PETERSSON, LARS (Petri Laubentius). — First Lutheran archbishop of Sweden, b. at Örebro in 1499, d. at Uppsala on 26 Oct. 1573.
He studied with his elder brother Olaf at Wittenberg, in Luther’s school, and on his return to his homeland in 1527 he actively collaborated with him in the Lutheranization of the Church of Sweden, first as a teacher at Uppsala, then from 1531 as archbishop of Uppsala and primate. He enjoyed the favour of King Gustav Vasa. With his brother he supervised the complete translation of the Bible into Swedish and published it in 1541; the so-called “Gustav Vasa Bible,” which had for the development of the Swedish language the same importance that Luther’s Bible had for the German language. At the Diet of Västerås he promoted new laws to eliminate Catholic usages; he was not unconnected with the articles of Vadstena (1553), which constituted the first attempt to organize the Church along distinctly Protestant lines. In 1561 he drafted the project for ecclesiastical ordinances, which was approved in 1571 and still forms the basis of the organization of the Swedish Church today.
With this he succeeded in maintaining the Lutheran character of the Church against Calvinist tendencies fostered by King Erik XIV. Besides the works mentioned, he published the first Swedish hymnal in 1555, a postil to the Bible in 1555, and a Swedish chronicle in 1559.