In July, Philip promised to withdraw the Inquisition and grant such tolerance as his conscience would permit ; but the secret archives of Simancas show that he wrote simultaneously to the pope and explained this promise as a mere ruse to gain time. At that point, a series of iconoclastic outrages by the Protestant mob gave a legitimate handle to the Catholics. The duke of Alva was then made vicegerent by Philip II. ; he proclaimed heresy as high treason and inaugurated a reign of terror (1567) ; from that time forth the struggle became political; religious discussion was merged in civil war.
In Scandinavia the revolution was comparatively bloodless. King Christian II. of Denmark imported a Lutheran preacher in 1519, and would have welcomed Luther himself ; he published new codes of law which no pope could approve. But he became un popular, fled from his kingdom in 1523, and was reconciled to the pope in 1529. Meanwhile Frederick I., proclaimed as his succes sor, made peace with the clergy; but Lutheran doctrines still spread; and, Frederick believing himself to have been tricked by the pope in the matter of the archbishopric of Lund, was con firmed in his own growing inclinations towards Protestantism.
His son Christian and his son-in-law Albert of Brandenburg had already declared themselves and in 1527 Frederick met the solemn remonstrances of the bishops with the reply that faith is free, and that each man must follow his own conscience. In 1530, 2I Luth eran preachers, accused of heresy, offered to dispute publicly in Danish against the accusing bishops, who, however, refused to discuss religious questions in the vernacular. Frederick's son Christian III., in 1536, abolished the bishops' authority, seized their possessions, and imported a disciple of Luther, Bugenhagen, as his chief ecclesiastical adviser. Much of the ancient ritual was preserved; and, though there was inevitable friction between the two parties, this systematic and authoritative change of official religion avoided civil war, and brought Denmark higher in com merce and in learning than she had ever stood before. Frederick and Christian made corresponding changes in their subject lands of Norway and Iceland; but here the ancient abuses had been less crying ; the people were less ready for change ; so that the revolu tion thus forced upon them from above caused perhaps as much evil as that which it professed to remedy.
In Sweden also the royal initiative secured a bloodless change. Gustavus Vasa (1523-6o) had made the acquaintance of Lutheran preachers before his accession; and political necessities led him to look towards disendowment of the Church. A public disputation
in the king's palace (1524) went in favour of the reformers; be tween 1526 and 1541 the whole Bible was published in the vernac ular; and men could henceforth judge better for themselves be tween the rival claims. The diet of 1527 decided in favour of Lutheranism and disendowment. The next king showed some preference for Calvinism; and John III. (1568-92) proposed re union with Rome. John's son had adopted Catholicism; therefore the people resolved to secure themselves before his formal acces sion. A synod of lay folk and clergy was held at Uppsala; it de cided to accept the bible as the supreme authority, adopted the Augsburg confession, and restored Luther's catechism as the foundation of all religious teaching.
In Southern Europe, in Italy and Spain, Protestantism enjoyed no princely protection of any importance, nor (perhaps on that account) did it ever spread far enough to gain a hold upon the people. Here, as elsewhere, orthodox reformers constantly fell under suspicion because orthodoxy and radical reform were so difficult to reconcile in practice. The celebrated Counsel for Amendment of the Church, drawn up in 1537 by a papal com mission of cardinals and other distinguished theologians, insisted that dispensations from Church law should not be so frequent, and should never be given for money. Yet one of these same car dinals, Caraffa, when raised to the papacy as Paul IV., condemned the document in 1559 to his Index of Prohibited Books, while three of the other cardinals (Sadoleto, Contarini and Pole) fell under suspicion of unorthodoxy in later years. Many Italian re formers were thus driven over the line; others protested their loyalty to the last.