Sixth Commandment

The Sixth Commandment is the biblical prohibition that Dean Drysell was said to have broken through his sexual conduct. The novel invokes it not as an abstract rule but through the history of a respected parish pastor: his reputation for caring for the poor coexists with rumors of sexual misconduct and an episode in which church discipline gave way to absolution.

The Commandment and Church Authority

The parish’s religious life was organized around the established evangelical-Lutheran faith. The church law of 1686 and the royal Resolution and Order of January 12, 1726 were described as protecting the community from dangerous religious ideas and preserving unity of teaching. Within this framework, the commandments formed part of an institutional system of religious instruction and moral examination.

The Sixth Commandment appears in the account of Dean Drysell as a standard against which conduct could be judged. The narrative does not reproduce the commandment’s wording; instead, it reports that Drysell’s sexual behavior was forbidden by it. Its force therefore rests on the contrast between the rule’s moral authority and the uneven way that authority was applied.

Dean Drysell’s Reputation

Drysell had served for many years as pastor in Ljuder Parish. He was nearly seventy when he suffered a final stroke in the sacristy on a Sunday morning, before the service, and died before anyone could carry him out of the church. He had already suffered two strokes. The parish remembered him as conscientious and fearless, and as good to the poor and suffering; women in particular liked him.

That public esteem stood alongside a less chaste private history. Drysell had lived as a bachelor, but it was widely known that he had not lived chastely. In his younger years, he was said to have used his favor with women in a way forbidden by the Sixth Commandment. The account includes rumors that he had visited a married woman in her bed, serious enough that a bishop reprimanded him.

The reprimand did not settle the matter. When the bishop later visited Ljuder and saw the woman’s beauty, Drysell received absolution for his sexual sin. The detail makes the application of the rule appear entangled with personal judgment: the commandment remained the standard, but the pastor’s offense was met with forgiveness rather than lasting exclusion. The novel leaves the tension visible between the church’s declared moral order and the discretion of its authorities.

Death and the Unburied Body

Drysell’s death, during the performance of his pastoral duties, did not erase the unresolved character of his reputation. A week passed without his burial, and the delay astonished the parish. Because it was the hot season, when maggots quickly infest meat and a corpse can soon begin to stink, eight days above ground seemed an unusually long time.

The account places the remembered pastor’s moral history beside the physical urgency of his unburied body. The Sixth Commandment belongs to a story about public piety, reported transgression, and absolution; the delayed burial adds a stark aftermath to the death of the man who had once administered the parish’s religious life. The rule is thus recalled through a human record that is neither simply condemnation nor uncomplicated respect.