Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Richt vay to the Kingdome of Heuine

XV111
INTRODUCTION.
historian of the Reformation says, become to the lagging
communities around a city “ set on an hill,” whose light
could not be hid ?
It was in this light, doubtless, that the city appeared
to our countryman Alexander Alesius in 1531, when, to
escape the cruelties of Prior Patrick Hepburn of St An¬
drews, he took ship at Dundee, and being driven by con¬
trary winds across the North Sea and into the Sound,
had to take refuge at this port till the ship was repaired.
The treatise ‘ De Apostolicis Traditionibus,’1 in which he
has given an account of his visit, and of the manner in
which he was received by his countrymen and the re¬
forming preachers of Malmo, is one of the rarest of his
minor treatises, and is not to be found in any of our
Scottish libraries, nor in the British Museum, nor even in
the library of the University of Leipsic, in which he was
so long an honoured professor. I owe it to the kindness
of Professor Franz Delitzsch of Leipsic, and of Dr Von
Gebhardt of the Royal Library at Berlin, that I am able
once more to bring to light the long-forgotten reference of
this Scottish confessor to his visit to Malmo at this inter¬
esting time. In his preface or dedication of this treatise to
1 The full title of the treatise is ‘Ad libellum Ludovici Nogarolse comitis De
Traditionibus Apostolicis et earum necessitate Responsio Alexandri Alesii D. ’
Prefixed is the “ Prsefatio ejusdem ad illustrissimos principes D. Fredericum
Regem designatum et D. Magnum Christiani inclyti Regis Danise filios et D.
Joannem Ducem Holsatiae fratrem Regis.” (Alternate title)—‘ Apostolicae
institutiones a Ludovico Nogarola Com. in parvum libellum collect* et ab
Alexandro Alesio in Disputationem proposit* in celebri Academia Lipsiensi.
Lipsi*, Excudebat Georgius Hantzsch, 1556 : ’ 8vo. Perhaps in writing of
his visit so long after it occurred, Alesius may have per incuriam put the
name of Petrus Palladius for that of Petrus Laurentius, who was prominent
among the reforming divines in Malmo. I have found no other mention of
the part taken in the movement by Petrus Palladius, but his brother, Nicolaus
Palladius, was the second reformed Bishop of Lund. He himself was Professor
of Theology in Copenhagen and Bishop of Roeskilde in Zealand.