387 SUMMARY: THE BISHOP IN THE DECENTRALIZED PROVINCE COMMUNITY The earliest history of the Church of Sweden has not been sufficiently investigated, especially not from a legal, social and organizing point of view. Largely, the question comprises the confrontation of canon law and Church ideals with the native community and its function at the timeof the christianizing of Sweden and in the earliest organization of the Church. In this investigation I raise the question of how and to which extent the bishop as being the foremost representative of the Church of Sweden has been working as an ordinary member of the Swedish community, and also how he has grown familiar with legal usages and eustoms in Sweden. On one side, the bishop has belonged, as to the ecclesiastical canon law, to the hierarchy and the organization of the Church. On the other side, it was his task to act in a community which was, on several points, eharacterized by quite other eonditions than the Chureh and the canon law. At this time the Swedish community was politically decentralized. The isolated countries, or provinces, whirhin the union of provinces which composed the Kingdomof Sweden, enjoyed a pronounced independence. Politically, socially, juridi-
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