the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 316 of the judges were part of Sweden’s elite, it is no wonder that several had studied in Leiden. The records of Leiden University are helpful as they contain information on the faculty chosen. Looking at the Svea judges, there were following disciplinary choices: law (4), law and politics (1), politics (1), politics and mathematics (1), litterarum(1), history (1), eloquence (1), theology (1) and medicine (1). Five of the twelve men were born noble, while the rest were not noble at the time of their studies. We can see clearly that the background affected the choice of field. Of the five men who had enrolled at the law faculty, four were commoners.920 This may lead to the assumption that the legal knowledge of the court in particular rose as the third class of the court began to be better educated. This is perhaps not a completely fair conclusion as the noblemen often travelled extensively and may have read law at another university.921 While not enrolling at a law faculty, they may still have socialised with learned jurists.922 In any case, it does tell us that young non-nobles saw a legal education as beneficial. Whereas nobles had other aspirations as well, commoners went abroad specifically for academic purposes and were encouraged to do so by being granted scholarships.923 The case of Wittenberg, one of the most important universities of Protestant Europe and another favourite among the Svea judges in spe, demonstrates how the Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648) affected the German universities negatively. Four of the 1634 and three of the 1714 judges had studied in Wittenberg – the first group in 1600, 1607, 1609 and 1610 and the second group in 1666, 1686 and 1687. Wittenberg was most popular among Swedes in the first decades of the seventeenth century, and as the popularity of the university declined in the eighteenth century, so did the number of Swedish students there.924 Again, seven of our judges seem to have studied in Strassburg. They are distributed quite evenly across the seventeenth century, and at least three of them appear to have read law.925 920 Those who had read law had apparently often done so under the guidance of law professor Jacobus Maestertius (professor 1637–1658). See above and Wrangel, E. 1897 p. 91. On Maestertius, see Ahsmann, Margreet 1997 p. 424. 921 This is true e.g., for Ernst Johan Creutz. See Lappalainen, Mirkka 2005 pp. 147-148. 922 See e.g., Niléhn, Lars 1983 p. 299; Nuorteva, Jussi 1997 pp. 435-436. 923 Lindroth, Sten 1975 p. 60. 924 Callmer, Christian 1976 pp. 3, 6 and passim. 925 Anjou and theSBLlist five Svea Court of Appeal judges as having studied in Strassburg
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