"Mine lands blodh till tienst". En undersökning av Andreas Servius' bönbok "Någre Christilige och Catholische böner" av år 1593, med särskild hänsyn till dess förlagor, innehåll och funktion

Sammanfattning: The main purpose of this thesis is to present and analyse the Swedish sixteenth-century Catholic priest Andreas Servius’ prayer book Någre Christilige och Catholische böner printed in the Silesian city of Neisse year 1593. The general questions of the study are: which where the main sources of the prayers found in this prayer book? What characteristics typical for the period’s piety can be found in it? And above all: what does this tell us about the purpose and the function of the prayer book, in the ordinary life of its users as well as in the greater historical context in which it was written? The author Andreas Servius states in his preface that the prayers of the book have been “collected” and “swedicised” (i.e. translated into Swedish) by the author himself. One task of this study has therefore been to find what sources these prayers have been collected from. Since we know that Servius had been studying at mainly German-speaking Jesuit seminaries in Morovia and Austria and that most Swedish devotional books of the sixteenth-century had a German origin, a natural procedure has been to study sixteenth-century German prayer books of the reformation era. This investigation has made use of digitized material available at online library recourses as well as scholarly works relevant to this topic. The other task has been to investigate the content of the prayer book for the purpose of distinguishing characteristic features typical for the piety of the era and confessional characteristics. To crystallize these features and characteristics I have made use of current research about late medieval and reformation spirituality. I’ve also compared and contrasted the content with contemporary devotional, dogmatic and liturgical sources. This has also been my way to investigate the main purpose and the function of the prayer book. The conclusion of this study is 1) that approximately two thirds of the prayers and devotions of the prayer book can be traced to three German Jesuit prayer books, 2) that the focus on confession, holy communion and the sacrifice of the Mass, as well as concepts of sin, self examination, repentance and spiritual perfection are typical characteristics of Catholic and Jesuit Spirituality contained in the book, 3) that the main purpose and function of Andreas Servius’ prayer book is didactic and that it is intended to be used as a fostering tool, preparing its users for a possible near future restoration of the Catholic Church in Sweden.