The Catholic church in Scandinavia disappeared within two decades of the beginning of evangelical preaching in these countries. The late medieval church in the Nordic countries was beset with problems similar to those in the rest of Europe. There was growing princely and papal interference in local church affairs, and increased involvement by bishops in predominantly lay, political and economic activities. This was often to the detriment of the church's religious obligation which, after all, should have been primary. Even taking this into consideration, however, the speed of this collapse is remarkable.

To some extent it may well have been this perceived weakness, or failure to resist the Reformation which accounts for the scant interest taken in the Catholic church and its leaders by scholars of Scandinavian Reformation history. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that most Scandinavian Reformation history has been written from a Protestant perspective which retrospectively has viewed the victory of Protestantism as a more or less obvious outcome, confronted as it was with what is seen to have been a morally corrupt and politically inept Catholic church. This is a view which has served to underline that there is little need to take a closer look at the Catholic church and its leadership in sixteenth-century Scandinavia.

This conveniently simplistic view of the church and its leadership on the eve of the Reformation, characterised by decay, lack of piety and proper worship, has not been restricted to Scandinavian Reformation history.