Introduction
During one of Jeppe Aakjær’s many archive studies in his search for good local history, he came across an episode with a priest from Vroue, southeast of Skive, which he thought deserved to be retold. The story was published in Skivebogen 1911 under the heading “En ordentlig Lining. The word “lining” can best be translated as a beating or beating.
With a picnic basket and a canteen
On July 10, 1645, the priest in Vroue, Oluf Knudsen, left the vicarage in the middle of the morning in beautiful sunny weather and – reportedly in a good mood – to go out into his nearby meadow to treat his servants who were cutting hay. He carried a basket of food in one hand and a canteen of liquid in the other. When he reached the meadow, he greeted his servants nicely as they went to cut the hay, but to get to the other servants who were walking in another of the pastor’s meadows, he had to pass another man’s meadow, which belonged to a farmer from Sjørup named Chr. Jensen. He was raking hay himself and had the help of two maids, and the priest greeted them all nicely with a “God’s peace”, as befits a priest.
Angry neighbor
However, this kind gesture was not reciprocated in the same way, as Chr. Jensen suddenly approached the pastor with his rake raised and angrily asked what the pastor was doing on his land, after which the angry farmer accused the pastor of having mentioned him in his prayer day sermon and hanged him in front of the congregation. The priest denied this, but the angry farmer continued to accuse the priest of always scolding him in his sermons and that he should now face the consequences of his actions.
The beating
The farmer, who had now come very close to the priest, raised the rake above his head and hit the priest on the neck and head, causing the basket and jug to fly out of the hands of the priest, who fell to the ground. As the priest lay dazed on the ground, the farmer, in his wildness, hit the priest two more times until the rake snapped in half. As if that wasn’t enough, Jensen sat on top of the priest and punched him several times in the head, causing serious injuries. When his face was sufficiently mangled, the farmer began to tear off the priest’s hair, and it could have gone horribly wrong if two men resting nearby hadn’t realized what was happening. They rushed over and with great difficulty and force pulled the mad farmer away from the beaten priest. You would have thought that things had calmed down, but the mad farmer continued to threaten and abuse the priest in front of all the shocked servants, using all kinds of swear words such as “pig herder” and “earwig”. Despite his battered state, the priest was not without words and called Jensen a “scoundrel” and a “disgrace”, and that the assailant would have to pay for his “misdeed” in the “name of God”. To this the farmer boldly replied that the priest should start praying in the name of “Death and the Devil”.
Home safe and sound
Now the priest had had enough and started to walk home, but the priest’s two rescuers saw that Jensen had gone to his wagon to get a knife, and they shouted to the priest to go back safely to them, which he did. When the danger seemed to have passed, the beaten priest made his way home and reached the vicarage safe and sound. Here he called out four men to see what injuries he had suffered. In addition to being bruised all over, the priest had a wound above his right eye that was red, blue and yellow, and his eyelid was cracked. His entire face was swollen and he was missing many tufts of hair.
The verdict
The above description of the attack comes from the priest’s own official complaint to the authorities, signed in Vroue Presbytery on July 15, 1645, five days after the attack. The verdict fell well into 1646. It stated that the crime consisted, among other things, of the priest having been “greatly assaulted” and “badly beaten”, and the victim was even the assailant’s own “soul keeper”, which was obviously aggravated circumstances. Moreover, the victim would hardly have survived without “God’s help”. One might wonder if it wasn’t rather the merit of the two rescuers that the priest had survived. The verdict was that Chr. Jensen had to go to confession in Vroue Church as punishment and thus confess his sin and pay 40 Sletdaler to Viborg Latin School, which also appears in the Latin School’s accounts. From the perspective of today’s justice system, it is surprising that the mad farmer was not sentenced to prison for his assault. Today, such an unjustified assault would cost at least three to six months in prison.
Sources:
En ordentlig Lining by Jeppe Aakjær, Skivebogen 1911