Peter Olivarius Bugge

This article was published in the Norwegian Biographical Lexicon, published 1999–2005. The article will not be updated. Newer articles can be found in Store norske leksikon.

Bishop. Parents: Prost Søren Bugge (1721–94; see NBL1, vol. 2) and Gidsken Edvardine Røring (1724–93). Married 26.10.1787 in Horbelev on Falster to Cathrine Magdalene Koch (29.9.1771–14.1.1869), daughter of parish priest Hans Peter Koch (died 1806) and Lucie Olsen. Father of Søren Bruun Bugge (1798–1886; see NBL1, vol. 2) and Frederik Moltke Bugge (1806–53); grandfather of Johannes Christian Piene (1832–1912).

Peter Olivarius Bugge is one of the most colorful personalities in Norwegian church life, with strong inner tensions in his mind. It is significant that he came to bear the nickname "bifrons" (lat., 'The man with the two faces'). He flung himself around with jokes and jokes. "My jovial mood," reads a letter from 1816, "hardly leaves me here in life, and then nature goes over the rebuke, and caution lies under the table."

Bugge's father, who was the merchant's son from Christiania, had been seized by the Herrnhut teachings that reached the country in the 1740s, and he raised the children in the same spirit. After being a priest in Holt from 1750, he became a priest in Vanse on Lista in 1767, and the youngest son received his education here until he was 11 years old. Then he was sent to Bergen to go to school with principal Fr. Arentz, and here he lived with his uncle, Hans Wilhelm Bugge, who at that time was the head of a Herrnhut congregation in Bergen, and who even the first summer took the young Peter Olivarius to Herrnhut itself.

After four years of schooling in Bergen, he returned home and attended the cathedral school in Kristiansand for a year, and from here he graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1782. He began to study theology and took all his exams (cand.theol. 1786, magister 1787) with best Grade. Brilliantly gifted as he was, he had the good fortune - he says himself - to be treated by his teachers more as a fellow student than as an apprentice.

When Rector D. G. Moldenhawer, on behalf of the university, called him parish priest in Skullelev in 1787, he could not say no, but he did not thrive in the Zealand village, and in 1790 he succeeded in being appointed his father's successor as parish priest in Vanse. In the meantime, he wrote the work that in a way became the program of his life, the Betragtninger over de aarlige Søn- og Helligdags Evangelier tillige med et Anhang af Passions-Betragtninger  (house postal Considerations of the Annual Gospels of the Sunday and Holidays as well as an Appendix of Passion Considerations) (1791). The postil was published as early as 1793 in German translation, and a Finnish translation from 1804 was published in several editions until the 1860s. It must also have been translated into Swedish and Dutch. Bugge did not have his name on the first edition; he knew full well that the book would not give him any honor among his friends of the educated class. It was a sharp attack on the rationalist preaching, which made Jesus' teaching the pattern of human virtue. In sharp contrast to this work is his treatise from 1796, De perversitate humana morali (On the Moral Plain of Man), in which he rejects both original sin and the devil; the dissertation earned him the theological doctorate at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

In the years 1799–1804, Bugge was parish priest in Fredericia in East Jutland, and it is in many ways a new Bugge you meet here. He began publishing a new Danish translation of a number of New Testament writings, and was thus the first Norwegian in recent times to attempt a Bible translation. Both the translation and the remarks that were attached to it have the clear tendency to transfer the words of the testament to modern thought and speech, and the four writings he had published in the years 1799–1803 are closely connected with contemporary rationalist work, and formed a clear contrast. to his house post.

In 1803, it was decided that the diocese of Trondheim, which also included the whole of northern Norway, should be divided in two, and on December 30, Bugge was appointed bishop of the new diocese of Trondheim, which in addition to the county of Søndre and Nordre Trondheim also included Nordmøre and Romsdal. He was ordained a bishop (along with Johan Nordal Brun and Matthias Bonsach Krogh) at a large joint episcopal ordination in Our Lady's Church in Copenhagen on May 10, 1804, and then traveled to Norway to take over his new position. 

After Bugge came to Trondheim, he soon came into conflict with his closest associate, diocesan dean H. J. Wille, and with other prominent officials in the city, such as diocesan court justice Andreas Rogert and commanding general G. F. von Krogh. He also came into conflict with the chancellery, which i.a. led to the fact that he did not receive the Order of Dannebro at the great service of the Order in 1810 like the other Norwegian bishops or as priests in his own diocese. The only thing in the administration that he was interested in was the care of the poor, and in 1809 he founded a "Charitable Society" in Trondheim. The distress that followed the war years of 1807 unleashed the power of compassion that lived in him, but also the violent indignation that was so strong in him. With a bleeding heart he saw how poor peasants and homemakers had to suffer, and with resentment he turned to landlords and merchants, who abused the peasants and exploited the need for their own gain. Throughout his life, he continued to feel almost connected to the underclasses.

As vice-president (from 1804) in the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences, Bugge came from 1806 in constant correspondence with its president, Prince Christian Frederik. After the prince came to Norway in the spring of 1813, Bugge sent him a detailed description of the political way of thinking in Nordafjell. Bugge did not attend the large deliberation meetings at Eidsvoll on 30 January and 16 February 1814 (the "notable meeting"). He had traveled in advance for the prince to Trondheim. But he preached in the cathedral on February 6 about the hope that religion bestowed in these turbulent times, and he turned the hope to the prince who now worked for the good of the people. Carsten Anker had wanted the prince to be proclaimed king in the cathedral, but when the prince came to Trondheim, the plan had already been abandoned. Bugge still greeted him in a company in the bishop's manor with a tribute poem as King of Norway.

After the big man's meeting at Eidsvoll, Prince Bugge encouraged people to prepare a draft constitution and then come to Christiania. In less than fourteen days he had finished the draft. But it did not succeed, and was in its entire structure a clear contrast to the constitution that was created at Eidsvoll. According to Bugge's proposal, the National Assembly was to be a pure assembly of clergy, bourgeoisie and peasants. It would have no legislative authority and would also have a very limited granting authority.

At the invitation of Christian Frederik, Bugge lived at Eidsvoll as long as the National Assembly sat together. Bugge's deed at Eidsvoll is unclear. Some claim that he was Christian Frederik's spy. "My fire-arrows," he writes in a letter, "wounded many; I knew that pretty well; but they were just about to be wounded, and thereby frighten away from many a canary that was intended. ” When Bugge on his way home traveled up through Gudbrandsdalen, he was, according to himself, greeted by the farmers as the "who had significantly contributed to us becoming true Norwegians and independent, and especially at the National Assembly strengthened many weak". He was received "almost with swarming Joy", and followed many miles by all kinds of people, "yes even by Ladies". Before his departure from Eidsvoll, the newly elected king had appointed him president of the Science Society, a position he held until 1820.

In the parliamentary elections of 1815, Bugge was elected as the first representative of Trondheim. In parliament, he soon made a name for himself by his "demosthenic" eloquence. He was for a time vice president of both the Odelsting and the Storting and for a time also president of the Odelsting. He was a member of the nomination committee and gave the impetus to the appointment of standing committees. He fought for the establishment of a protocol committee and was himself a member of it from the very beginning. Of the other standing committees, he was a member of the church committee, and auxiliary committee no. 3, where he allegedly wrote the temporary national school law of April 1, 1816. But he did not like the work of the Storting, and never later tried to be re-elected.

It took time before Bugge waited for the new situation. As late as 1816 he wrote secret letters to Christian Frederik, whom he consistently referred to as "King" Christian, at the same time as he let his irony spread to Karl Johan, who in a letter from 1816: "I parlance French so it has good custom without almost being able to (sic) a Word. My Norwegian Fist is squeezed and pressed with all Southern sincerity; yes, sometimes the love goes so far that it manifests itself in kissing. I got 6 ditto in one day and feared for my chastity. ... My wife, on the other hand, who received a visit to Thjem, retained her chastity without any such attack on her. Instead, she received a souvenir of a pair of earrings with diamonds. I intend to take these with me when I come home, for she has no holes in her ears, and the town must not be left unused. ”

Only once later did Bugge attract political attention. On September 7, 1818, he gave a speech in the cathedral in Trondheim in connection with Karl Johan's coronation. Bugge rebuked the people's boastful arrogance and its abuse of freedom, and he urged people to bow to God and the king. But his sermon provoked a storm of rage, because he gave Karl Johan the credit that freedom had been saved in 1814. In the evening, the windows of the bishop's courtyard were smashed, and the newspapers were filled with blacksmiths. He who had been Karl Johan's fierce opponent was now perceived as bilingual - in politics as before in religion. He had then also been appreciated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of the North Star in 1815 and the rank of commander (ie Grand Cross) two years later.

The storm against Bugge's coronation speech led to him never later falling back into the worship of rationalism. He soon began to gather a Herrnhut circle around him, and in 1819 he officially defended the Haugian lay preachers. When the peasants in the Storting in 1836 had received a majority for the repeal of the Conventical poster, Bugge was the only one of the bishops who spoke in favor of the repeal.

In his older days, Bugge was afflicted with poor health, and he was - after a reluctant application - resigned from the episcopate in 1842. Seven years later he died in Trondheim, 85 years old. By then he had already experienced seeing two of his sons installed as principals at the learned schools in Christiania and Trondheim.

Works

• The full record can be found in Bugge's biography in the NFL, bd. 1, 1885, p. 528–530

• Considerations of the Gospels of the Annual Sun and Holiday, as well as an Anhang of Passions-Recitals, Copenhagen 1791 (ty. utg. Flensburg 1793, fi. utg. Åbo 1804 and later utg.)
• The perversitate humana morali eiusque origine et ratione universa, dr.avh., Göttingen 1796
• Jacobs Letter, translated with Annotations, Copenhagen 1799
• Pauli Letter to de Galatians, translated with Annotations, Copenhagen 1800
• Pauli Letters to the Corinthians and the Letter to the Ebes, translated with Annotations, Fredericia 1803
• John's Gospel translated with Annotations, Fredericia 1803
• To Tronhiems Indvaans, the Maintenance of the Poor,in Aurora 1809, p. 3–12
• Draft of a Norwegian Constitution, 1814, printed in Y. Nielsen: Contribution to The History of Norway in 1814, bd. 1, 1882, p. 51–61
• Gospel Progress Intelligence in All Parts ofthe World , 2 bd., Trondheim 1821–22

Sources and literature

• F. M. Bugge: Characteristic Features of Bishop Dr. P.O. Bugges Life and Company, Trondheim 1851
• M. Birkeland: Contribution to the recent history of Norway, 1858, p. 14–30 and 33–46
• D. S. Thrap (ex. ): From Bishop Bugges Haand. Letter and Speeches, 1886
• d.s.: Contribution to the history of the Norwegian Church in the nineteenth century. Biographical Depictions, bd. 2, 1889, p. 1–211
• A. Fridrichsen: "P. O. Bugge as the exeg", in Norwegian theological journal, rk. 3, bd. 1, p. 115–140
• T. Høverstad: Norwegian skulesoga, bd. 1, 1918, p. 106–110, 234–249, 264 and 270
•  H. Koht: biography in NBL1, bd. 2, 1925