Chronicle of The Expulsion of The Greyfriars - The Chronicle

The Chronicle

Now follows a chronicle or a short account of the case of the Greyfriars expulsion from their friaries in the Province of Denmark. First an explanation of that:

'God's judgement is a deep abyss.' (Psalms 36:7) How true the words of the psalmist are; one can all too often see in our (time). O the pains,(of this) all too often unhappy and storm-filled age where one can see the Lutheran party's miserable expectations take hold. They have forsaken the (appointed) interpreters' true explanation of the holy scriptures, so that they with cunning and slyness and in a quarrelsome manner wrest the scriptures. They become stiff-necked by holding fast to their error (which) they drank in at first, to condemnation for themselves and for others.

Because their lying master, Martin Luther, has asserted that faith alone was enough to save and that one had only to see to it that (faith) grew. But works, he asserted, were done only for dead flesh and to edify (one's) neighbor, but not to righteousness or salvation. Nor would there be any reward hereafter for mankind's holy works, but that works were only a preparation for faith which all the righteous were given, and taken away from the wicked.

That interpretation is and has done much to foster laxity, O, that can one see more of in our time than is necessary to produce evidence of without long and extensive research. For many who before burned brightly in their devotion and zeal for the faith and despite their determination to never to forsake it, cooled, and went out completely with this devilish wind gust.

For many who at one time were devoted under the holy father Francis' rule and stood like Lebanon's cedars, hurtled down in that they gave way before the misfortunes, like shrubbery on flat fields (give way) before the force of the wind. The majority ending their days in a very unhappy manner. Nearly all Denmark's great nobles were led away by their bad examples and pestilent dogma. And our order's poor brothers who are steadfast in the faith and preach against the Lutheran party's doctrines. They Greyfriars) are persecuted without compassion and against all just laws and driven from their friaries. And they (the fallen brothers) take away the alms and remove the religious decorations from the friaries, which property they took which (belonged to the friaries) and then use them for worldly purposes, thinking that they bring God an offering from the heart.

For so they are taught by the heretic preachers. They assert that the offering of mass which has always been celebrated and which should be celebrated in the church is so abominable and so pernicious that is a wonder that such priests of the mass are not by God's punishing judgement swallowed up alive by the earth. their supposed heresy lifted from them whose god is (their) belly. Among them Mogens Gjo can be seen who was the first, he who in the most unjust manner drove our poor order's brothers from many places.