143 the reconstruction in the previous chapter. Without the support of the case material — and without setting the Finnish literature in an international context - these doctrinal works would remain isolated snapshots, not capable of producing a coherent picture of the development of the law of proof in nineteenth-century Finland. Seen against their background, however, these traces reveal interesting aspects of the Finnish lawof proof. The Outset: Matthias Calonius as Teacher of Criminal Procedure and Supreme Court Justice Matthias Calonius, one of the central figures of Finnish law, was not only the founder of the Finnish legal science, but also the first Finnish legal scholar to write about the law of proof. Even though Calonius’s main interests lay elsewhere, there are sources that expose his thinking on the lawof proof and yield important information as to the contemporary legal practice such as it stood close to the time before the law of proof started to change. Calonius’s article “Dissertatio Juridica de elicienda in foro criminali reorum confessione” of 1830 is an essay on the lawfulness and desirability of different ways of extracting confession in criminal cases according to Swedish-Finnish law. Calonius’s private lectures on civil and criminal procedure have also survived in manuscript notes taken by the professor’s students. In his “Opera omnia” of 1836, Calonius’s statements fromFebruary 1796 to April 1800 as a member of the Supreme Court of Sweden are printed. These statements show a clear correspondence between the author’s theoretical and practical legal thinking revealed by the lectures and “De elicienda.” In “De elicienda,” the author lays out the statutory theory of proof as it had developed in ius commune by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although Calonius mainly treats the subject fromthe point of view of Swedish law and legal practice, a continental influence is evident. Calonius set the amount of evidence required in proportion to the severity of the crime. Petty crimes were, then, equivalent to civil cases, and the more severe the crime, the more evidence was needed.'^ The case reports in “Opera Omnia” suggest similar general structural features of evidence evaluation. In a theft case of 1798,^ Calonius - against the decisions of the lower courts — decided for absolutio ab instantia. Calonius’s interesting insofar as he regards the circumstantial evidence as grounds “very convincing.” However, “even though [the indicia] of [the accused’s] un¬ are sure and contradictory statements appear very convincing, they do not ... reach such a degree of certainty which the lawrequires of full proof, for which reason [I do] not dare to confirm the High Court’s ... decision.” •» Calonius 1829-1836 II pp. 266, 272. C.ilonius 1829-1836 I\' pp. 418—120 (March 28, 1798).
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