entangled in insolvency – jussi sallila 271 the privilege of the state treasury (fiscus) in taxes. The medieval law gave priority to taxes and tithes. According to Lohrman, this privilege encompassed not only the old forms of taxation but also the extraordinary taxes that were plentiful in seventeenth-century Sweden. This could be supported by the fact that the consent of the Estates was necessary for the imposition of new taxes.747 In some cases, privileges that were adopted from the foreign doctrine had no basis in Swedish legislation but had been recognized in case law. For example, the wage arrears of servants were granted a privilege in Lohrman’s account. He invoked the Bible as an authoritative argument. As Jägerskiöld has noted, similar arguments had already been used by the Svea Court of Appeal.748 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Stockholm had been a small city by European standards, but by the 1660s and 1670s it had become the centre of Baltic Sea trade and one of the major cities in Northern Europe. Both Swedish and foreign observes marvelled at the transformation of the city in the course of half a century.749 From the 1630s onwards, Stockholm became the heart of modern central administration and the residence of a royal court. Aristocrats enriched in Sweden’s successful wars built city palaces in the capital. The desire to keep up with the fashions of Europe contributed to the growth of conspicuous consumption, raising indebtedness.750 On the other hand, accounts focusing on the splendour of seventeenth-century Stockholm are one-sided. Images in seventeenth-century publications focused on the relatively few representative buildings of Stockholm, not on the mass of ordinary wooden houses.751 The capital 747 Bechmann/Lohrman 1669 Th. XVII: “Nec dubitandum, an jure Suec. eodem privilegio gaudeant extraordinaria tribute, quo ordinaria:cum& ea justis de causis ex necessitate utlitateque regni consensu ordinum sint imposita, & salutem publicam regiumque honorem ac dignitatem concernant. […] Huic nostro juri adstipulatur jus civile Romanum, quo omnibus creditoribus quoad tributa & collectas, in concursu potior sit fiscus.” 748 Bechmann/Lohrman 1669 Th. XIV: “[…] favor ejusmodi famulorum jure divino magnus est, Deut. 24:14. eodem die reddas ei pretium laboris sui. Nam æquum Christianumque est unumquemque laboris sui mercedem habere,” Jägerskiöld, Stig 1967b pp. 371-372, citing the 1658 case involving the estate of the deceased archbishop Laurentius Paulinus Gothus. 749 Corin, Carl-Fredrik 1958 pp. 17-23. 750 Englund, Peter 1989 pp. 205-220. Stockholm in the 1660s and 1670s: The Network of Indebtedness at the Heart of the Swedish Empire
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