While these transactions were going on in England, elsewhere in Europe events were taking place

which presaged a storm. In 1521, Martin Luther had published De votis monasticis (On the monastic
vows),[12] a treatise which declared that the monastic life had no scriptural basis, was pointless and
also actively immoral in that it was not compatible with the true spirit of Christianity. Luther also
declared that monastic vows were meaningless and that no one should feel bound by them. Luther,
a one-time Augustinian friar, found some comfort when these views had a dramatic effect: a special
meeting of the German province of his order held the same year accepted them and voted that
henceforth every member of the regular clergy should be free to renounce their vows, resign their
offices and marry. At Luther's home monastery in Wittenberg all the friars, save one, did so.
News of these events did not take long to spread among Protestant-minded rulers across Europe,
and some, particularly in Scandinavia, moved very quickly. In the Riksdag of Västerås in 1527,
initiating the Reformation in Sweden, King Gustavus Vasa secured an edict of the Diet allowing him
to confiscate any monastic lands he deemed necessary to increase royal revenues, and to allow the
return of donated properties to the descendants of those who had donated them, should they wish to
retract them. By the following Reduction of Gustav I of Sweden, Gustav gained large estates, as well
as loyal supporters among the nobility who chose to use the permission to retract donations done by
their families to the convents. The Swedish monasteries and convents were simultaneously deprived
of their livelihoods. They were banned from accepting new novices, as well as forbidden to prevent
their existing members from leaving if they wished to do so. However, the former monks and nuns
were allowed to reside in the convent buildings for life on state allowance, and many of them
consequently survived the Reformation for decades. The last of them was Vreta Abbey, where the
last nuns died in 1582, and Vadstena Abbey, from which the last nuns emigrated in 1595, about half
a century after the introduction of reformation.[13]