kingship and law 462 than in the Danish and Swedish laws, and the Norwegian naval levy was to a greater extent under the king’s direct jurisdiction. The requirement of the freemen to possess arms (Sw. folkvapen) was more stringent in Norway and Sweden than in Denmark. In both Denmark and Sweden there were restrictions on the king’s right to demand participation in wars of aggression after the navy lost its military significance, whereas in Norway—where the naval levy did not lose its military significance to the same degree—there was instead an increase over time in the royal right to use the naval levy. In none of the three Scandinavian kingdoms was the king able to force through legislation giving him a total monopoly on the possession of armed forces. The tendency in the Scandinavian countries was instead, as elsewhere in Europe, that the king, rather than completely forbidding other actors to have armed forces at their disposal, strove to regulate and limit the possession, and above all the use, of military forces and to demand that they should be made available to the king when needed. Opposition to a centralization of military resources in the person of the king is visible only in the Danish material. The hypothesis is presented that the increasing royal monopoly on the possession, and especially the use, of military resources ensured the king’s power while simultaneously pacifying society when individual magnates no longer had the same potential to use military force in conflicts with each other. Previous research has neglected the fact that the development towards a royal monopoly on force entailed a great military centralization which, at least in theory, involved a greater coordination of armed forces. this chapter is devoted to a study of power relations between the king and the regional legal assembly and how it changed over time in the Scandinavian countries, by examining the extent to which the king was obliged to follow the law, what mutual obligations existed between the king and the people, the degree of individual right to pursue feuds and exact vengeance, the scope of the royal privileges (jura regalia), and the number of crimes classed as lèse-majesté. A theoretical point of departure is the dichotomy between regimen politicum, royal power subject to the law, and regimen regale, royal power above the law. Earlier research has not used the law material to study differences in the development of power relations between the king and the regional legal asChapter 5: The King and the Regional Legal Assembly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=