deciding civil cases between serfs, and their petty criminal cases, on the manors. Because of the orality of the proceedings, little evidence remains of these courts, but enough to know that they remained active all through the Swedish period. First, so few of these cases appear in the lower courts that they must have been decided somewhere else, in which case manorial courts are the likely candidate. Second, the Rechtsfinder at times appear in the lower court records, not in other roles such as witnesses. And third, the Economy Regulation (Ökonomie Reglement) of 1696 expressly mentioned the law-finders. It stated that when a peasant’s crime could lead to a punishment or damages paid, the lord of the crown manor could not convict him, but had to delegate the case to “law-finders and objective peasants to be investigated and determined” (Ökonomie Reglement; Ch. 5, § 2). If the punishment did not exceed flogging up to10 pairs of lashes or the damages of 20Reichsthaler, then it could be administered immediately, as long as the plaintiff agreed. If the maximum number of lashes or damages was exceeded, or the plaintiff did not agree with a lesser punishment or damages, then the case had to be taken to a land court.677 The second type of patrimonial court, apart from manorial courts, was those held on the nobility’s enfeoffments, counties and baronies. Internationally, kings had had to struggle hard to bring patrimonial courts under the supervision of royal courts everywhere. The Holy German Empire with its Court of Appeals (Reichskammergericht and Reichshofrat) and the appeals privileges of territorial rulers is acase in point.678 In Sweden, the same kind of phenomenon was present, albeit on a smaller scale. The history of Swedish patrimonial courts is important, because their legal position provides a context for the two patrimonial courts active in seventeenth-century Livonia. The medieval gårdsrätter have been seen as the root of the larger wave of patrimonial courts emerging from the late sixteenth-century onwards.679 The subject has been poorly researched, but it seems that the importance of seventeenth-century patrimonial courts has been underestimated. The crux of the matter was whether, with the growth of Sweden into a European great power, the crown was forced to the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 248 677 “[…] die Sache [muβte] auf andere, absonderlich der verordneten Rechtsfinder und unpartheyscher Bauren Untersuchung und Determinierung ankommen,” Sammlung der Gesetze, vol. 2, ed. Buddenbrock, p. 1221. 678 See Weitzel, Jürgen 1976. 679 See Bergquist, Lars 1957.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=