Lars Ulstadius

Who was Lars Ulstadius?

In Finland the first appearance of radical Pietism is personified by Lars Ulstadius. He was a Lutheran minister and a schoolteacher who, due to contacts with early pietist literature, came to be tormented by religious doubt, guilt, and general anxiety. He first caused a stir in the beginning of the 1680s by blowing up his philosophical works in Oulu. He also renounced his priesthood in the Lutheran church and his schoolteacher job.

He then fell ill and for about two years he neither washed himself nor had his hair or beard cut. In his agony he turned to the local vicar, asking for public absolution for his sins. The vicar explained to him that such scruples were merely the work of the devil and he should not pay attention to them.

On July 22, 1688, Ulstadius then in due course appeared in the Dome of Turku in his rags, with his hair hanging long and with a huge matted beard, interrupting the service by starting to read aloud the radical theses he had written down. Like some Old Testament prophet, he proclaimed that the Lutheran doctrine was to be doomed, that prayer books and postils were a bunch of lies, and that the ministers were not endowed with the Holy Spirit.