Makten och döden : Stat och kyrka möter svenska efterlevande under ett långt 1700-tal

Sammanfattning: This thesis addresses the issue of how the Swedish governmental authorities – the secular (the State) and the ecclesiastical (the Swedish church) – aimed at treating the population during the early modern era. The question asked is whether the authorities always strived to foster the people, or whether there were areas where care for individuals was more important. This is explored by a study of the authorities’ general normative principles for the handling of death.The study focuses two normative problems: the first concerns how the authorities decided that the deceased should be taken care of; the second concerns the norms formulated regarding the actions of the survivors. These problems are explored through normative source material – laws, royal ordinances, church regulations, service books and hymnbooks – and to some extent illustrated by funeral sermons and grief correspondence. A framework for interpreting the handling of death is used where care is placed on a level equal to social support, and fostering to that of demands. The handling of death was characterised by great continuity. The norms concerning the handling of the deceased foremost aimed at getting the deceased interred in a respectable fashion, and they were motivated by care. The prescriptions concerning the survivors are more complex and the amount of care and fostering respectively varied, depending on whether the regulations had ecclesiastic or secular origin. The study shows that the authorities and especially the Church were mainly acting out of care for individuals. There were also obvious fostering elements, but it is impossible to say that the authorities always displayed a single fostering ambition. Hence care and fostering must be considered parts of a whole, since all fostering in some sense could be understood as motivated by care.