96 rigidity of the statutory theory of proof. Whereas the courts attempted to enlarge their discretionary powers with the help of these exceptions to the statutory theory of proof, the Crown sought to limit and control their use. This attempt is especially manifest in the last decades of the 1600s as Swedish absolutism reached its high point: the use of these exceptions of the statutory theory of proof was restricted to the high courts and the king, as the local courts were required to follow the law strictly. As sort of a practical compromise, absolutio ab instantia and confessional imprisonment were incorporated into the Swedish Law of 1734. Poena extraordinaria is not mentioned in the Law of 1734, and it seems probable that the institution ceased to be employed in judicial practice by the middle of the eighteenth century. Apractical compromise? In international comparison, it seems obvious that the courts needed to be furnished with some ways of getting around the difficult situations where a case was strong but lawful full proof was missing. In other countries, torture had been employed as a remedy since the MiddleAges, but by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had begun to be replaced by poena extraordinaria and absolutio ab instantia. Leaving less to chance than did judicial torture and thus ensuring more convictions, these legal institutions were better suited to the control needs of the early modern state. Following the international trend, the statutory theory of proof was, therefore, introduced into Sweden with poena extraordinaria and absolutio ab instantia. In Sweden, then, judicial torture never became a legalized part of the criminal proceedings, nor was it ever used in Swedish courts systematically and consistently, although the Law of 1734 made the use of confessional imprisonment possible for similar ends under certain circumstances. Moreover, the heavily lay-dominated, public character of the Swedish trial did not favor the use of judicial torture. The legal theory of proof can be seen as part of a larger social and penal context, for the 1600s have usually been seen as a century of stricter penal attitudes on the part of the centralizing government. In its attempts to solidify its powers, the stricter criminal law and the straightforward sanctioning of the law of Moses as an addition to the medieval Swedish law's (through the so-called Appendix of 1608) forma working pair with the simultaneous reception of the legal rules of proof. Both the aspiration tow’ards harsher and more systematically implemented penal measures and towards legal rules of proof, moreover, drew much of their legitimation fromthe religious ideology of the state Lutheran Church. I have discerned three levels of actors in the seventeenth century, all with interests of their own as to how' the lawof proof ought to be shaped. Fromthe power elite’s point of view, the “judicial revolution” could not be brought about without an effective systemof proof that would bind the judiciary, espedaily the lower courts, to the will of their superiors, thus ensuring the working
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