65 Summary »... unity inreligion and thecorrect religious serviceformthestrongest basis for an ... enduring rule ...» BY PROFESSOR INGUNMONTGOMERY In the Formof Government of July 29, 1634 we can read the following in the first paragraph: »Whereas unity in religion and thecorrect religious serviceform the strongest basis for a lawful, harmonius, and enduring rule, so shall hereafter, the King as well as all public officials and subjects here in the Kingdom, above all, accept the pure and clear word of God ...». This paragraph can be taken as a point of departure whenoneattemptstounderstandSweden’s development into a state governed by law. The Reformation in Sweden had its own peculiar pattern. Dynastic change and religious reformwere closely connected, and both came to be taken as the pretext for the national self-consciousness. The Danish King Christian had, together with the Archbishop Gustav Trolle, subjugated the country with violence and treachery. The verdicts of heresy and the violent settlement of accounts with the opposition party at the so-called StockholmBlood Bath also compromised the Catholic Church. Gustav Wasa’s war of liberation thus also became a struggle against the Church. The Church’s possession of large estates and the independent position that resulted frombeing subordinate to the Pope in Rome, made it unwieldy in a crisis. It was presumably for practical and administrative reasons that the King listened to the advocates of the Reformation. It does not appear that he wished to modify the content of the teachings. It was first with the coronation of Gustav Wasa in 1528 that the new reformed church received a wordly head who obligated himself to its support. With the election of the Archbishop in 1531, the structure of the church as that of the evangelical bishops was established. Under Gustav Wasa’s three sons who succeeded one another on the throne, the content of what constituted the correct evangelical faith crystallized. Charles, the youngest of the brothers, emphasized the inheritance fromGustav 5
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