Medieval Clerical Aristocracy
The clergy (Norwegian: geistlighet) was the second estate in the Norwegian feudal system.
It was in the years after the death of Olaf ‘the Holy’ in 1030 that Norway finally was Christianised, whereby the church gradually began to play a political rôle. Together with the King and his men, the clerical aristocracy, which until the Reformation operated and developed parallelly with the secular aristocracy, constituted the power class in the Kingdom.
The Archbishop of Nidaros had his own organisation and court. Among his men were they known under the term setesvein (not to be confused with the noble title of skutilsvein), who were seated along the coast of Western and Northern Norway as well as in Iceland. A register of 1533 shows that there were altogether 69 setesveins in Norway.. Their function was to administrate the land estate and the taxes of the Archbishop, and they also traded partly themselves and partly on behalf of the Archbishop.
A part of the clerical aristocracy, many setesveins had ‘arms and helm’, i.e. coats of arms. Some setesveins additionally belonged to the secular aristocracy.
After the Reformation in 1536, when King Christian III abolished the Catholic religion and the Archbishop went into exile, the King punished setesveins who had supported the Archbishop. Many of them got their houses robbed as the King and his soldiers raided the coast.
From the setesveins originated the so-called page nobility (Norwegian: knapeadel), which is described in the section Other terms of nobility.
Read more about this topic: Norwegian Nobility
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