Jørgen Sadolin

Jørgen Jensen Sadolin (c. 1490 – 29 December 1559 in Odense) was a Danish reformer, the son of Jens Christensen, a curate and subsequently a canon of Viborg Cathedral, and consequently, in all probability, born c. 1499 out of wedlock, as his Catholic opponents frequently took care to remind him.

He himself never used the name Sadolin, which seems to have been invented subsequently by his son Hans, and points to the fact that the family were originally saddle-makers.

We first hear of him on 1 December 1525, when Frederick I permitted him to settle at Viborg to teach young persons of the poorer classes "whatever might be profitable." On this occasion he is described as "magister" and no doubt got his degree abroad, where he seems to have been won for the Reformation.

He sided with Hans Tausen when the latter first began to preach the gospel at Viborg and Tausen, though himself only in priest's orders, shortly before he left the place, ordained Sadolin (1529). Amongst "the free priests" who attended the herredag of Copenhagen in 1530 Sadolin occupied a prominent place. Frederick subsequently transferred him to Funen, where he acted, according to his own expression, as "adjutor in verbo" to the Bishop of Odense.

At the diocesan council on 27 May 1532, during the absence of the bishop, he presented to the assembled priests a translation of Luther's catechism, with Luther's name omitted, preceded earnestly in favour of a better system of education and a more practical application of the Christian life, which occupies a conspicuous place in the literature of the Danish Reformation. In the following year Sadolin published the first Danish translation of the Confession of Augsburg.

On 2 September 1537 he was consecrated by the German reformer, Johann Bugenhagen, who himself only had priest's orders, superintendent, or first evangelical bishop, of Funen.

...
Wikipedia