the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 188 value, a kind of greatness, which was “owned” by the individual. A person could also lose his honour by breaking the law. The law regarded honour as a concrete thing, and a court could sentence a person to lose the honour and become infamous. During the early modern period, this applied to severe crimes such as theft, treachery, heresy and witchcraft. A person who had lost his honour could not enter into agreements or bear witness in court, for example.524 The importance of maintaining one’s honour led to a striking rise in the number of cases about defamation brought to court in the seventeenth century. Crimes against honour were common at all levels in the court system, in the lower courts as well as the higher and the range of punishable insults expanded during the seventeenth century.525 In the Svea Court of Appeal, the disputes about defamation were evenly spread over the period investigated. Accusations of defamation occurred in cases where officials were accused of professional misconduct, as in the case where a noble bank clerk was accused of being an embezzler,526 or when government officials were attacked when they tried to execute judgements. For example, the accountant Henrik Jacob Hillebrandt (1636 – 1714) and provincial governor Didrik Wrangel (1637 – 1706) were beaten and defamed when they tried to carry out an execution at an old widow’s home.527 Occasionally, even judges in the Svea Court of Appeal were defamed. Ernst Johan Creutz (1619-1684), appointed assessor in the Court in 1644, was an intellectual and educated man, but he also had a bad temper which he could not control. This caused him trouble more than once. In 1650, Johan Svinehufvud (1631 – 1715) accused Creutz of killing Svinehufvud’s younger brother. The brother, a school boy, was staying with Creutz’s family at the time of the incident. On one occasion, Creutz boxed the boy on the ear so hard that the boy fell and hit his head on a tiled stove. Two days later, the boy died and Svinehufvud accused Creutz of causing his death. Accusations of this kind were very serious and required substantial justification and evidence. The accusation put Creutz’s honour at stake. The Svea Court of Appeal decided to suspend him from his work as a judge until the dispute was settled. In the end, the appeal court ruled that Svinehufvud’s accusations had no substance, stating instead that Svine524 Collstedt, Christopher 2007 p. 83; Persson, Fabian 1999 p. 23. 525 Ylikangas, Heikki and others 2000 pp. 79 and 81. 526 Judgement on 22 November 1690 (RA, SHA, B II a:61).
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