398 In the first place the bishop’s jurisdiction should apply to persons holding Church offices or being in the service of the Church, above all the priests. The question about special spiritual courts, the privilegitim fori, for the priests was a most important part of the claims on freedom for the Church. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there is a large number of examples showing that privilegium fori was not respected in the Swedish provinces. From the end of the thirtheenth century the representation of these facts in the sources is different. The development in respect to the claims on privilegium canonis have probably been analogous. The one who committed an offence against an ecclesiastical person is, by the fact of the deed, placed under the ban, and the crime would belong to a spiritual court. From of old we have observed that it has been easier for the bishop to assert the claims on a spiritual jurisdiction concerning different kinds of criminal-lawcases —adultery, homicide, larceny, perjury etc. — than concerning civil action. Deeds that became crimes only with the canon law, idol-worship, and certain matrimony- and sexual cases, was also easier a matter for the bishop, as they need not first be withdrawn from the ting. This is also applicable to the Church discipline which seems never to have been a matter for the ting. The civil actions were the most disputed ones, as they were so intimately connected with the structure and the functions of the whole province community. This applies, in the first place, to the long conflicts in the history of law, concerning gifts and wills to the Church, and cases concerning the possessions of the Church. Not even a conflict between the priest and his parish church could, without further notice, be part of the bishop’s jurisdiction. The growing of the spiritual jurisdiction takes, like so many other things, a very long time. From comparisons between old laws —the first laws of Västergötland, Dalarna and Gotland —and later Swedish laws, it appears that great changes took place during the end of the thirteenth century. The law sources which can throw light upon this development are the Scandinavian ting- and province laws, where the spiritual cases were, at first, a part of the whole. Ecclesiastical law-regulations were mixed with others. Gradually special Church codes were separated. The final phase is a special Church legislation within the bishop’s potestas jurisdictionis, entirely separated from the provincial law. In opposition to the ting the Church claimed a pure spiritual court. In the laws the bishop and his sokeman appear still at the ting, but
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=