22 oaths, must have seemed to reduce the amount of random decision and enhance predictability of law. Second, in relation to the church’s aspirations to a hierarchical, efficient administration, the system of legal proof reduced the scope of action reserved for an individual judge to a minimum. A judge was bound by a set of pre-established rules; in principle, he became an automaton who only received the evidence and drew fromit the inescapable conclusions described by law. And third, as Langbein remarks, in the eyes of the subjects of the legal order, the statutory theory of proof had a quality of legitimacy. Under the statutory theory of proof, the law of proof and the courts drew or borrowed their justification fromthe supreme ecclesiastical or secular authorities. The Statutory Theory of Proof Although Roman lawwas a useful tool in the hands of princes aiming at consolidating their power, it was by no means the onlv, not even the central, one."^^ For a ruler who wished to obtain control over the heterogenous medieval legal world, the basically immutable system of Roman law, although reinterpretable, did not ser\'e adequately. Therefore, an abundance of royal legislation is seen to appear virtually everywhere where royal power manages to gain domination."^2 The statutory theory of proof, as part of Roman law, helped to structure the use of a centralizing judicial power. It is frequently assumed that the theory was an indigenous century, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and its achievement of canon law scholars and that it was taken into use in canon law courts starting in the eleventh abolition of ordeals marking an important milestone.Gradually, as scholars of canon law and Roman law were in close communication with each other, the theory came to formthe theory of proof of the Roman-canon ius commune. As part of Roman-canon law, the statutory theory of proof spread with the newly-founded universities to most parts of Europe in the late Middle Ages and the first two centuries of the Modern Age. The statutory theory of proof was a creation of juristic writing. From legal scholarship, rules of proof later found their way into the statutes as well; these spe.^k. of changing conceptions of what kind of proof have at different times been regarded as conducive to (material) truth. In this sense, the late Middle Ages, with their distinctive, scholastic theory of truth, certainly constitute an epoch verv different from both the preceding centuries and the subsequent centuries of the New Age. On this and the influence on law, see Shapiro 1983 and Kantola 1994, and Chapter 4. •" This point is forcefully conveyed by Berman 1983; see especially pp. 204-205. lbid.\ the growth of statutorv legislation in medieval Sweden in 1350-1500, see B)arne on Larsson 1994. van Caenegem 1965 p. 727; Berman 1983 pp. 250-253; and Peters 1985 pp. 43—17.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=