DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS.

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Christian III., of Holstein, could not be enlisted in support of their hostile undertakings against Holland. Hence, they put forward the Count of Oldenburg as a champion of the banished sovereign. Malmö, Copenhagen, and other cities of Denmark, as well as Stralsund, Rostock, and other old cities of the Hansa, at once transformed their former municipal system, or gave to it a democratic cast, and joined hands with Lübeck in behalf of Christian II., whose measures, when he was on the throne, had looked to an increase of the power of the burgher class. The confederate cities established their alliance with England, and gained to their side, a German prince, Duke Albert of Mecklenburg. This combination had to be overcome by Christian III., before he could reign over Denmark. His energetic efforts were successful; and with the defeat of Lübeck, the democratic or revolutionary movement, the radical element, which threatened to identify itself with the Reformation, was subdued. Sweden contributed its help to the attainment of this result. Wullenweber himself was brought to the scaffold. The principle of Luther and his associates, that the cause of religion must be kept separate from schemes of political or social revolution, was practically vindicated. In Münster, this principle had to be maintained against a socialist movement in which the clergy were the leaders. In Lübeck, it was political and commercial ambition that sought to identify with its own aspirations the Protestant reform. Christian III. was a Protestant; his triumph, and that of his allies, did not weaken the Protestant interest, although it subverted a new political fabric which had been set up in connection with it.

The reception of Protestantism in Norway was a consequence of the ecclesiastical revolution in Denmark. Christian III. was at first opposed in that country; but, in 1537, the Archbishop of Drontheim fled, with the treasures of his Cathedral, to the Netherlands, and Nor

way was reduced to the rank of a province of Denmark. In Iceland, Protestantism gained a lodgment through similar agencies, although the Bishop of Skalholt, who had been a student at Wittenberg, was an active and influential teacher of the new doctrine.

As early as 1519, two students who had sat at the feet of Luther in Wittenberg, Olaf and Lawrence Petersen, began to preach the evangelical doctrine in Sweden. The Reformation prevailed, however, through the political revolution which raised Gustavus Vasa to the throne. Christian II. of Denmark was supported in his endeavors to conquer Sweden, by papal edicts, and by the coöperation of the archbishop, Gustavus Trollé. The Swedish prelates were favorable to the Danish interest. Gustavus Vasa, a nobleman who was related to the family of Sturé, which had furnished several administrators or regents to Sweden prior to its conquest by Christian II., undertook to liberate his country from the Danish yoke, and succeeded in his patriotic enterprise. He was favorable to the Lutheran doctrine, and was the more inclined to secure for it the ascendency, as he coveted for his impoverished treasury the vast wealth which had been accumulated by the ecclesiastics. He appointed Lawrence Andersen, a convert to Lutheranism, his chancellor; Olaf Petersen he made a preacher in Stockholm, and Lawrence Petersen a theological professor at Upsala. Plots of the bishops in behalf of Christian II. naturally stimulated the predilection of Gustavus for the Protestant system. A public disputation was held in 1524, by the appointment of the king, at Upsala, in which Olaf Petersen maintained the Lutheran opinions. The pecuniary burdens which Gustavus laid upon the clergy excited disaffection among them. Finally, at the Diet of Westeras, in 1527, the controversy was brought to a crisis. Gustavus threatened to abdicate his throne if his demands were not complied with. The

ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM.

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result was that liberty was granted "for the preachers to proclaim the pure Word of God," a Protestant definition being coupled with this phrase; and the property of the Church, with the authority to regulate ecclesiastical affairs, was delivered into the hand of the King. The churches which embraced the Protestant faith preserved their revenues. The ecclesiastical property fell for the most part to the possession of the nobles. The common people, not instructed in the new doctrine, were generally attached to the old religious system. Gustavus proposed to introduce changes gradually, and to provide for the instruction of the peasantry. He had to put down a dangerous insurrection which was excited in part by priests who were hostile to the religious innovations. By degrees the Swedish nation acquired a firm attachment to the Protestant doctrine and worship. Gustavus was succeeded by Eric XIV., whose partiality to Calvinism made no impression on his subjects. Then followed John III. (1568-1592), who married a Catholic princess of Poland, and who made a prolonged, and what at times seemed likely to prove a successful effort, with the aid of astute Jesuits, to introduce a moderate type of Catholicism, and to reconcile the nation to its adoption. Popular feeling was against him; and after his death the liturgy which he had established and obstinately maintained, was abolished by a Council at Upsala in 1593, and the Augsburg Confession accepted as the creed of the National Church. Sigismund III. of Poland, on account of his Catholicism, was prevented from reigning; and the crown of Sweden was given to Gustavus Vasa's youngest son, Charles IX.. who became king in 1604.

The destruction of Huss by the Council of Constance in 1415, followed in the next year by the execution of Jerome of Prague, sent a thrill of indignation through the

greater portion of the Bohemian people. The Bohemians were converted from heathenism by two Greek monks, Methodius and Cyril; but the power of the Germans, coupled with the influence of the Roman see, secured their adhesion to the Latin Church. In the Middle Ages, however, a struggle took place between the vernacular and the Latin ritual. An application for leave to use the former was denied in a peremptory manner by Gregory VII. Underlying the movement of which Huss was the principal author, was a national and a religious feeling. The favorers of the Hussite reform were of the Slavic population; its opponents were the Germans. The contest of the two parties in the University of Prague led to an academical revolution, a change in the constitution of the University, which gave the preponderance of power in the conduct of its affairs to the natives. Hence, the German students left in a body; and out of this great exodus arose the University of Leipsic. The effect of this academical quarrel was to establish the ascendency of Huss and his followers. While the Council of Constance was in session, Jacobellus, priest of the Church of St. Michael at Prague, began to administer the cup to the laity; and the practice obtained the sanction of Huss himself. The cup had been originally withdrawn from laymen, not with the design to confer a new distinction upon the priestly order, but simply from reverence for the sacramental wine, which was often spilled in the distribution of it through an assembly.2 The custom, once established, became a fixed rule in the Church, and contributed to enhance still further the dignity of the sacerdotal class. Thomas Aquinas aided in confirming the innovation by inculcating the doctrine of concomitance, the doctrine that the whole Christ is in each of the ele

1 For works relating to Bohemian ecclesiastical history, see supra, p. 61; also, Lenfant, Hist. de la Guerre d. Hussites et du Concile de Bâsle; Pesheck, Geschichte d. Gegenreformat. in Böhmen (1850).

2 Gieseler, Dogmengeschichte, p. 542.

THE UTRAQUISTS.

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ments, and is received, therefore, by him who partakes of the bread alone. The Utraquists of Bohemia claimed the cup. They went beyond the position of Huss, and asserted that the reception of both elements is essential to the validity of the sacrament. Henceforward the demand for the chalice became the most distinguishing badge of the Hussites, the subject of a long and terrible contest. The Council at Constance pronounced the Utraquist opponents of the Church doctrine heretics.

Fifty-four Bohemian and Moravian nobles sent from Prague a letter to the Council in which they repelled the accusations of heresy which had been made against their countrymen, and denounced in the strongest language the cruel treatment of Huss. This was before the burning of Jerome, an event that raised the storm of indignation in Bohemia to a greater height. The Prague University declared for the Utraquists, and their doctrine speedily gained the assent of the major part of the nation.

The Council, and Martin V., resolved upon forcible measures for the repression of the Bohemian errorists. Bohemia was a constituent part of the German Empire, and the execution of these measures fell to the lot of Sigismund, its head, who was an object of special hatred in Bohemia on account of his agency in the death of Huss. There soon arose in Bohemia a powerful party which went far beyond the Utraquists in their doctrinal innovations, and in hostility to the Romish Church. The Taborites, as they were styled, gathered in vast multitudes to hear preaching, and to cement their union with one another. Their creed, which took on new phases from time to time, embraced the leading points of what, a century later, was included in Protestantism; although their tenets were not deduced from simple and fundamental principles, nor bound together in a logically coherent system. Unlike the ordinary Utraquists, they re1 Czerwenka, i. 130.