summary 369 canon law after the Reformation. In 1590, Henry Swinburne, an English lawyer, published his A Brief Treatise of Testaments and Last Wills as a treatise on civil law, despite the fact it was based on canon law and came at a time when the two faculties of ecclesiastical law in England had already been abrogated by order of King Henry VIII. This treatise became, however, a key work on wills and the law relating to them for the next two centuries. In producing his treatise, Swinburne compiled the key points of a number of Latin texts, summarised a variety of arguments and read the works of more than two hundred authors. English wills also display greater similarities to the wills of the Scandinavian countries than they do to Roman law. Secondly, law-making by the court of appeal was characterised by the spread of common law (ius commune) during this century. The Swedish courts of appeal operated in a milieu that had clear links to a wider European legal culture. This involved the organisation of the courts of appeal, opportunities for appeal and the processes of the court of appeal. Many of the members of the courts of appeal had studied law and other subjects abroad, and, via their studies, had come into contact with foreign laws and European legal writings. References to doctrines from other countries appear in several places in the reports on the law of wills from the Svea Court of Appeal. Many lawyers in the 17th century had studied abroad and returned to Sweden with new or different ideas on legal thought acquired abroad. The continent of Europe saw the reception of Roman law which developed new areas of use. The development of the law of wills in Sweden, however, had little in common with the law of wills that emerged under Roman law. The terminology was to some extent contingent, but the substance of these legal rules was not implemented by the court of appeal. The regulations were too formal for use in a country which was a 17th century great power, and in this context the set of rules required by Roman law was impractical. The members of the court of appeal may have made use of Roman law related to other areas than the law of wills in their interpretation of the Swedish law of wills, but this was seldom stated explicitly in the records of the court of appeal. As mentioned, the court of appeal used the terminology of Roman law in cases of disputed wills. However, the use of the terminology of Roman law did not necessarily indicate the extensive influence of Roman law or that the court of appeal justified its decisions directly by reference to
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