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THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
the future of his new town, dreaming of the creation of a Londinum 
Gothorum corresponding to the capital of his English kingdom. 
During the Roman Catholic era Lund grew to be a magnificent place, 
and the chronicles measure its greatness by the fact that it boasted 
twenty-two churches and seven monasteries and nunneries, in addition 
to the cathedral. 
Its strength, however, was more or less borrowed from Rome, and 
the Reformation brought its downfall. The neighboring town, 
Malmo, was the main seat of the new creed in Denmark, and the van¬ 
dalism which everywhere accompanied the democratization of the 
Church, destroyed a number of architectural treasures in Lund in 
order to secure material for new buildings at Malmo. 
Lund declined, and when the province of Skane became part of 
Sweden, the town was at its lowest ebb. At that time, however, Lund 
was given a new task, well in tune with its ancient spiritual traditions, 
when Karl X Gustaf selected it as the seat of his new university, 
opened in 1668, and designed to weld Swedish thought and language 
into the new provinces which until recently had been Danish. It was 
his wish that Lund should become the Conciliatrix, the mediatrix 
between the old times and the new. 
The Cathedral Flanks the Square Known as Lundagard, Which Is at Once a Campus 
and a Park Used by the Townspeople 
