Johannes Magnus and the Composition of Truth

Johannes Magnus (1488–1544), the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala to hold residence in Sweden, was the author of a monumental work about Swedish history, in the form of biographies of over 200 kings, from the grandsons of Noah to Gustavus Vasa. The work is entitled Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus, the ‘History of all the Kings of the Goths and the Swedes’, and was published posthumously in Rome in 1554. Johannes’ work gained spectacular importance in the 17th century, when the