52 THE KING'S MIRROR 



much better for them to suffer a brief pain in death than 

 a long torture in hell." The sacramental efficiency of the 

 death penalty seems also to extend to the one who exe- 

 cutes punishment: for those who assisted Moses in the 

 slaughter sanctified their hands in the blood of those 

 who were slain. In the same way "a king cleanses 

 himself in the blood of the unjust, if he slays them as a 

 rightful punishment to fulfil the sacred laws."* 



There can be little doubt that this doctrine of the 

 death penalty also shows the influence of the great civil 

 conflict which ended with the death of Duke Skule in 

 1240. During a century of factional warfare there had 

 been much violence, much slaughter, much " swift 

 punishment." Applied to Norwegian history the au- 

 thor's argument amounts to a justification of the slaugh- 

 ter at Elgesseter; for Skule and his partisans had re- 

 belled against the Lord's anointed. The hands of the 

 Birchshanks were cleansed and sanctified in the blood 

 of the rebels; but the author also has this comforting 

 assurance for the kinsmen of the fallen, that their souls 

 were not lost: Skule and his companions were cleansed 

 from their sins in the last great penance of death. 



It may also be that this same long record of violence^, 

 treason, and rebellion was responsible for the prom^ 

 nence that the King's Mirror gives to the duty of obedi- 

 ence. In the political ethics of the work obedience is the 

 chief virtue and the central principle. Conversely diso- 

 bedience is the greatest of all sins. When Saul spared the 

 Amalekites, whom the Lord had ordered him to destroy, 

 he sinned far more grievously than did David when he 

 * C. Ixi. 



