What happens to the property of a person after his or her death? Who has the right to inheritance, and on which conditions? Who decides over inheritance rights? These questions are extremely relevant nowadays, and they were relevant also in the Middle Ages. In today’s Sweden, matters regarding inheritance belong to the sphere of secular legislation, and so they did in medieval Sweden too, but not only.2 Due to the strong influence of the Catholic Church on Swedish society, the regulations of canon law had to be taken into consideration in matters of inheritance – especially if the deceased belonged to the clergy.3 Although details regarding inheritance were included in both civil and ecclesiastical legislation, questions regarding the right to inheritance very often led to disputes and legal processes. As the Church tried to avoid unnecessary quarrelling, it attempted to find out how to clarify the situation. This article concerns one practical solution by which the Catholic Church attempted to regulate matters of inheritance and to prevent inheritance disputes: a type of document in Latin called licentia testandi.4 These were papal licences that allowed members of the clergy to freely bequeath their property to whomever they wished. It was possible for a member of the clergy to be granted such a licence by petitioning the pope. This article is structured so as first to summarize the inheritance regulations of the Catholic Church, and then to concentrate on the situation in the medieval Swedish Realm and the diocese of Turku.5 Subsequently the article introduces two Finnish cases related to the testamentary rights of clergymen: a petition from 1488 made by the local bishop, cathedral papal administration and the rights of clergymen to make a last will 168 2 Regarding recent research about the inheritance rights in medieval Sweden, see for example Korpiola – Lahtinen 2018 and Bjarne Larsson 2019. 3 An old but still relevant presentation of the hereditary regulations regarding medieval Finnish clergy is Pirinen 1952. This article also provides the necessary framework about European practices. 4 Meehan 1913. 5 In the Middle Ages, the diocese of Turku (Sw. Åbo; Lat. Aboensis diocesis) covered most of the territory of present-day Finland. Administratively, the diocese of Turku was part of the Swedish ecclesiastical province of Uppsala, as Finland belonged to the medieval Realm of Sweden. Introduction
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