ABSTRACT
There were many similarities between the dual monarchies of Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland other than their shared desire to dominate the Baltic region and thereby play an important role in European politics. Constitutionally, both were in the process of changing from elective into absolutist monarchies, as successive monarchs strove to liberate themselves from domination by the nobility. While the transition from oligarchy towards an increasingly powerful monarchic rule moved with speed and direction determined by the skills, attitudes, and good luck of princes and politicians, the bedrock of society remained the same, as no authority claimed or power wielded was legitimate without the divine sanction. The power to confer this status had changed hands at the Reformation, when those princes who broke with Rome had to look to their own clergy to supply Scriptural sanction for their powers. The Lutheran clergy found itself in a position that was both more and less secure than that of their Catholic predecessors: less secure because they could no longer appeal to a higher authority outside the realm in which they resided; but more secure because they alone now held the ideological keys to the political power exercised by their rulers and, though their obedient servants like all other subjects, were ultimately only answerable to God for the maintenance of His Word against all His enemies.
