It is easy to understand what a terrible blow this desolating pestilence proved to the Church in Norway. All its best and wisest men were carried away, and the ranks of the clergy were most terribly thinned, and no suitable men left to take the vacant posts. The Nidaros chapter had only one member left, and the pope nominated Olaf, abbot of Nidarholm, to the vacant see. In this instance the pope made use, for the second time at Nidaros, of the power which the papacy claimed of appointing to vacant sees per provisionem, and overriding the rights of the chapters. There were, of course, cases in which this might manifestly be for the benefit of the Church, as, for example, where, from disputes or other causes, there was an unreasonable delay in filling up vacancies. In the case of Archbishop Olaf it was a very wise step, but the papacy did not confine the exercise of its power to such instances, but proceeded in many cases to deliberately overrule the decisions of the chapters and appoint its own nominees to vacant sees. Another instance of this happened on the death of Bishop Salomon of Oslo (the only survivor of the Black Death among the bishops), who died in 1351. After his death the chapter chose Gyrd, one of their number, and he was consecrated by Archbishop Olaf; but the pope declined to recognize him, and appointed Sigfrid, or Sigurd, bishop of Stavanger, who was in Rome at the time. The canonicallychosen bishop gave up his post, but, Clement VI. dying soon after, his successor, Innocent VI., appointed Gyrd to the see of Stavanger.

The new archbishop at once set to work to try and reorganize the shattered Church. To fill up the many vacancies, it was absolutely necessary to lower the canonical age for ordination, and many lads of eighteen years of age were put in charge of parishes. These young men had, of course, neither the learning nor experience needed for the posts which they held, and many abuses soon manifested

themselves. Their lives and conversation were very much below the standard of upright living which had characterized their predecessors, and for a time at any rate there was a great declension in the state of the spiritual life of the Church. The archbishop called together a council at Nidaros in August, 1351. At this many of

the older regulations were renewed and new ones added to cope with the state of things then existing. It was especially enjoined on the clergy the necessity of leading clean and pure lives and of avoiding being mixed up in quarrels among their people. The old regulations respecting the friller were again re-enacted, and great abhorrence was expressed that some of the clergy had regularly and openly taken friller, and had had public betrothals to them. Although, on paper, the laws always existed, yet we know that down to the Reformation, from the time of the Sorte Død, these regulations were never enforced, but that the clergy continued to contract these irregular unions, and that it was practically acquiesced in by their superiors, who in many cases, if we are to believe Theodore of Niem, themselves had their friller as well as the parochial clergy!

A wise provision of the council was that the older clergy, who had survived the plague, should instruct the new and untried ones in all matters pertaining to the right and proper performance of the Church's offices.

The new prelates strove, as far as they could, to remedy the state of things which they found around them as the result of the Black Death, but it was a long time indeed before matters were finally reduced to order, and the revival of religious life was again checked, by the desolations which accompanied the break with Rome, under the Danish kings, in the early part of the sixteenth century.

If ecclesiastical affairs in Norway at this time were in an unsatisfactory state, things were no no better as regards temporal matters. The feeble King Magnus's unpopularity,

caused largely by his continued absences from the country, increased year by year. It will be remembered that he had arranged that his second son, Haakon, was to have the kingdom of Norway, but Haakon was still a child. In 1350 Magnus was in Bergen, and seems to have agreed to nominate as "drotsete" Orm Eysteinssøn, who practically ruled the country for five years, until 1355, when young Haakon was declared of age and took over, nominally, the government of the kingdom. Magnus now remained king only of Sweden. His other son, Erik, who had been brought up in that country, was not on good terms with his father, chiefly on account of Magnus's favourite, Benedict Algotssøn, whom he imagined, his father wished to make his heir. An arrangement was made, however, in 1357 by which Erik and Magnus divided Sweden, but the peace did not last long. Erik suspected, with apparently good reason, that his father was intriguing with the Danish king Valdemar against him. In 1359 young Haakon of Norway was betrothed to Margaret, Valdemar's daughter (afterwards the famous queen), and the marriage took place in 1363.

In 1359 Erik of Sweden died suddenly at the age of twenty-two years, supposed to have been poisoned,* and his wife and two children died soon afterwards. Magnus thereupon resumed the government of Sweden, and Valdemar attacked and conquered the district of Skaane. The Swedish chiefs were very furious with Magnus on account of what they believed to be his secret compact with the Danish king, and in 1363 they offered the crown to Albrekt of Mecklenburg, son of Euphemia, Magnus's sister. Albrekt accepted the offer and went to Stockholm. But Haakon came to his father's assistance, and there was much

According to another account, he was carried off with his young wife and infant twin children, by the visitation of barnekopper (smallpox), which visited the north in 1359-60.

hard fighting. At Enkjøbing a battle (March, 1365) was fought, in which Magnus was taken prisoner and Haakon wounded. The war continued with varying successes, until at last, in 1371, an agreement was made by which Magnus was set at liberty. Magnus was to have the revenues of some Swedish provinces and to bear the title of king during his life; Haakon renounced on his part, his claim to Sweden, and left the government to Albrekt. Magnus did not long survive this peace; he was drowned while crossing the open Bømmel Fjord, to the north of Stavanger, in December, 1374, and thus ended his long and inglorious reign of fiftyfive years.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CHURCH UNDER MARGARET AND ERIK.

Queen Margaret gains Denmark for her son Olaf-The Pope appoints Nicholas Ruser Archbishop-Erik of Pomerania chosen King-The Union of Kalmar-Bishop Eystein Aslakssøn of Oslo-His Mission to London-History of St. Birgitta-The Order of the SaviourThe State of the Norwegian Church as recorded by Theodore of Niem.

DURING the concluding years of the fourteenth century the history of the Church in Norway does not present any special features of interest. It had not recovered from the shock of the disasters of 1349-50, and in 1371 another outbreak of plague still further paralyzed its powers. The energetic Archbishop Olaf, who had done his best to revive life in his diocese and province, fell a victim to the plague in 1371. He was succeeded by a man named Thrond, about whom practically nothing is known. It will give some idea to what a low ebb the Church had been reduced by the Black Death when we are told that in the diocese of Nidaros, Archbishop Thrond found only forty priests (old and feeble), where formerly there were three hundred! In the Bergen diocese there was only one priest to every three or four churches, and when the enormous extent of most parishes in Norway is borne in mind, the wonder only is that there was any religion left in the country. There is no doubt that a very great falling-off in the religious life of the people, was the result of the lack of a properly instructed priesthood. Even in the towns this was noticeable, and the energetic Bishop Jakob of Bergen, in a pastoral which he issued in 1390 to that city, paints in very dark colours