Religion.—The established religion of D. is Lutheran, to which the king must belong; but complete ,toleration is enjoyed in every part of the kingdom. The reformation was Introduced in 1536, when Christian III. caused all the Romish bishops to be-seized in one day, formally proclaimed their deposition from their sees, and incorporated the property of the church with that of the crown. D. is divided into 7 dioceses, or stifter (besides those in the West Indian colonies)—viz., Seeland, Laaland, Frinen, Ribe, Aarhus, Viborg, Aalborg, besides Skalholt in Iceland; 1907 parishes, with numerous affiliated churches, 62 rectors, and 1677 parish ministers. The nomination of the bish ops is vested iu the king; they have no political character; but in other respects exer cise nearly the same privileges within their dioceses as their English brethren of the same rank.
supreme court of justice, presided over by four assistant judges, chosen by the landsthing, in addition to the four ordinary high judges, holds its sittings at Copenhagen, and there are lower courts in the town. All civil cases are first carried before a court of conciliation, composed of persons from the vicinity, selected on account of their position and character. Their decisions are registered, and have legal force where both parties have engaged to abide by the judgment; otherwise, the case is car ried to the higher courts. Appeals are allowed from all the lower courts to the supreme court.
Constitution and succession to the crown was not necessarily hereditary till 1660, when the people and the clergy, impelled by hatred towards the nobles, in whose hands the supreme power of the state rested de facto, constituted them selves into a national assembly, which invested the sovereign (Frederick III.) for him self and his heirs with absolute power, and declared the succession to the throne hered itary. From that time, the crown exercised the dominium absolutum, unchecked by any constitutional restraint, till 1831. when Frederick VI., yielding to the pressure of the times, granted a constitution to his people, and established an assembly of notables for•the islands and Jutland; the duchies being governed by their own constitutional forms. The nation was at first perfectly satisfied with the amount of power conceded by the king, but after a time the anomalous character of the authority vested in the assembly created great political agitation and discontent. This feeling continued to increase under the reign of Frederick's successor, Christian VIII.; and on the death of the latter, his son and successor, Frederick VII., saw himself obliged to depart from the conservative policy of his father, and to grant, in 1849, the constitutional form of gov ernment which D. now enjoys, and which is based upon the most liberal principles. The national assembly or rigsdag consists of the folkething and landsthing, and is invested with very extensive powers: it meets annually for two months, and its mem bers receive a fixed allowance during their sittings. The landsthing is composed of 66 members, of whom 12 are chosen for life by the king, while the remainder are elected for a term of eight years by certain municipal and rural electoral bodies, who represent the large tax-payers of the kingdom. A fixed age, good reputation, and a certain moderate independent income are the only qualifications required for election to this branch of the rigsdag. The members of the Folkething, whose number (which is now 102) varies with the population, are elected for three years by universal suffrage, and, except that no fixed income is required in their case, they must have the same qualifications as candidates for the upper chamber. The rigsdag must meet every year, and must, in the course of their session, consider and dispose of the annual accounts that the finance ministeris bound to submit to their scrutiny.
The king's person is inviolable; the ministry is responsible, and with the king as president, constitutes the executive royal privy council. The seven members of this body, who preside over seven distinct ministerial departments, arc individually and collectively responsible to the rigsdag for their acts, and cannot under any circumstances be condemned or pardoned by the sovereign without the concurrence of that body. D. is divided for administrative purposes into 20 amter, or jurisdictions—viz:, 10 for the islands, and 10 for Jutland, each presided over by a chief, or " amtmand," who in Copenhagen alone bears the title of "over-president." Primogeniture is still in force, but all other limitations to succession, and all remains of the ancient forms of land tenure by soceage or fixed terms of labor, are being entirely abrogated. The titles of nobility in D. are limited to counts (" greyer") and barons.
History. —The Kymri were the earliest known inhabitants of Scandinavia, and made themselves formidable to the Romans 100 years n.e. To them succeeded the Goths, who, under their mythical leader, Odin, established their rule over the Scandi navian lands. Odin's son, Skjold, is reputed to have been the first ruler of D.; but the little that is known of Danish history in those remote ages, seems to indicate that the country was split up into many small territories, whose inhabitants lived by piracy. The people were divided into "Bonder," freemen, and "Trtulle," bondsmen. The former busied themselves with war, and " Vikingetog," or piracy, and the government of the land; while to the latter were left the peaceful pursuits of hunting, fishing, and tilling the soil. The mission of Ansgarius, the apostle of the north, to Southern Jutland in 826, where he baptized Harald Klak, one of the Smaa Kongar, or little kings of D., was the means of first opening the Danish territories to the knowledge of the more civilized nations. The country was soon torn by civil dissensions between the adherents of the ancient and modern faith. Gorm the Old, the first authentic kingof D., the bitter enemy of Christianity, died in 935, after having subjugated the several territories to his sway; and although his death gave fresh vigor to the diffusion of the new faith, paganism kept its ground for 200 years longer, and numbered among its adherents many of those half mythical heroes whose deeds arc celebrated in the Eddas and the Kumpeviser of the middle ages. The success that attended the piratical incursions of the Northmen, drew them from their own homes; and while Germ's descendants, Svend and Knud, were reigning in England, D. was left a prey to anarchy. On the extinction of Knud's dynasty in 1042, his sister's son, Svend Estridsen, ascended the throne. Internal dissen sions and external wars weakened the country, and the introduction of a feudal system raised up a powerful nobility, and ground down the once free people to a condition of oppressed serfage. Valdemar I., by the help of his great minister, Axel Hvide, known in history as bishop Absalon, subjugated the Wends of Hagen and Pomerania, and forced them, in 1168, to renounce the faith of their god, Svantevit, and accept Chris tianity. During the time of Knud VI., and in the early part of the reign of Valdemar
II.—sons of Valdemar I.—the conquests of D. extended so far into German and Wendic lands, that the Baltic was little more than an inland Danish sea. The jealousy of the German princes and the treachery of his vassals combined to rob Valdemar II. of these brilliant family conquests. His death in 1241 was followed by a century of anarchy, and inglorious decadence of the authority of the crown, during which the kingdom was brought to the brink of annihilation under the vicious rule of his sons and grandsons. Under his great-grandson, Valdemar III., the last of the Estridsen line, D. made a quick but transient recovery of the conquests of the older Valdemars, and the national laws were collected into a well-digested comprehensive code. From his death in 1375 till 1412, his daughter, the great Margaret, first as regent for her only and early lost son, Olaf, and later as sole monarch, ruled, not only D., but in course of time also Sweden and Norway, with such consummate tact, and with so light yet firm a hand, that for once in the course of their history, the three rival Scandinavian kingdoms were content to act in harmony. Margaret's successor, Erik, the son of her niece, for whose sake she had striven to give permanence, by the act known as the union of Calmar, to the amal gamation of the three sovereignties into one, undid her glorious work with fatal rapidity, and, after an inglorious war of 25 years. with his vassals, the counts-dukes of Slesvig-Holstein, lie lost the allegiance and the crowns of his triple kingdom, and ended his disastrous existence in misery and obscurity. After the short reign of his nephew, Christopher of Bavaria, the Danes, on the death of the latter in 1448, again exerted their long-used ancient right of election to the throne, and chose for their king Christian of Oldenburg, a descendant of the old royal family through his maternal ancestress, Rik issa, the great-granddaughter of Valdemar II. Christian I., the father of the Oldenburg line, which continued unbroken till the death of the last king of D., Frederick VII., in 1863, laid the foundation of the Slesvig-Holstein troubles, which, after maturing for centuries, have ended in our own day in dismembering the Danish monarchy. Christian bought the empty title of count-duke of Slesvig and 'Holstein in 1460, by promising for his successors that they should forever leave the two provinces united, a pledge he had no right to impose, and they no power to keep; and by his failure to pay his daughter's dowry to tier husband, James III. of Scotland, he lost for Norway her ancient provinces of the Shetlands and Orkneys, which had been given in pawn to the Scottish king. His unprofitable reign was followed by half a century of international struggles in Scandi navia. The insane tyranny of the otherwise able and enlightened Christian II., by exas perating the Danish nobles, and lashing the national anger of the Swedes to fury, cost him his throne, and gave him a lifelong cruel imprisonment among his subjects in D., who chose his uncle Frederick I. to be their king, while Sweden was forever separated from D., and raised under the Vasas (see GUSTAVUS I.) to be a powerful state. Christian III., in whose reign the reformation was established, united the Slesvig-Holstein duchies in perpetuity to the crown in 1533. His partition of the greater part of these provinces among his brothers became a source of much mischief to D., which did not end till 1773. when the alienated territory was recovered by the cession of Oldenburg and Delmen horst to the grand-duke of Russia, the representative of the Holstein-Gottorp family. Frederick II., who increased the embarrassments connected with the crown-appan ages, by making additional partitions in favor of his brother (the founder of the Holstein Sonderburg family), was succeeded by Christian IV., 1588, who was the ablest of all the Danish rulers. His liberal and wise policy was, however, 'cramped in every direction by the arrogant nobles, to whose treasonable supineness D. owes the reverses by which she lost all the possessions she had hitherto retained in Sweden. The national disgraces and abasement which followed, led, in 1660, under Christian's son, Frederick III., to the rising of the people against the nobles, and their surrender into the hands of the king of the supreme power. For the next hundred years, the peasantry were kept in serfage, and the middle classes depressed; while the power of the crown rested in the hands of a Germanized nobility, who despised the language and usages of their country, and exerted the most baneful influence on the true national life. Many improvements were, however, effected in the mode of administering the laws, and the Danish kings, although autocrats, exercised a mild rule. The abolition of serfage was begun by Chris tian VII. in 1767, but not finally completed till twenty years later; it was extended to the duchies in 1804. The miseries of the reign of Christian's son, Frederick VI., due to the relations maintained 'by with Napoleon; brou,ght the country to the verge of ruin. At war with Sweden, England, Russia, and Prussia, and with the finances in a depressed condition, the kingdom was threatened with bankruptcy; and although it had speedily rallied from the injuries and losses inflicted by the battle of Copenhagen, under Nelson. in 1801, the fresh rupture with the allies, which ended in the compulsory surrender to the English of the entire fleet, after the destructive bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 1807, completely paralyzed the nation. By the congress of Vienna, D. was coin. pelled to cede Norway to Sweden. The discontent that had long been brooding in the duchies, degenerated after the stirring year of 1830 into mutual animosity between the Danish and German population, which was not allayed by the schemes devised by the court to meet the difficulties of the case. The anticipated failure of heirs to the throne complicated the questions at issue; and the Holstein party, being encouraged by the diet at Frankfort, and perhaps still more by Prussia, came to an open rupture with D. in 1848, hastened, no doubt, by the reaction produced all over the continent by the French revolution, and thus, on the accession of Frederick VII., half his subjects were in open rebellion against him. After alternate hostilities and armistices, the Slesvig-Holstein war was virtually concluded in 1849, by the victory of the Danes over Slesvig-Holstein ers at Idsted, followed by the conclusion of peace between D. and Prussia. The liberal constitution granted by the king fully satisfied his subjects in D. proper, but disaffection still smoldered in the duchies.