papal administration and the rights of clergymen to make a last will pope agreed with the request and granted it with the usual formulary Fiat ut petitur. If one, however, pays attention to what then follows, it becomes evident that the pope did not fully agree with the request but restricted his decision in two ways. Firstly, he did not agree with the request of the Finns to continue as they had done earlier, but rather granted them a normal licentia testandi (licentia testandi in forma), thus excluding the right to bequeath ecclesiastical property.28 Secondly, Pope Innocent did not grant the licence for all clerics in the diocese of Turku, as requested, but only to the bishop of Turku and the current members of the cathedral chapter. With this clause the pope – who had himself signed the petition with his initial “I” (referring to his Christian name Johannes Babtista Cibo) – partly agreed and partly disagreed with the request. Thus, this licentia testandi from 1488 allowed the bishop of Turku, Conradus Bitz, and his cathedral chapter to bequeath to whomever they wished their personal property. Unfortunately, the surviving medieval documents do not shed light on what the other Finnish priests did afterwards – did they continue the old custom without a papal permit, or did they begin to follow the regulations of canon law? The testamentary practices of Finnish priests must have been at stake in the late 15th century, since there exists also another contemporary testimony related to the same issue. This is an entry in the jordbok (‘landbook’; Swedish name for a chartulary related to an estate) of a Finnish nobleman, Ivar Fleming, which informs us that Nicolaus Byskalle, canon of Turku and parish priest in Taivassalo (c. 50 km east of Turku) had been 28 The usual formulary for a licentia testandi, beginning with “Quia presentis vite conditio…” typically states that the person is allowed to bequeath freely the property belonging legally to him, which he has acquired from any lawful source, but not through a church or churches, (…ut de bonis tuis undecumque, non per ecclesiam seu ecclesias, alias tamen licite acquisitis, que ad te pertinere omnimode dinoscuntur, libere testari valeas …). An edition of a document with this formulary can be found, for example, in http://telma.irht.cnrs.fr/chartes/en/apo scripta/notice-acte/20016. 176 Canon Nicolaus Byskalle’s Attempt to Receive a Licentia Testandi
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=