kirsi salonen siastical benefices to their successors in such a good economic state (at least) as it was when they had received it. There is very little concrete information about priests’ inheritance rights in medieval Finland, as there are only a very few documents that can shed light on the hereditary regulations in the diocese of Turku. Apart from the statutes of the diocese of Turku from circa 1350, forbidding priests to use income from their parishes to educate their sons,19 we have only one surviving document that has any relevance for the question. It is a regulation from the year 1491 stating that priests were expected to keep their vicarages in good shape, and that they should leave their benefices to their successors undiminished.20 In addition to these two statutes, the copybook of Bishop Magnus Särkilahti (Stjernkors) of Turku, dated roughly to the 1480s, includes copies of four testament formularies.21 Finnish historians studying wills and ecclesiastical history have rightly pointed out that the existence of these formularies in the episcopal copybook could indicate that hereditary issues might have been at stake at that time.22 After presentation of this background, let us now take a look at a hitherto unknown document containing interesting relevant information about the practice of priestly inheritance in the diocese of Turku. It is a document surviving as a copy in the copybook series of incoming papal petitions, the Registra Supplicationumseries in the collection of the Vatican Apostolic Archives.23 It bears the date of approval of 21 August 1488 19 Edited inFinlands Medeltidsurkunder (henceforthFMU) I, document no. 624 (1352). See also Pirinen 1952, pp. 228–231. 20 The document is edited inFMUV, document no. 4395 (1491). See also Pirinen 1952, p. 231. 21 The document is edited in FMUVI, document no. 4894 (s.d.). About the copybook of Magnus Särkilahti, see Kallio 2017. 22 Pirinen 1952, p. 232; Kallio-Hirvonen 2021, pp. 142–150, about the testament formularies in particular pp. 145–146. 23 Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (henceforthAAV), Registra Supplicationum(henceforth Reg. Suppl.) 889, fol. 217r. 173 Licentia Testandi for the Bishop and Chapter of Turku
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