ABSTRACT
Lutheranism had been most successful in northern Germany and Scandinavia because it had suited the rulers of these areas to tolerate or sponsor it for political and economic reasons. Calvinism, by contrast, spread itself more widely and thinly across Europe, particularly in the regions outside the Lutheran-dominated Baltic coast and the purely Catholic Italian and Iberian Peninsulas. It might take root in states which provided government support, or become a vigorous opposition to the existing political and religious establishment.
