Norway
Denmark–Norway (Danish and Norwegian: ) was an early modern multi-national and multi-lingual real unionFeldbæk 1998:11 consisting of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Norway (including the then Norwegian overseas possessions: the Faroe I ...
Zealand
Zealand ( da, Sjælland ) at 7,031 km2 is the largest and most populous island in Denmark proper (thus excluding Greenland and Disko Island, which are larger in size). Zealand had a population of 2,319,705 on 1 January 2020.
It is the 1 ...
and professor of theology at the
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
. After his father's death in 1614, his mother married his successor as bishop. Peder Winstrup the younger studied at the universities of
Rostock
Rostock (), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (german: link=no, Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, c ...
,
Wittenberg
Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon language, Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the Ri ...
,
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, and
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...
in Germany and graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1633. In 1635, he was appointed
royal chaplain
A royal chapel is a chapel associated with a monarch, a royal court, or in a royal palace.
A royal chapel may also be a Chapel (music), body of clergy or musicians serving at a royal court or employed by a monarch.
Commonwealth countries
Both ...
in the household of King
Christian IV
Christian IV (12 April 1577 – 28 February 1648) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 until his death in 1648. His reign of 59 years, 330 days is the longest of Danish monarchs and Scandinavian monar ...
. He was awarded a doctorate in theology in 1636 and was made bishop of Lund in 1638.
Career
After Scania and the other provinces included in his diocese had been ceded to Sweden through the
Treaty of Roskilde
The Treaty of Roskilde (concluded on 26 February ( OS), or 8 March 1658) ( NS) during the Second Northern War between Frederick III of Denmark–Norway and Karl X Gustav of Sweden in the Danish city of Roskilde. After a devastating defeat, ...
in 1658, Winstrup pledged loyalty to his new sovereign,
Charles X Gustav
Charles X Gustav, also Carl Gustav ( sv, Karl X Gustav; 8 November 1622 – 13 February 1660), was King of Sweden from 1654 until his death. He was the son of John Casimir, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Kleeburg and Catherine of Sweden. Afte ...
, and he was ennobled under the name Himmelstierna, a name he never actually used. In 1658, he suggested that a new university should be founded in Lund (at the location of the former Academy of Lund) and where there was already a renowned Latin School, but received little response from the king. When the Swedish authorities eventually decided to start up a university there a few years later, at least part of the initiative lay with a subordinate priest in the diocese, Bernhardus Oelreich, and Winstrup now turned against the idea.
After the
University of Lund
, motto = Ad utrumque
, mottoeng = Prepared for both
, established =
, type = Public research university
, budget = SEK 9 billion
One of the reasons that the Swedes became increasingly suspicious of Winstrup was that he willingly obliged the Danes when they reconquered Scania in 1676. Between June and December that year, Scania was under Danish rule again and Winstrup, like most of the Scanians, seemed happy enough with that. The Scanian War (1675-79) was the bloodiest war in Scandinavian history and took a disastrous toll on the Scanian population. After the battle of Lund on 4th December 1676, the Swedes slowly wrenched back their grip on Scania and at the peace negotiations 1679, Swedish rule was legally re-established. Winstrup and his family had experienced their fair share of tribulations during the war. In a letter from 4th October 1678, Winstrup's wife Dorothea wrote to the Danish district governor (amtmand) Knud Thott to complain that she and her husband were stuck in the bishop's residence (Lundegaard) in the city of Lund, and that everything had been destroyed; the city burnt down (most lately by Danish troops, before that by continuous fighting), their property confiscated, their food taken away, their carriage confiscated, they had nothing and her husband's health was in decline. "God knows that Calamity has stricken us often during these times of war...my husband's health is very weak and that he should have to experience this in his old age - they have taken all that we need to survive, and then we had this great fire ("storre ilde bran")...". They had been asked to move out of their house but had nowhere to go and were both terribly frightened, so they had ended up stuck in the middle of the war zone. Winstrup died shortly after the end of the Scanian War.
In June 2015 Winstrup's grave was moved from the crypt of the Lund cathedral to its northern tower. The body was taken away temporarily for research. It was in a well-preserved condition. The body of a fetus was discovered in the Winstrup's coffin, tucked in under the feet of the bishop. The fetus, wrapped in a piece of linen cloth, is believed to have been five to six months old. It is presumably a grandson of Winstrup. Swedish researchers have established a family connection with the help of DNA material from the bishop and the fetus, according to Lund University. According to the study, the boy and Winstrup share 25 percent of the genes; it is a second-degree relationship. It was not unusual for the time for young children to be placed in coffins with adults.