Nicolaus Ragvaldi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For another medieval Swedish churchman of the same name, see Nicolaus Ragvaldi (monk).

Nicolaus Ragvaldi (latinized form of Swedish Nils Ragvaldsson) (born in the early 1380s and died on February 17, 1448) was Archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden, 1438-1448. He is known as an early representative of the Gothicist tradition.

On November 12, 1434, he held a speech at the synod in Basel, Switzerland, where he urged that the Swedish monarch, Eric of Pomerania, was a successor to the Goths kings. The speech was written down and preserved, and was taken up by Johannes Magnus when he wrote the influential History of the Nordic People about 150 years later.

The intention of the speech was to prove that the Swedish monarch should be allowed to account old mythological kings of Sweden and Semi-legendary kings of Sweden's deeds, some 800 years earlier, to his own house. The result was that today's official list of Swedish monarchs starts with a king labeled Eric VI, as the existence of earlier Erics can not be confirmed.