Reformation in Denmark–Norway and Holstein
Bible Translators Theologians During the Reformation, the territories ruled by the Danish-based House of Oldenburg converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism.
After the break-up of the Kalmar Union in 1521/1523, these realms included the kingdoms of Denmark (with the former east Danish provinces in Skåneland) and Norway (with Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and the Duchies of Schleswig (a Danish fief) and Holstein (a German fief), whereby Denmark also extended over today's Gotland (now part of Sweden) and Øsel in Estonia.
Lutheran figures like Hans Tausen, known as the "Luther of Denmark", gained considerable support in the population and from King Christian II, and though his successor Frederick I officially condemned the reformatory ideas, he tolerated their spread.
Nearly a century later would come Denmark-Norways's unsuccessful involvement in the Thirty Years' War under Christian IV, who led the defense of a Protestant coalition against the Catholic League's Counter-Reformation.
Trolle was pro-union (the Kalmar Union) and was allied with Christian II who made a unionist conquest of Sweden in the autumn of 1520.
[4][5][6] Trolle was forced to flee to Denmark in 1521 during the Swedish War of Liberation, during which Gustav Vasa came to power in Sweden with the support of the excommunicated parliament.
The pressure from Rome was a contributing factor for why Gustav Vasa never re-established the relationship with the Vatican, and introduced Protestantism by initiating the Reformation in Sweden.
At the end of the war in 1536, when Christian III entered Copenhagen, Archbishop Torben Bille was arrested along with two other bishops who were in the city at the time.
Christian III demanded that the councilors assure that no future bishop would be allowed to exercise secular power in Denmark.
The former king Christian II, who had lived in exile since 1526, took advantage of the unrest and issued propaganda writings, agitating for himself and the new Lutheran doctrine.
Discontent with the nobility taking over control of the country through the Council made citizens from Malmö and Copenhagen along with farmers, especially from northern Jutland, rally around the exiled Christian II.
In January 1534, the city government of Malmø led by Mayor Jørgen Kock refused to comply with an order from the bishop of Lund to expel the Lutheran preachers.
He had been hired by Kock of Malmø and Wullenwever of Lübeck to conquer Denmark, officially in order to restore Christian II.
The count's main objective was not Holsten but Zealand, where he sailed and he quickly gained control of all Danish territory east of the Great Belt.
After both Funen and Jutland had rebelled and Sweden and Prussia had become involved in the war in Scania, Lübeck withdrew from the struggle in January 1536.
The real reason was that Christian wanted to kill two birds with one stone: carry through a Lutheran Reformation and confiscate the bishops' properties, the profits from which were needed to cover the expenses of the recently ended civil war.
Before Christian III came to power in all Denmark–Norway after the Count's Feud, he had already implemented the Reformation in his realms of Haderslev (Hadersleben) and Tørning (Tørninglen, Törninglehn),[9] two domains in southern Jutland which he had received in 1524.
[13] After a second revision by Bugenhagen, the church order was completed and signed by Christian III on 2 September 1537 as Ordinatio ecclesiastica regnorum Daniae et Norwegiae et ducatuum Slesvicencis, Holtsatiae etc.
Thus, in spite of more fierce procedures followed, especially by bishop Peder Palladius on Zealand, the Reformation progressed as a relatively bloodless affair in Denmark.
[17] In addition to working on the Danish church order, Bugenhagen crowned Christian III and his wife Dorothea with a Lutheran ritual on 12 August 1537, the king's thirty-fourth birthday and the first anniversary of the arrest of the Roman Catholic bishops.
Christian III declared Lutheranism to be the official religion of Norway, sending the Catholic archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, into exile in Lier in the Netherlands, now in Belgium.
The Icelandic Reformation was concluded with the execution of Jón Arason, Catholic bishop of Hólar, and his two sons, in 1550, after which the country adopted Lutheranism.
