HELGESEN, POVL', Danish humanist, was born at Var berg in Halland about 148o, of a Danish father and a Swedish mother. Helgesen was educated first at the Carmelite monastery of his native place and afterwards at another monastery at Elsi nore, where he devoted himself to humanistic studies and adopted Erasmus as his model. As lector at the university of Copen hagen, gathered round him a band of young enthusiasts, the future leaders of the Danish Reformation. But Helgesen desired an orderly, methodical, rational reformation, and denounced Luther, whose ablest opponent in Denmark he became, as a hot-headed revolutionist. Helgesen's denunciation of Christian II. made it necessary for him to leave the capital. Under Frederick I. (1523-1533) he returned to Copenhagen and resumed his chair at the university, becoming soon afterwards provincial of the Car melite Order for Scandinavia. Helgesen was attacked as bitterly by the Catholics as by the Protestants. In October 1534, how ever, Helgesen issued an eirenicon in which he attempted to reconcile the two contending confessions. After that every trace of him is lost. Helgesen was indisputably the greatest master of style of his age in Denmark. His historical works, Danmark's Kongers Historie and Skibby Kroniken, have some importance.
See Ludwig Schmitt, Der Karmeliter Paulus Heliii (Freiburg, ; Danmarks Riges Historie (Copenhagen, 1897-1905), vol. iii.