Master Svend is said to have been a follower of Erasmus; he later became a Lutheran bishop[2] and may have been the one who influenced the boy to criticize the abuses of the Catholic Church at an early age.
The order's teaching at the universities of Paris, Cologne and Louvain was distinctly anti-humanist and conservative, and the Carmelite monks emerged as some of Erasmus' fiercest opponents.
Nevertheless, the Carmelites cannot have ever questioned Helgesen's orthodoxy, for in 1522 he was elected provincial prior, i.e. supreme head of the order's province of Dacia et Norwegia (Denmark and Norway), an office he held for the rest of his life.
With his extensive knowledge of the past and present, Helgesen stands out as one of the foremost spiritual figures of his time in the Nordic countries.
[6] The German Didrik Slagheck came to Bergen as an indulgence trader, entered Christian II's service and participated in the Stockholm Bloodbath.
The king rewarded him with the Diocese of Skara and in 1521 with the Archbishopric of Lund, but Slagheck fell from grace and was burned on 24 January 1522 at Gammeltorv in Copenhagen.
[2] "Such is the fate of all who corrupt the minds of princes with false counsel," he commented the same day in a writing dedicated to Christian II.
In 1526, the king asked him to give a lecture at the palace on "Lutheranism", which he thought he did "moderately"; but was nevertheless mobbed by anti-Catholic courtiers and chased down the street afterwards by a court jester, while the soldiers called him a "hypocrite" and "murderer of souls".
Nevertheless, it was Christian II's positive attitude that brought humanism to Denmark, as can be seen from his planned reform laws with greater requirements for education and teaching, and his financial support for the Carmelite Order's house on Sankt Peders Stræde in Copenhagen.
In the Skibby Chronicle, Helgesen follows the ancient and humanist tradition of viewing history as an instructive mirror, magistra vitæ ('schoolmistress of life'), where one can learn from the follies of others and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes.
His chronicle lacks depictions of individuals, landscapes, battle scenes and state documents – except for the complaint against King Christian, which he had nevertheless written himself.
After the death of Frederick I in April 1533, the Rigsråd (Privy Council) took over the rule of Denmark and postponed the election of a new king.
Helgesen called it the "common man's rebellion and disobedience", but it was a matter of class conflict, with the Lutheran cities of Malmö and Copenhagen, supported by Lübeck, rising up against the Privy Council.
His polemical writings against both Catholics and Protestants show his theological knowledge and have been interpreted as evidence of a fiery temper.
Helgesen in fact expressed himself in the tradition of Cicero, Quintilian and Erasmus, where the seriousness of the matter is emphasized precisely by the use of sharp turns of phrase and outbursts.
[18] Helgesen was an outstanding historian, and his main work, handwritten in Latin, is the unfinished Skibby Chronicle (Danish: Skibbykrøniken), with biting criticism of the Denmark of his time.
[19] Although weakly constructed and mixing large and small events, the work is nevertheless a monument to his firm political and religious convictions with its description of the Stockholm Bloodbath, Christian II's escape from Denmark which Helgesen himself contributed to, Frederik I's inauguration and his connection with Tausen; the Lutheran storming of the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen in 1530, and King Christian's imprisonment in Sønderborg Castle.