kingship and law 464 the form of laws appeared in Denmark with the coronation charter from 1282, in Norway with the law of the realm in 1274, and in Sweden with the election statute from the 1330s. The Danish coronation charters were intended to limit the king’s powers and rights. In the Norwegian law of the realm we see instead kingship by the grace of God, with the focus on the king’s elevated position and the obedience and gratitude that the people, as subjects, were expected to show the king. In Sweden, by contrast, there came a series of specific articles that constitutionally regulated the king’s power and clearly defined what rights and obligations the king and the people had towards each other. An inter-Scandinavian difference that has been observed is that the early Danish provincial laws did not place the king explicitly under the law in the same distinct way as the early Swedish and Norwegian laws. It appears to have been in the course of the thirteenth century that development began to differ between the Scandinavian countries as regards whether the king was over or under the law. In Denmark the king was clearly subjected to the law through the coronation charters of 1282, 1320, and 1326, and in Sweden the principle that the king was subject to the law was consolidated in the law of the realm of 1350. Norway took the opposite course. From having had the laws which stated most explicitly that the king was subject to the law, there was a development which culminated in the de facto position of the king above the law with the law of the realm of 1274. this chapter isdevoted to a study of power relations between king and church and how they changed over time in the Scandinavian kingdoms, by examining the royal influence over the election of bishops, the extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the extent of ecclesiastical exemption from taxation, and the degree of equality between king and (arch)bishop. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction refers to the existence of privilegium fori—immunity from secular law for holders of ecclesiastical offices—and the right of the church to judge laymen in accordance with canon law. It has been noticed that institutional expansion and comprehensive jurisdiction for the church came first in Denmark and that the ecclesiastical influence over the royal succession was greater in Norway than in Denmark or Sweden. Conversely, there has been no general comparison of the relationship between king and church in the different Scandinavian countries on the basis of the law material. Chapter 6: The King and the Church
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