Principio quidem calamo certatum…, or Magnus, the evil

Abstract

Today, Copenhagen and Malmö belong to the same region: the Øresund Region (Öresundsregionen), also known as the Greater Copenhagen Region, which includes, among others, seventeen universities. Its most iconic landmark, the Øresund / Öresund Bridge, has been connecting the two cities by road and rail for 25 years. Building a common region—or even just a bridge—is a long process, and at the beginning of this road lies a historical trauma: in the Treaty of Roskilde (1658), onethird of Denmark, including Malmö, was ceded to Sweden. The eleven wars fought between the two countries from 1563 to 1814 were preceded by incitements to hatred. As a Swedish historian once wrote while imprisoned by Gustavus Adolphus: principio quidem calamo certatum, [...] [s]ed postmodum cruentissimo pugnatum gladio. Regarding Latin texts, the first piece of this "beginning" is Johannes Magnus’ Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus, first published in Rome in 1554. In my paper, I would like to present Professor Szörényi with a bouquet of remarkable passages from this Historia—but altius repetendo.