PETERSSON, LARS (PETRI LAURENTIUS). - First Lutheran archbishop of Sweden, born at Örebro in 1499, died at Uppsala on 26 Oct. 1573.
He studied with his elder brother Olaf at Wittenberg, under Luther, and on returning to his homeland in 1527 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 married a relative of King Gustavo Wasa. Together with his brother he oversaw the complete translation of the Bible into Swedish and published it in 1541: this is the so-called “Bible of G. Wasa,” which was as important for the development of the Swedish language as Luther’s was for the German language. At the Diet of Vesterås he promoted new laws to eliminate Catholic practices; he was not uninvolved in the articles of Vadstena (1553), which constituted the first attempt to organize the Church in a distinctly Protestant sense. In 1561 he drafted the plan for ecclesiastical organization, which was subsequently approved in 1571 and still today constitutes the basis of the organization of the Swedish Church.
By means of it he succeeded in maintaining the Lutheran character of the Church against Calvinist incursions favoured by King Erik XIV. Besides the works mentioned, he published the first Swedish hymnal, in 1555 a postil on the Bible, and in 1559 a Swedish chronicle.