The popular protest against royal despotism failed in Denmark and the triumph of Christian III in 1536 sealed the fate of Catholicism in that country and in Norway. It was promptly enacted that the Catholic bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority and all their property should be transferred to the crown "for the good of the commonwealth." After discussions with Luther the new religion was definitely organized and declared the state religion in 1537. It might be added that Catholicism died with difficulty in Denmark,—many peasants as well as high churchmen resented the changes, and Helgesen, the foremost Scandinavian scholar and humanist of the time, protested vigorously against the new order. But the crown was growing powerful, and the crown prevailed. The enormous increase of royal revenue, consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church, enabled the king to make Denmark the leading Scandinavian country throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth. In time national patriotism came to be intertwined with Lutheranism.
[Sidenote: Sweden]
In Sweden the success of the new religion was due to the crown quite as much as in Denmark and Norway. Gustavus Vasa had obtained the Swedish throne through the efforts of a nationalist party, but there was still a hostile faction, headed by the chief churchman, the archbishop of Upsala, who favored the maintenance of the union with Denmark. In order to deprive the unionists of their leader, Gustavus begged the pope to remove the rebellious archbishop and to appoint one in sympathy with the nationalist cause. This the pope peremptorily refused to do, and the breach with Rome began. Gustavus succeeded in suppressing the insurrection, and then persevered in introducing Protestantism. The introduction was very gradual, especially among the peasantry, and its eventual success was largely the result of the work of one strong man assisted by a subservient parliament.
At first Gustavus maintained Catholic worship and doctrines, contenting himself with the suppression of the monasteries, the seizure of two- thirds of the church tithes, and the circulation of a popular Swedish translation of the New Testament. In 1527 all ecclesiastical property was transferred to the crown and two Catholic bishops were cruelly put to death. Meanwhile Lutheran teachers were encouraged to take up their residence in Sweden and in 1531 the first Protestant archbishop of Upsala was chosen. Thenceforth, the progress of Lutheranism was more rapid, although a Catholic reaction was threatened several times in the second half of the sixteenth century. The Confession of Augsburg was adopted as the creed of the Swedish Church in 1593, and in 1604 Catholics were deprived of offices and estates and banished from the realm.
CALVINISM
The second general type of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth century was the immediate forerunner of the modern Presbyterian, Congregational, and Reformed Churches and at one time or another considerably affected the theology of the Episcopalians and Baptists and even of Lutherans. Taken as a group, it is usually called Calvinism. Of its rise and spread, some idea may be gained from brief accounts of the lives of two of its great apostles—Calvin and Knox. But first it will be necessary to say a few words concerning an older reformer, Zwingli by name, who prepared the way for Calvin's work in the Swiss cantons.
[Sidenote: Zwingli]
Switzerland comprised in the sixteenth century some thirteen cantons, all of which were technically under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire, but constituted in practice so many independent republics, bound together only by a number of protective treaties. To the town of Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz came Huldreich Zwingli in the year 1516 as a Catholic priest. Slightly younger than Luther, he was well born, had received an excellent university education in Vienna and in Basel, and had now been in holy orders about ten years. He had shown for some time more interest in humanism than in the old-fashioned theology, but hardly any one would have suspected him of heresy, for it was well known that he was a regular pensioner of the pope.
Zwingli's opposition to the Roman Church seems to have been based at first largely on political grounds. He preached eloquently against the practice of hiring out Swiss troops to foreign rulers and abused the Church for its share in this shameless traffic in soldiers. Then he was led on to attack all manner of abuses in ecclesiastical organization, but it was not until he was installed in 1518 as preacher in the great cathedral at Zürich that he clearly denied papal supremacy and proceeded to proclaim the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and morals. He preached against fasting, the veneration of saints, and the celibacy of the clergy. Some of his hearers began to put his teachings into practice: church edifices were profaned, statues demolished, windows smashed, and relics burned. Zwingli himself took a wife.
[Sidenote: Zwinglian Revolt in Switzerland]