Cross and Scepter (39 page)

Late-medieval constitutional thought was far from democratic, and in most countries the aristocratic constitutions were over-thrown by a strong monarchy in the following period. Nevertheless, there is a connection between the principles articulated in the later Middle Ages and the new wave of democratic constitutionalism that coincided with the American and the French revolutions of the late eighteenth century. Intellectually, the ideas of the medieval theorist survived and were developed further by thinkers like Locke and Montesquieu, and in some countries, notably England, even the medieval constitution survived. Within Scandinavia, Sweden forms a parallel to England. Although the Sture regime was replaced by a strong monarchy, the Swedish king never became formally absolute, and the late-medieval diet survived until 1866, when it was replaced by a modern parliament with two chambers.

The Reformation and Its Consequences, 1523–1537

The Swedish rebellion under Gustaf Vasa was followed by the deposition of Christian II in Denmark and Norway in 1523. The next year the new king, Frederik I, issued separate election charters for Denmark and Norway, in which he gave the usual promises about ruling justly and respecting the privileges of the Church and the aristocracy. Danish attempts to rule the whole of Scandinavia were a thing of the past, and the traditional government of
a king ruling in cooperation with the aristocracy had replaced Christian II's attempts at royal absolutism. Actually, however, Frederik's accession to the throne introduced one of the most dramatic periods in Scandinavian history, which ended in the fall of both the Catholic Church and the independent kingdom of Norway.

After Luther's break with the pope in 1520, the Reformation movement had spread quickly over Germany and soon reached Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark, and, a little later, Sweden. The movement was particularly strong in the towns, but segments of the nobility were influenced. King Frederik was friendly to the movement and protected the Protestant preachers. Already in 1523, he broke the Danish Church's connection with the pope, but he did not interfere with Catholic doctrine and religious practice and left the bishops in possession of their estates. After Frederik's death in 1533, the bishops were reluctant to elect his eldest son Christian to succeed him, because he was, even more than his father, a convinced Protestant. This resulted in a postponement of the election to the next year, but before it could take place, a civil war broke out, usually referred to as the “Count's War,” after the commander of the rebel forces, Count Christoffer of Oldenburg, a distant relative of the royal house. The rebels did not represent a Catholic reaction, but on the contrary were staunchly Protestant, with Copenhagen and Malmö as their main strongholds and Lübeck, led by a radical weaver who had replaced the merchant aristocracy as the town's ruler, as their main ally. Their aim was to reinstate the captive Christian II—who had also converted to Protestantism—as king. The rebellion thus had elements of a social revolution. In the beginning, however, the rebels, thanks to their mercenary army, managed to gain control of Scania and the islands, where they also, at least for a time, received the support of the nobility. In this situation, the bishops reluctantly rallied behind Christian and elected him king in the
summer of 1534. Christian gained the upper hand already late in 1534 and won the final victory when Copenhagen surrendered on July 29, 1536. A few days later, on August 12, he arrested the bishops, and on October 30 the Reformation was officially declared. Lutheran superintendents replaced the Catholic bishops, the bishops' estates were taken over by the king, and the monasteries were dissolved. In 1537, a new ecclesiastical constitution was issued after close consultation with Luther and the theologians around him.

By that time, the Reformation had already been introduced in Sweden. This happened at the diet of Västerås in 1527. Sweden also had a Reformation movement, although it was weaker than the movement in Denmark. The king's attitude was also very different. Whereas Christian III was a convinced Lutheran, Gustaf Vasa seems to have had little interest in theology and to have embraced the Reformation for political and financial reasons. The result of the diet was to give the king control of the Church, but very little was said about cult and doctrine. The Swedish Church continued to have bishops and even an archbishop, and the Catholic bishops continued in their offices, but were normally succeeded by men with Protestant sympathies. The Swedish Reformation was therefore gradual; there were even attempts to reintroduce Catholicism as late as in the second half of the sixteenth century. Gustaf Vasa's son Johan III (1568–1592) married a Polish princess and their son, Sigismund, King of Poland and for a short time also of Sweden (1592–1598), was a Catholic.

In contrast to the two other countries, there was little trace of Protestant influence in Norway before 1536. In the following year, by Danish decree, Protestantism was instated, and Christian III fulfilled the promise in his election charter that Norway should be a part of Denmark forever, like Jutland, Funen, and the other Danish landscapes. Norway was incorporated into the Danish realm and ceased to be an independent kingdom.

The twelve years between 1524 and 1536 are full of drama and have been much discussed. So has also the interpretation of the paragraph in Christian's election charter, as well as its legal status. Admittedly, the status of Norway was not identical to that of the Danish landscapes. The king of Denmark always referred to himself as king of Norway and Denmark; there was a clear distinction between the two territories, and even during the most centralizing phase of the period of absolutism, the revision of the laws resulted in a separate law for Norway (1687). Nevertheless, a drastic change from equality or near equality to subjection took place in 1536–37, and its course was largely a consequence of the Reformation.

The Norwegian council of the realm was dominated by the bishops and chaired by the archbishop. The archbishop rebelled against Frederik in 1531–32 and actively sought an alternative to Christian III as his successor, although he accepted him in the end. By then, however, it was too late. Drastic administrative changes would in any case be necessary to introduce the Reformation in Norway, and there was not much point in upholding the council of the realm if there were no bishops. The members of the Norwegian high nobility were too few to uphold the council as an effective institution, or, from the king's point of view, to necessitate such a concession on his part. Nor could they expect much solidarity from their equals in Denmark who now got free access to
len
in Norway. It must also be added that the fall of the Catholic Church was probably a greater blow against national interests in Norway than the fall of the council of the realm; the Church was the most important path to a career for the lower nobility in Norway, either as bishops or canons, or as the numerous laymen in the bishops' service. From the point of view of the Danish aristocracy, the elimination of Norway as a separate kingdom also had the advantage that the king could not use the Norwegian
tradition of hereditary kingship to weaken the Danish council's right to elect his successor.

What accounts for the different fates of Norway and Sweden? The most obvious explanation is the difference in wealth and population between the two countries. In the early sixteenth century, the population in all countries was still smaller than it had been before the Black Death, but their relative size was probably similar. However, as we have seen, the economic decline hit the upper classes considerably harder in Norway than in the other countries. Moreover, it seems that Norway lost its independence at the time when its economic weakness relative to the neighboring countries was greatest. While Denmark and Sweden were on their way to recovering from the crisis by about 1450, it would last nearly a hundred years longer in Norway. In the following period, however, from around 1550, Norway experienced rapid growth, demographically, agriculturally, and economically, through the export of new commodities like timber and metals. Thus, Norway was more vulnerable in the period between 1450 and 1550 than ever before or after.

Not only did Norway succumb to Denmark, but the process also took place easily and without much violence. Although there had been rebellions against Danish rule during the union period, among the peasants as well as the aristocracy, they were significantly rarer and less serious than in Sweden. During the final stage, in 1536–37, the Danes already controlled the most important castles in the southern part of the country—Bohus, Akershus and Bergenhus—and a force of three hundred men was sufficient to conquer the rest without much fighting. This points to a strategic explanation, much the same as explains the ease with which the country was unified. During the later Middle Ages, Denmark had once again become the leading sea power in Scandinavia and could therefore easily control Norway from the coast. Once
the Danes had taken the few important castles, which were all in reach of the coast, they had full control. When attempting to conquer Sweden, they usually managed to gain bridgeheads along the coast, notably Stockholm and Kalmar, but this was insufficient for control of the whole country. Conquering the inland regions was considerably more difficult and was only achieved for brief periods of time and with the aid of Swedish allies. Thus, we have come back full circle: the same factor that explains the rise of the kingdom of Norway also serves to explain its decline. A Danish conquest of Norway in the Viking Age would have meant a piecemeal struggle against various power-holders along the coast, but the Norwegian dynasty had eliminated these long before the sixteenth century, so that the Danish king could now take over the country as their successor. Politically, the Danish king had become the legitimate successor to the strong Norwegian monarchy, and the status of the legitimate dynasty was considerably stronger in Norway than in Sweden. In addition, the Norwegian elite had become even more dependent on the king's service in the later Middle Ages than before, because they had lost other incomes with the economic crisis.

Danish economic and military superiority over Norway would probably have led to Norway's subordination even without the Reformation, but the process would have been more gradual and might not have been carried so far. It might even have been halted by Norway's economic revival in the following period. Thus, while long-term economic and political factors explain Norway's increasing dependence on Denmark, the form this dependence took can only be explained by the Reformation.

The Reformation changed the relationship between the three kingdoms by abolishing what remained of Norwegian independence. It also had far-reaching consequences for internal conditions in all three countries. There were no longer two independent organizations within each country; the king had taken full
control of the Church and gained an enormous profit from confiscated church lands. Of equal importance was his ideological gain in having the priests now as loyal servants of the monarchy, preaching obedience to the lawful ruler and even—particularly in Sweden—mobilizing the population for a new kind of crusade, the defense of the true faith against the “Papists” during the Thirty Years War. Admittedly, the Church had served somewhat similar purposes in the past, but the king's control over it had never been so direct. The second winner from the suppression of the Church was the secular aristocracy, which got hold of a large part of the former ecclesiastical lands and increased its position in the king's administration, centrally as well as locally. In Denmark, the period between 1536 and 1660 (the introduction of absolutism) is usually referred to as “Adelsvælden” (the Dominance of the Nobles). It has been debated who benefited more, the king or the aristocracy, but whatever the answer, there can be hardly any doubt that it was a considerable step forward in state formation. The conditions for holding
len
became stricter, and the courts of law and the central administration more centralized and efficient. The king had to share his power with the council of the realm, which, in the case of seventeenth-century Denmark-Norway led to considerable rivalry, as well as other problems, until a series of disasters resulted in the introduction of absolutism in 1660. By contrast, Sweden had the advantage of good cooperation between the two powers, which in part explains her military successes during the Thirty Years War and the following period.

CONCLUSION