Henry was a medieval English clergyman. He came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare in 1153. According to legend, he entered Finland together with King Saint Eric of Sweden and died as a martyr. He stayed in Finland out of pity, but was never appointed as a bishop there.
About Henry (bishop of Finland) in brief
Henry was a medieval English clergyman. He came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare in 1153. According to legend, he entered Finland together with King Saint Eric of Sweden and died as a martyr. The authenticity of the accounts of his life and ministry are widely disputed and there are no historical records of his birth, existence or death. Together with his alleged murderer, peasant Lalli, Henry is an important figure in the early history of Finland. His feast is celebrated by the majority Lutheran Church of Finland, as well as by the Catholic Church of Finnish. He is commemorated in the liturgical calendars of several Protestant and Anglican churches. Henry and his crusade to Finland were also a part of the legend of King Eric. Henry’s legend is commonly considered to have been written during the 1280s or 1290s at the latest, when his alleged remains were translated there from Nousiainen, a parish not far from Turku. Yet, even as late as in the 1470s, the crusade legend was ignored in the Chronica regni Gothorum, a chronicle of the history of Sweden, written by Ericus Olai, the Canon of the Uppsala cathedral. In 1291 a document by the chapter of the cathedral makes no reference to Henry, even though it mentions the new Bishop of Turku in many times. The first mention of Henry in the papal letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1292 has the Virgin Mary as the sole patron of the Bishop ofTuru.
The legend strongly emphasizes that Henry was a Bishop of Uppala, not a Bishopof Finland which became a conventional claim later on, also by the church itself. He stayed in Finland out of pity, but was never appointed as a bishop there. With the exception of a priest in Skara who suffered a stomach ache after mocking Henry, all miracles seem to have taken place in Finland. The Legend does not state whether there had been bishops in Finland before his time or what happened after his death. It does not even mention his burial in Finland, and it does not mention his death in the vita. The appendix of the early 13th century Västgötalagen, which has a short description of Eric’s memorable deeds, also makes no references to Henry or the crusade. The Swedish Archbishop of Kero, Bero, elected in 1289, after three years in office in Turku, had apparently been selected by the king’s brother, King Ragvald andettil, as the new bishop of Finland before him. He was also the appointment of the Duke of Finland in 1284, which challenged the Bishop’s earlier position as sole authority on all local matters. The Bishop of Finland was followed in 1291 by Johan Johan Magnus Magnus, who had been born in Finland and had been elected by the Swedish king in 1287. Henry is said to have ruled the peaceful kingdom with the king in heavenly co-existence. He died when he tried to give a canonical punishment to a murderer.
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