Why was the Håndfæstning forced on Erik V of Denmark?
Upvote:0
I'm also basing my answers on the links provided in the question. The interpretations are mine.
Erik V's reign was "snakebit" from the beginning. His father died when he was two years old. Any number of nobles tried to take advantage of his mother, and one of them, Duke Valdemar, succeeded in capturing the mother and Erik himself. He spent part of his childhood as a prisoner of the Duke.
When Erik grew older, many of his mother's enemies became his enemies. To his credit, he managed to make peace with the Church (the Pope, actually), as a young man. But others were hard to placate. The nobles who had spent over twenty years "running wild" wasn't about to take orders from a young man. Nothing he did, or would do, with the possible exception of abdicating, could please them. Because he was basically the "first among equals," the nobles forced him to grant them a "handfaesting" that preserved noble powers while limiting his.
The nobles were not content to stop there. They bribed his "best friend," Rane Jonson, to spy on him. Then the "friend" set him up for a bloody murder.
The handfaestning of Erik V was not like the Magna Charta. The former was unique to King Erik V, and each subsequent Danish king or queen signed a different document with his or her nobles until absolute monarchy was established in 1660. The latter was a permanent document that bound all kings of England, including Queen Elizabeth II, for all time.
Upvote:3
From the Wikipedia article on Erik V:
As an adult ruler, Eric tried to enforce his power over the church and nobility. In the 1270s, Eric Glipping attacked Småland. His conflict with the church was brought to a satisfying result, with the help of the pope. By 1282 he had so offended the nobles throughout Denmark that he was forced to accept a charter (Danish: håndfæstning - a kind of a Danish Magna Carta) which limited his authority and guaranteed the ancient rights and customs which preserved the power of the nobles.
In other words, the story is very similar to the introduction of the Magna Carta in Britain. We are talking about times before absolute monarchy, the king had to rely on his vassals to enforce his will - all vassals had their own armies that weren't much smaller than that of the king. Support from the vassals was essential when going into war with other countries, and occasionally the king would even ally with some of the vassals against the others. However, in a situation where all vassals were united against the king (and this was apparently the case here) the king had no power to confront them - fighting was not an option, Erik V had to sign.
Why this didn't happen earlier: limiting the power of a king with a charter isn't an obvious thing to do, it is very likely that the Magna Carta served as an example. Of course there were other kings after Magna Carta and before Erik V but their interests most likely didn't bring up the majority of the vassals against them.
More post
- 📝 What is Charles Babbage referring to when he talks about the 'College of Laputa'?
- 📝 How did the Chinese Civil War avoid becoming another Korean War?
- 📝 Did France send ships to the Indian Ocean in 1971 in support of Pakistan?
- 📝 Did anyone find gold in California before 1848?
- 📝 Did the Persian Immortals instill fear in their Greek adversaries?
- 📝 What makes studying science different from studying the history of science?
- 📝 By which year did smiths achieve the ability to handle metal in an exact way that's necessary for the printing press?
- 📝 Did the Latins see the Etruscans as a plague?
- 📝 What is the date and original source of this medieval picture?
- 📝 Are there any examples of European rulers with a rank lower than king to utilize a "throne" and a "throne room"?
- 📝 How did the Greeks and Romans move between their destinations?
- 📝 Louis XIV of France, "L'État, c'est moi", and the royal 'we'
- 📝 What cipher did Jefferson and Madison use to correspond?
- 📝 Why did Mozi's philosophy die out in China?
- 📝 Was Mohammed known and respected in seventeenth-century Europe?
- 📝 Who was the US first cross-dressing governor?
- 📝 How did Medieval armies survive the use of mail armor in the deserts of the Middle East?
- 📝 How many proofs does History require?
- 📝 Have the officials/leaders of the winning country ever been punished for war crimes?
- 📝 When is the crossed sword and baton alone? When does it appear with the crown?
- 📝 How many people were needed to build a country house?
- 📝 How long would it take to travel from the United Kingdom to America in 1890?
- 📝 What was the flower of Empress Taytu?
- 📝 How much materiel was shipped to Continental Europe per month, after D-Day?
- 📝 How is it possible to be a baronet and not a peer?
- 📝 When did the last (non-tourist) commercial stagecoach line run in the USA?
- 📝 Why did the Umayyads spare some of the male members of the Family (Ahl-al-Bait) after Karbala?
- 📝 Did any country adopt a straight pull bolt-action rifle?
- 📝 At what date did the Ostrogoths formally stop ruling as Roman tributaries?
- 📝 Does the Proto Canaanite ‘mother serpent’the Pyramid text of Unas/Wenis have another known name or epithet?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why was the Håndfæstning forced on Erik V of Denmark?
- 📝 Why was James II and VII (same person), the last Roman Catholic monarch of Britain, not forced to convert to Anglicanism?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Why was Poland spared from the Black Death?
- 📝 Why was Africa colonized last of the continents in the Age of Discovery?
- 📝 Why was the Scout movement so successful?
- 📝 Why was the Council of Nicea held in Nicea rather than Rome or Constantinople?
- 📝 Why was World War I ended on Nov 11 11:00, rather than immediately upon signing the armistice?
- 📝 In the Soviet Union, why was the Cheka renamed so many times?
- 📝 Why was "leaping into the river" a valid trial outcome to prove one's innocence?
- 📝 Why was the Japanese Army's fatalities inflicted:suffered ratio so low in the Pacific theatre?
- 📝 Why was capturing the south of Okinawa necessary?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Why was there a surge in the US incarceration rate during the 1990s?
- 📝 Why was the Treaty of Versailles so harsh?
- 📝 If the Ch’in dynasty was so short-lived, why was China named for it?
- 📝 Why was Switzerland not attacked during the two World Wars?
- 📝 Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
- 📝 Why was PTSD not written about as much before the 20th century?
- 📝 Why was Kaliningrad placed under the Russian SFSR rather than the Lithuanian SSR?
- 📝 Why was the Roman Empire considered an empire rather than a kingdom (again)?
- 📝 Why was the northern boundary of the Mongol empire set where it was?
- 📝 When and why was the samurai class abolished?
- 📝 Why was uranium mined in the 1500s, but only "discovered" in 1789?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 Why were troops with bayonets often effective against enemy cavalry even though the bayonet was a "secondary" weapon?
- 📝 Why was the bald eagle chosen as the national bird of the United States?
- 📝 Why was the US so pro-China and so anti-Japan before WW2?
- 📝 Why was the Red Army successful against the Japanese in 1939 but perform poorly against Finland 1939-40 and early part of WW2?