The Pastor of Vejlbye

By Steen Steensen Blicher

A Crime Story
(From Herredsfoged Erik Sørensen´s diary, with two appendices by the Pastor of Aalsøe.)

A. Erik Sørensen´s Diary.
In the name of Jesus! So now, by the gracious will of God, and on the initiative of my dear lord and master, I, unworthy that I am, have been promoted district sheriff and judge over these people. May the almighty Judge of all the earth bestow on me His blessing, and grant me wisdom and righteousness with which to administer my difficult office! "Every man´s judgement cometh from the Lord." Proverbs 29:26.

B. The Pastor of Aalsøe´s Account
In the seventeenth year of my office an event occurred in this neighbourhood which struck everyone with terror and dismay and reflected shame and disgrace upon our cloth; for the Pastor of Vejlbye, the erudite Søren Qvist, killed his servant in a fit of rage and thereafter buried him at night in his garden. After the preliminary investigation in court he was convicted of having committed this cruel deed, both on the strength of the testimony of many witnesses and of his own confession, and was thereupon sentenced to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out here on Aalsøe Common in the presence of many thousand spectators.
The condemned man, whose spiritual counsellor I had formerly been, sent for me to visit him in jail, and I can truthfully say that I have never administered the holy sacrament to a more well-prepared, repentant and believing Christian. He himself admitted with deep contrition that he had walked after the flesh and been a child of wrath, for which reason God had abandoned him to sin and hardheartedness, humbled him deeply and made him most wretched, so that he could raised up again by the Lord Jesus. He maintained his composure right to the end, and on the place of execution he delivered to those assembled a speech full of force and unction, which he had composed during his last days in confinement and learnt by heart. Its subject was anger and its terrible consequences, with touching reference to himself and to the cruel misdeed to which anger had induced him. His text was taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Chapter II, verse 6: "The Lord hath despised in the indignation of His anger the priest." When finished, he disrobed, then bandaged his own eyes and knelt down with folded hands. And as I said the words, "Be comforted, dear brother! Today shalt thou be with the Saviour in paradise," the executioner´s sword severed his head from his body.

First published in the journal Northern Lights 1829

Steen Steensen Blicher: The Diary of a Parish Clerk and other Stories, Athlone 1996

Translated by Paula Hostrup-Jessen