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38 Having absorbed the Roman-canon system of proof from the end of the thirteenth century onwards, the French criminal process of the Renaissance can best be described as learned, but rigid and complicated. It was the purpose of the draftsman of the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets to regulate that rigidness and to speed up the process.26 The principles established by the Ordinances of Blois and Villers-Cotterets were later completed and confirmed by the Criminal Ordinance of Louis XIVin 1670.^^ The development of French criminal procedure helps to understand the intimate union that the Roman-canon law of proof has tended to formwith the centralization of royal power, the appearance of the university-trained jurist and judicial torture as a means of ensuring the establishment of material truth. Besides judicial torture, the formation of French law in the early modern period (see Chapter 4) shows the tendency of the statutory theory of proof to lead to a further categorization of decisional alternatives so as to provide means of handling cases short of full proof. The French jucidiary developed more ways of escaping the rigid medieval rules of proof in the early modern period. The French history offers, thus, a clear example of the interplay between the inquisitorial procedure and the legal theory of proof on the one hand, and of judicial torture on the other; however, in Sweden the concrete models of continental ius commune were taken fromGermany. 3. The Appearance of the Inquisitorial Procedure, Torture and the Legal Theory of Proof in Germany When compared to France, the tardiness of the German reception of Romancanon criminal procedure is evident. Whereas Roman law began to be taught in France in the thirteenth century, the reception did not really begin in Germany until the end of the fifteenth. The appearance of inquisition and torture is a clear sign of the central power’s growing interest in the administration of justice and in the establishment of material truth. As in France, Roman law in Germany was an essential tool at the service of a centralizingand consolidating political power, although in Germany the centralization occurred mainly at a territorial level.' Additionally, in late medieval Germany, as in France, the judicial duel, the purgatory oath, and ordeals started to give way to confession and witness testimony to fulfill this aspiration. The change was a gradual one, however; the accusatorial principle yielded slowly to the inquisitorial one.- 26 Ibid. pp. 247-248. 22 C.irbassc 1990 p. 148. For a detailed description of the procedure of the Ordinance of 1670, see Esmein 1882 pp. 221-253; Ruff 1984 pp. 45-63; Carbasse 1990 pp. 149-155. * On the use of Roman law in Germany for these ends, see Strauss 1986, especially pp. 136143; as a “lawof peace,” Whitman 1990 pp. 5-7. 2 Kleinheyer 1979 pp. 367, 376.

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