Gustav I of Sweden - Reformation

Reformation

After Gustav seized power, the previous Archbishop, Gustav Trolle, who at the time held the post of a sort of chancellor, was exiled from the country. Gustav sent a message to Pope Clement VII requesting the acceptance of a new archbishop selected by Gustav himself: Johannes Magnus.

The Pope sent back his decision demanding that unlawful expulsion of Archbishop Gustav Trolle be rescinded, and that the archbishop be reinstated. Here Sweden's remote geographical location proved to have a marked impact — for the former Archbishop had been allied with the Danish king, or at least was considered to have been so allied in contemporary Stockholm, and to reinstate him would be close to impossible for Gustav.

The king let the Pope know the impossibility of the request, and the possible results if the Pope persisted, but — for better or worse — the Pope did persist, and refused to accept the king's suggestions of archbishops. At the time, incidentally and for different reasons, there were also four other unoccupied bishop's seats, where the king made suggestions to the Pope about candidates, but the Pope only accepted one of the candidates. Because the Pope refused to budge on the issue of Gustav Trolle, the king, influenced by Lutheran scholar Olaus Petri, in 1531 took it upon himself to appoint yet another archbishop, namely the brother of Olaus, Laurentius Petri. With this royal act, the Pope lost any influence over the Swedish Church.

In the 1520s, the Petri brothers led a campaign for the introduction of Lutheranism. The decade saw many events which can be seen as gradual introductions of Protestantism, for instance the marriage of Olaus Petri — a consecrated priest — and several texts published by him, advocating Lutheran dogmas. A translation of the New Testament had also been published in 1526. After the reformation, a full translation was published in 1540–41, called the Gustav Vasa Bible. However, knowledge of Greek and Hebrew among Swedish clergymen was not sufficient for a translation from the original sources; instead the work followed the German translation by Martin Luther in 1534.

Gustav I's breaking with the Catholic Church is virtually simulataneous with Henry VIII doing the same in England; both kings acted following a similar pattern, i.e., a prolonged confrontation with the Pope culminating with the king deciding to take his own decisions independently of Rome.