marju luts-sootak troducing the Livonian High Court as an instance of appeals. Although the High Court in Dorpat/Tartu did indeed deal with appeals, their relative importance always remained low in the total number of cases being handled. In the first decades of the High Court’s activities, the appeals numbered at times only a quarter or a third of the cases, but even in the end of the seventeenth century, their number never rose to more than a half of the cases handled at the High Court.19 Most of its cases, in fact, the Livonian High Court actually processed as a court of first instance. These included all cases related to nobles’ inheritance and real estate in general, cases related to the privileges of the knighthoods and royal economy or royal prerogatives, all cases of denegatio iustitiae and all cases that had to do with the peasant serfs’ complaints against their landlords.20 Although the law might leave the impression that Livonian peasants now suddenly had an excellent opportunity to raise cases against their land lords in the High Court, the actual number of such cases was extremely small. There were very few complaints filed against land lords.21 The only other way in which cases could have reached the High Court also remained practically closed, as the disputes between peasants were not solved by royal land courts, but rather – and as before – by manorial courts.22 Even if it had been possible to file appeals in these courts, the cases involving peasants would likely have been cut short by the value census. It is not likely that Livonian peasant serfs, or even the free peasants of state manors, already freed in the end of theseventeenth century, would have entered into disputes over objects with value higher than 50 Swedishriksdaler, as specified to be the minimal value of cases in the appellation law. soll gehalten warden, 1.2.1632. In: Buddenbrock, Gustav Johann von (ed.) 1821 pp. 95-116. About Skytte’s activities in building up the Livonian court system and recruiting its personnel, see: Laestadius 1897 passim; Liljedahl, Ragnar 1933 pp. 273-280. 19 For precisedata by decades, see Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014 pp. 228-229. 20 See also Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014 pp. 224-226; Bunge, Friedrich Georg 1874 pp. 231-232. 21 See Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014 p. 228, as well as Seppel, Marten 2006 p. 400 who, by using different sources, reaches the same conclusion that such complaints and court cases rarely existed in practice. 22 About manorial courts as the lowest level of patrimonial courts in Livonia and in Sweden, see Pihlajamäki, Heikki 2014 pp. 246-248. 221
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