less, against this background the solutions taken in relation to the law to be applied become understandable. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Swedish legal system, although it was in contact with the Roman-canonius commune since the thirteenth century, had retained many of its archaic features. Lawyers and learned judges were a rare sight in Swedish courts of law, and virtually no Swedish legal science to speak of existed. The University of Uppsala had been founded in the late fifteenth century, but had been closed down in the turmoil of the Lutheran Reformation. The University had been reopened in the late sixteenth century, but mainly in order to train priests. Whatever “reception” of Roman law there had been in Sweden, the layer of learned law was thin. Compared to the heartlands of ius commune, the layer of learned law would remain thin in Sweden. However, learned law did not remain nonexistent, the seventeenth century being the main century of its reception. As everywhere in Europe, universities contributed to this. A new institution of higher learning was established in Turku in 1630 and another in the heart of Livonia, Dorpat, in 1632. Not unlike their predecessor in Uppsala, both new universities were founded mainly for pastoral training. All Swedish universities had law faculties as well, but their teaching personnel typically consisted of one professor only. It is no wonder that the universities did not constitute great centres of legal learning for a long time. It is as if the Swedish political establishment was not much concerned with fostering legal learning. Livonia was different. During the late Middle Ages and the Polish period, the reception of Roman law had advanced more there than in Sweden. David Hilchen’s (ca. 1561 – 1610) Proposal for Livonian law of 1599, although never formally promulgated, is a good example of the extent to which Livonian law was integrated into the world of ius commune. Livonia had no universities, however (until the founding of the University of Dorpat in 1630), and it boasted no legal literature of its own. However, the linguistic and cultural ties of Livonian’s German-speaking elite had joined the province to gemeines Recht. In addition to the linguistic and cultural ties came the political ties, since Livonia was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until the dissolution of Order State. The tension between the “unlearned,” archaic law of the Swedish conqueror and the learned law of Livonia constitute the basic framework of the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 222
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