Cross and Scepter by Sverre Bagge Page B

bureaucratization. The Church, particularly the post-Gregorian Church, introduced the ideas of office and hierarchy. The ecclesiastical organization consisted of officers, from the local priest to the pope at top, who were supposed to act not on their own behalf but on behalf of the organization to which they belonged. Through common rules of behavior and of rights and duties, education, and from the eleventh century, celibacy, the Church tried and at least partly succeeded in introducing an esprit de corps among its servants. In its capacity as an organized hierarchy, the Church could insist on obedience from inferiors to superiors in a way that might serve as a model for secular organization as well. Even as late as the mid-thirteenth century, the Norwegian treatise The King’s Mirror uses the ecclesiastical hierarchy as a model when teaching the king’s men the importance of obedience: if the priest disobeys his bishop or the bishop his superior, they are removed from their offices. Comparing Saul’s sin, which led to his deposition, to David’s sin, for which he was punished but forgiven, the author states that the reason behind their different treatments was not that the act Saul had committed was in itself worse than David’s sin. Saul had been ordered by God to kill all the captive Amalekites, whereas David had committed adultery with the wife of one of his officers and then killed the officer in order to cover up the sin. Like most of his readers, the author of the treatise might have found it difficult to deny that David’s was actually the worse of the two acts, but heinsists that it was nonetheless outweighed by Saul’s sin because Saul had disobeyed a direct order from God.
    The twelfth century has often been viewed as the heroic age of the Scandinavian Churches, even by historians with little sympathy for the Catholic Church. It was the age of great, visionary churchmen with international connections and a program for fundamental reform of the Scandinavian kingdoms in accordance with the ideas of ecclesiastical liberty ( libertas ecclesiae ). Their program was the familiar one promoted by the contemporary papacy all over Europe. They wanted ecclesiastical control of the appointment of clerics and of ecclesiastical property; independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, notably in judgments of clerics; and they wanted to secure the economy of the Church through the introduction of the tithe and by abolishing or reducing restrictions against donations to the Church that had been imposed in order to protect the interests of the donor’s heirs.
    Evidence from two great reforming archbishops of the twelfth century, Eystein in Norway (1161–88) and Eskil in Denmark (1137–77), both members of aristocratic families, gives some idea of the status of the Scandinavian churches at this time and of the attempts taken to bring their two church provinces into conformity with international standards. Eystein’s efforts in this direction are most easily discernible in the collection usually referred to as the Canones Nidrosienses, which most scholars nowadays attribute to him. The collection, probably issued in 1163/64, shows the clear influence of Gratian’s Decretum, which Eystein may have encountered already on his journey to Rome to receive the symbol of his dignity, the pallium. The collection shows a good grasp of its source and an ability to apply its regulations to Norwegian conditions. In Canon 1, Eystein applies the essence of Gratian’s reasoning and his sources to his ordinance about the rights of the founders of churches (the ius patronatus ). In the canons dealing with the most sensitive and controversialissues of the day, ecclesiastical elections and celibacy, Eystein shows an awareness of the limits on what could be achieved under twelfth-century Norwegian conditions. Whereas the contemporary trend was to reserve episcopal elections for the cathedral chapters, Eystein