Again Rudbeck was forced to explain himself, both at the council meeting and to the university chancellor. No, he said, this lecture series “On Nothing” was not meant to insult his colleagues or deny the existence of knowledge. He had only intended to offer some reflections on the many uses of “nothing” in the sciences. From medicine to pharmacy to physics, he saw nothing, and nothing everywhere. This was, as he put it, an attempt at a “true science of nothing.”
Was Rudbeck speaking of experiments with vacuum, then in vogue among some natural philosophers? Was he hinting at a sharper mystical turn? Or was this just another attempt to get out of trouble? That is hard to say, though it was probably a little bit of each. De la Gardie, at any rate, accepted Rudbeck’s explanation. The count also acknowledged that Rudbeck had behaved somewhat inconsiderately with his announced program.
For Rudbeck, the critiques—just like the words of encouragement—acted like powerful stimulants, urging him forward, a man driven and not exactly known for his sense of moderation. When the objections moved beyond the realm of personal attacks, they could be even more beneficial. Sometimes they helped him identify unforeseen problems with his theory about Atlantis, or pinpoint areas that needed more fiddling. And Rudbeck would almost invariably proceed to solve them, at least to his own satisfaction.
Spurred on by encouragement and criticism in equal measure, not to mention his own inner drive to perfect the theory, Rudbeck made so many advances that he dreamed of publishing “a small addition” to
“Wish what Your Excellence said had been true,” Rudbeck wrote to De la Gardie, referring to the count’s prediction that there would soon not be enough copies to satisfy the demand. Most of the initial print run of some five hundred copies, with one hundred special, lavishly produced copies, was still available for purchase.
Frustratingly, after two weeks on the market, only sixty copies of the special presentation copies had been sold. He had set aside forty of them for the high-ranking figures at court, or leaders in the king’s government, but not a single volume was sold until the fourth of April, when the governor of the province of Geflve bought his copy.
Sales were so slow, in fact, that it is almost possible to count them as they occurred. In the first weeks, only about one dozen of the regular copies of
None of these trends boded well for narrowing the gulf between the glowing praise and the glaring lack of sales. Over the summer of 1679, the number of copies sold was, according to his own testimony, a grand total of one. Weary from worry, Rudbeck reported a few months later that, despite all his efforts, he had not managed to sell more than 120 copies. Given the huge debts he had assumed to print the work, Rudbeck hoped and prayed that the dismal slump would come to a speedy end. At this rate he was inching closer to financial disaster.
Sadly, one of the great sources of inspiration in his life, his dear friend Olaus Verelius, had fallen gravely ill. He had shown signs of deterioration for a while now. Rudbeck noted how his colleague would come over to his house and stand there in the doorway, nearly out of breath from the walk up the flight of stairs. The day Rudbeck had long dreaded came in early January 1682, and Rudbeck took a break from his own sorrows to write his friend’s epitaph,
Such words reveal a great amount about Rudbeck and his relationship with Verelius, not to mention his appreciation of the wisdom that was to be mined from the past. And every bit of this wisdom would be needed for what awaited him.
BETWEEN THE TIME
The young king Charles XI, so uncertain when he first sat on the throne, had matured considerably during the last four years, which he had spent almost completely on mud-soaked battlefields. In 1680, now that the war was over and Sweden had finally repulsed the Danish invaders, he was back in his royal palace in Stockholm. Coaxed by his new associates, the twenty-five-year-old king declared himself absolute ruler of Sweden.
No longer would he promise to seek the advice of the council before making decisions of consequence. The old council had in fact been disgraced by the poor showing in the war, deemed irrelevant, and, eventually, denounced as dangerously incompetent. Other traditional limitations on royal power were likewise to be swept away, at least in theory. Although the king had assumed many more powers during the humiliations and crises of the recent war, keeping real decision-making within his small circle of favorites in the camp, Charles XI was now, by law, answerable only to God in heaven.
For the vast majority of Swedes laboring under the severe strains of the state military machine, the king’s assumption of absolute power would not make all that much difference. They would continue to toil away on the farms and fields, struggling desperately with harsh winters, crushing taxes, and the ever-present threat of famine. For the small middle class, growing steadily though still much smaller than that in Britain, the Netherlands, or France, there would be more opportunities for joining the growing administration and serving the state. But the impact of the new system would be felt most by the high aristocracy, and for some the experience would be catastrophic.
With the Swedish navy annihilated and the countryside devastated, the setbacks of the last war had shown the sorry state to which the country had fallen. Sweden was, in the words of the king, like a poorly equipped ship that had just managed to survive the stormy waters to creep back into harbor. It was vastly in need of repairs, though there was no money available to make them, let alone repay all its enormous debts. There wasn’t even money to pay the crew, the loyal state employees who were keeping the creaking ship afloat.
“We know that the country is in desperate straits, and that everyone serves without wages,” one government official expressed his concern in one of the lively debates in Parliament held during the turbulent fall of 1680. Meanwhile, “a handful of persons,” he added, “own all the land in the kingdom.” At this cue, another member chimed in, “And what happens is that the poor among us have to pay up, but the rich and the powerful, who own the nation’s land, have done nothing; this is something that ought to be looked into.”
The new absolute power planned to do exactly that, and the result was radical, to say the least. The king’s men would examine every undertaking of the regency government—every single decision, expense, or gift bestowed in the last few decades would be scrutinized with the aim of discovering the “source of all the disorder.” And that source, it was added ominously, would be held accountable.
What had long been murmured was now written as the law of the realm. The members of the regency, the old elite who steered the country, were officially blamed for the “miserable condition of the finances” and the great disasters of the 1670s that nearly destroyed the kingdom. Now they would have to pay—and the price, it was decided, would be their own property.
Along with this punishment, the king decided to establish a “Chamber of Liquidation.” Far too many gifts and donations had been awarded to court favorites, seriously eroding the government’s sources of income. The king’s chamber was to make sure that all such grants were returned to the Crown. This was known as the reduction. With remarkably few exceptions, any major royal gift provided for any reason since 1632 was now judged to have been illegal and ordered to be returned immediately, with interest.
Such a sweeping plan was necessary, its proponents argued, to rescue Sweden from a state of emergency. To the high aristocracy targeted, however,
