Stockholm During The Early Vasa Era - Reformation

Reformation

The city Vasa took charge over had changed dramatically: As the Bloodbath had killed many of the city's prominent citizens, the king, who had no wish to return to the old order, could appoint city magistrates as he wished and thus controlled the city. He could use the Storkyrkan church as a bastion and force churches and other religious institutions to hand over countless gold and silver objects, an income used to pay his war debt to Lübeck. Additionally, he invited the clergyman Olaus Petri (1493-1552) to become the city secretary of Stockholm. With the two side-by-side, the new ideas of the Protestant Reformation could be quickly implemented, and sermons in the church where held in Swedish starting in 1525 and Latin abolished in 1530. A consequence of this development was a need for separate churches for the numerous German and Finnish-speaking citizens and during the 1530 the still existent German and Finnish parishes were created. The king was, however, not favourably disposed to older chapels and churches in the city, and not only did he order churches and monasteries on the ridges surrounding the city to be demolished — according to himself because the citizens feared they would impair the defence of the city — but he also wanted to see the city church destroyed because of its location near the royal castle — plans however never carried through. The many charitable institutions run by these religious institutions were converged into a single one which most likely couldn't offer the social services of its predecessors. A disaster for the many disabled in the city, further deepened twenty five years later when the hospital was relocated out of sight from the city.