The Jansonist movement in Sweden, which must not be confused with the Jansenist school or system of doctrine of another time and place in Western Europe, began about 1842 in Helsingland, in the prosperous agricultural province of Norrland.[119] For fifteen years there had been an undercurrent of dissent in the Established Church in that province, led by Jonas Olson, who called his followers "Devotionalists." The agitation was carried on primarily against the general ignorance of the people and the sloth of the clergy, but not until Eric Janson appeared on the scene did any organization of the dissenters take definite form. When he moved from Wermland to Helsingland in 1844 and published the high claim that he represented the second coming of Christ and was sent to restore the purity and glory of Christianity, he was received with great enthusiasm by the restless peasants, and accepted as a divinely appointed leader who should gather the righteous into a new theocratic community.[120] [119] Mikkelsen, _The Bishop Hill Colony_, 19 ff. [120] _Ibid._, 25. "The glory of the work which is to be accomplished by Eric Janson, standing in Christ's stead, shall far exceed that of the work accomplished by Jesus and his Apostles,"--quoted in translation by Mikkelsen from _Cateches, of Eric Janson_ (Söderhamn, 1846), 80. The progress of the dissenting sect was so rapid that the Established Church, backed by the civil authorities, took stern measures to suppress the heresy. It must be confessed that the dissenters continued to show a fanatical spirit, and gave the ecclesiastical officers special cause for alarm. In June, 1844, for example, the Jansonists made an immense bonfire near Tranberg, and burned as useless and dangerous, all the religious books which they could lay their hands on, with the exception of the Bibles, hymn-books, and catechisms. As if one offense of this kind were not enough to shock the pious Lutherans and everywhere stir up the zeal of the Lutheran clergy, a second burning of books followed in October, in which the Bible alone was spared.[121] [121] Mikkelsen, _The Bishop Hill Colony_, 22; Norelius, _Svenskarnes Historia_, 63.