Unfortunately for Rudbeck and his hopes of continuing his search for Atlantis, one of the hardest hit was Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie. After steadily losing his influence with the king and his position of power, the count was nevertheless still unprepared for the nightmare that followed.
The king’s men finalized the scrutiny of De la Gardie’s actions as Chancellor of the Realm, and judged that he owed the state a total of some 352,159
Considering the extent of the count’s property and assets, this fine might not have been so devastating. The problem was that the vast majority of his wealth consisted of land, not cash, and many of his transferable valuables, such as jewels, had already been mortgaged in an effort to maintain his lavish lifestyle and patronage. In one case, the count had even pawned an entire castle, Makalos, which stood just across the water from the royal palace and one of the most impressive in all of Stockholm. Far worse than all this, however, was the verdict of the Liquidation Chamber.
De la Gardie would watch helplessly as castle after castle, estate after estate, and jewel after jewel disappeared from his grasp. By the time the chamber finished its work, roughly three dozen castles, two hundred estates, and one thousand farms were lost, leaving the count literally with only one single castle, Venngarn.
In this bitter turn of events, De la Gardie turned to his last source of consolation: religious faith. One of the spiritual poems he composed at this time, when he was subjected to such wild extremes of fortune, is still a part of Sweden’s Lutheran hymnal.
By the end of the reduction, many other aristocratic families had also been plundered and devastated. The Brahes, the Oxenstiernas, and the De la Gardies, who together once owned about one-twentieth of all land in Sweden, saw much of their wealth depleted. Others left the country in 1680 for good, moving to the Netherlands, Britain, the Hapsburg lands, or anywhere away from the Liquidation Chamber of Charles XI’s Sweden.
Although some families would bounce back to prominence, many would never recover from such an unprecedented transfer of castles and properties. The winners in the royal lottery would be the growing state, its new civil servants, and the emerging businessmen with money to buy the new, relatively cheap castles that temporarily flooded the market. And ultimately, it was said, the country at large would benefit. Land ownership in Sweden would never be the same; a transformation had begun that would gradually allow this Scandinavian country to have one of the most equal distributions of land ownership anywhere in the world.
At the time, though, chaos prevailed, and De la Gardie was not one of those who would live to see their families reemerge after the upheaval. From the depths of an unofficial political exile, he had fallen straight into the abyss. Very disillusioned by the cruel swings of fortune, the count was further embittered when he saw many of his former friends forget the services he had previously rendered them. Time after time, he was abandoned by those he had promoted into power.
But Rudbeck would never forget the count’s past favors. There is no change in the tone of his letters, or in the volume of pages that he sent to his friend. In fact, if anything, it seems that Rudbeck was trying to overcompensate. For De la Gardie,
15
AND THEN THE SNAKE THAWED
—OLOF RUDBECK
This was Henrik Schutz, a professor who was quickly emerging as a powerful force in the coalition against Rudbeck. As a trained theologian, Schutz had heard many horror stories about the Rudbeck ogre: his stance as a wicked Cartesian, the scandalous behavior in the Curio lawsuit, and the shameless critiques of the Aristotelian principles enshrined at the heart of the university training.
Schutz was not exactly bred to take this blatant opposition silently. As one leading cultural historian described him, he was a “quarrelsome person and a game cock, who was unparalleled even in this time [for being] vindictive, possessing good memory, and quick to his guns.” His personality was indeed volcanic. Professor Schutz was known, as Count de la Gardie put it, for “scouring the neighborhood farms with a pistol to silence the horses and pigs just because they bothered him.”
Domineering and uncompromising, Schutz was also one of the most unpopular professors in town. He cursed, swore, and scolded in almost equal measure. When he was supposed to preach sermons, they were often given behind closed doors. The reason, De la Gardie suggested, was to hide his incompetence. Although this assessment was rather harsh, many did in fact seem to agree with the count’s portrait of a difficult man who wanted things done in only one particular way. Some absolutely abhorred him and his severity. Once when he lay sick, unsympathetic students assembled in the night to play funeral music outside his window.
And when Verelius was lying on his deathbed in early January 1682, Schutz had hurried off to Stockholm to seek the influential and presumably soon to be vacant position as librarian of Uppsala University. The rival candidate for this powerful post, the university soon learned, was Olof Rudbeck.
For some time, Rudbeck had been tiring of all the medical duties. Not that he had been actively engaged the last few years—indeed, since his search for Atlantis had become a full-blown obsession, Rudbeck’s disregard of his lecturing duties had reached almost legendary proportions. Such anatomy lessons, which had once been his love, were now just frustratingly inconvenient and distracting. Besides, referring to the sometimes macabre spectacle of dissecting bodies, Rudbeck said that his stomach no longer tolerated “the fresh steaks.”
Taking charge of the library would be much more amenable to his antiquarian pursuits, which he regarded as his truly important work. The position of librarian, moreover, traditionally went to an older professor as an unofficial reward for long and beneficial service to the university. Loccenius, Schefferus, and Verelius had all in turn been appointed, and Rudbeck wanted to be next.
None of the authorities dragged his feet in making the decision, and the announcement was ready the day after Verelius died on January 3, 1682. Much to the surprise of university insiders, the king announced that the new director of the library would be Professor Henrik Schutz.
Only thirty-three years old, Schutz did not have much experience with manuscripts. He did not seem to have the literary achievements, either, that would command respect when he was showing visitors around the halls. Far from having given long service to the university, Schutz had graduated just one or two years before. Why the king took such a liking to this professor is puzzling. Perhaps it was Schutz’s strong personality, or, as some have suggested, his influential friends and relatives at court.
When the appointment was announced, Rudbeck in fact made a sudden counteroffer. He proposed to do all the work as librarian, and yet allow the salary and the honors of the title to be given to Professor Schutz.
But this was all to no avail, and yet another attempt to secure the position for Rudbeck was made. In this last-minute move, De la Gardie called Schutz to Venngarn and told him bluntly, “There is no way that you can have
