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ii. FRIARS. CHAPTERS. COUNCIL OF SKENINGE. 115
which were gradually superseding the large popular assem
blies. They were often men of high birth. Thus Olaus
II., for fifty years Archbishop of Upsala (12231273), was
nephew of St. Eric; Charles I., Bishop of Linkoping,
was brother of the all-powerful Birger Jarl (ti22o);
just as a son of the JaiTs was later bishop of the
same see. Several of the bishops of Skara were of
noble or knightly rank. It was the interest of this
powerful hierarchy to keep the succession in the hands of
men like themselves, and they thus gladly promoted the
rules of the fourth Lateran Council of Pope Innocent III.
as to the election of bishops by their chapters (canons 23
and 24). Since the canons were for the most part nomi
nated by the bishops there was great likelihood of the tradi
tion represented by the bishops being maintained. The
first secular chapter founded in Sweden was that of Bishop
Benedict of Skara in 1222. Ten years later we find similar
institutions at Linkoping and Abo. Archbishop Jarler
organized a secular chapter at Upsala in the place of the old
"
capitulum monachorum," with the help of Cardinal
William of Sabina. The other three followed suit before
the end of the century.
6
The mention of William of Sabina leads to a reference to
the momentous step which was at last taken by the Council
of Skeninge in 1248 to introduce the most practical and
most difficult piece of the papal programme the celibacy
of the clergy, which was coupled with a requirement that
bishops should procure and study the most recent collec
tion of the Roman canon law. As Cardinal Nicolas had
presided at Linkoping, so another legate, William of
Sabina, presided at this second council. Its statutes were
sufficiently severe, dealing out excommunications and
anathemas on the married clergy and their wives, with a
6
1 owe this information to a letter from Professor Hjalmar
Holmquist. Dissertations on the subject have also been
written by K. V. Lundquist, Bidrag till kannedomen om de
Svenska domkapiteln , etc., Stockholm, 1897, and H. Lund-
strom in Skisser och Kritiker, 1903 (See below, 171, n. 19).
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