23 were then again classified by medieval legal scholars^'’ The theory was developed by legists and canonists, and the novel theories oscillated freely fromone group of medieval scholars to anotherd^ The intellectual roots of the medieval law of proof lie in scholastic philosophy. Without the scholastic method of categorization, the statutory theory of proof would not have come about such as we knowit. Therefore, it can be said that Aristotelian philosophy forms the epistemological basis of the medieval law of proof. The categories of the former concur roughly with those of the latter. Hence, the proof in itself constitutes a genus, the different modes of proof its species. Within different modes of proof, subdivisions appear according to the evidentiary value of different elements pertaining to the species. When different species with the same evidentiary value are regrouped together, gradus appear. When the grades of proof are arranged on evidentiary scales, a hierarchy of proof emerges. In the medieval theory of proof, a myriad of different gradations of proof developed during the late Middle Ages. For St. Thomas Aquinas, the credibility of witness testimony rose with the number of witnesses; therefore, it was better to have two or three witnesses instead of one. In spite of being mendacious, the testimony of one witness could easily appear consistent. If there were more consistent testimonies, they were likely to convey the objective truth.The basic division into three degrees of proof that Bartolus presents is, however, the typical one, despite the abundance of additions and subdivisions that were made to the theory by various medieval authors. The lowest category - the first degree of proof - is that of circumstancial evidence {indicium), capable of producinga suspicion in the mind of the judge only {suspicatio). The second degree would be probatio semiplena, imperfect evidence, which produces an opinion {opinio)', the third degree, perfect or full proof {probatio plena) on whose authority a verdict can be based. Full proof causes a credas instead of a mere opinion or suspicion in the judge’s mind.'*^'* These basic gradations of evidence were then, with modifications, adopted by the European ius commune and carried over all the way to the Finnish nineteenth-century law of proof. The following is based onJean-Philippe Levy’s work “La Hierarchiedes preuve dans le droit savant du moyen age depuis la Renaissance du Droit Romain jusqu’a la fin XIV siecle” (Lvon, 1939), and his article “Le problcme de la preuve dans les droits savants du moyen age (1),” pp. 137-167 in SociétéJean Bodin’s “La Preuve,” and Piero Fiorelli’s “Latortura giudiziaria nel diritto commune I—II” (Milan, 1953-1954). ■»5 Levy 1939 p. 6. Ibid. p. 22. According to Ilkka Kantola, Aquinas did not claim that two or more mutuallv consistent witness statements produce an infallible certainty. Instead, in judicial affairs he thought that we must make with “probable certainty” {certitudoprobabilis) and use those principles which lead to the correet result for the most part. Kantola 1994 pp. 35-39. ■»8 Levy 1939 pp. 28-29. 47
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