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„,, Measures of police. ittcttitjv au mnp cwcnirc Influence of the church.
Punishment of offences. IllOlUltX 1)1 IliU, SVVl^iJ^S. Serfdom early abolished.
lie liad deputed his judgment8. But generally it
was by no means considered necessary that a cause
should first have been befox-e an inferior tribunal in
order to come before a higher. Nothing hindered
the plaintiff from both instituting and terminating
his suit before the superior judge, if he were
present in his court; and although Steno Sture the
elder, in 1491, issued an edict enjoining that no one
should bring his plea before the king or the
administrator, unless he had previously sued before the
court of the hundred, or the lawman, or the
burgomasters,—this regulation was for a long time
afterwards not observed.
The law was made for freemen, and to be in the
"yeoman-law" (bondelag) implied a participation
in the rights and privileges of the people. Only
" yeomen and indwellers," not" vagabonds, or hired
servants," without any property of then- own to
risk 9, might speak in the court. For every
hundred there was a fixed court-stead, anciently under
the open sky, a custom not yet wholly disused in
the beginning of the sixteenth centuryAH the
members of the hundred were bound
interchangeably to offices of succour. A fire-rate is ordered to
be levied within the hundred by the law of
East-Gothland, and the inhabitants were conjointly
obliged to keep a "road for carl and king," or a
public way and bridge.
When outrage or robbery was committed, leading
to hue and cry, a staff of summons (budkafle) was
cut, and sent round in haste. This was a short bat
or stick, with certain marks, by which all the
surrounding inhabitants were called upon to render
assistance, and by this expedient Magnus Ladulas
enjoined those from whom entertainment was
extorted by the armed hand to procure themselves
help2. On the invasion of the country by an
enemy, fire was kindled on heights appointed for
the purpose, and the staff of summons was
despatched, burned at one end, and with a loop
fastened at the other, for a sign, it is said, that
whoever neglected to forward it without delay,
should be hanged or have his house burned 3.
The punishment of a freeman by death was
unknown to the old laws, except for such offences
as involved dishonour. The disgraced man was
branded with the epithet of infamous (niding), and
nidingswork was the name applied by the laws to
the gravest offences against the safety of the
person, when committed under circumstances of
treachery, as slaying in places of sanctuary, in a church,
or in a house, killing a sleeper or one unable to
defend himself, or the master of the house, or him
with whom one shared food and drink, or a woman
(for " she hath peace at fair and market, let feud
between men be ever so great," says the law of the
West-Goths), killing with cruelties or torments,
bearing arms against one’s country, going in a
warship to rob on the seas, which last prohibition
shows that Christian morals were by this time in
course of dissemination. All these could not be
atoned for by a pecuniary mulct. In general such
offences were deemed to deserve the severest
penalties as were committed in a cowardly and malicious
mode ; hence also the thief was doomed to death or
slavery. Corporal punishment was confined to those
in thraldom, who were beyond the pale of law.
"To beat one like a slave4," "to have as little
right as the scourged house-girl," or the female
slave, are expressions found in the laws.
For the developement of notions of legality and
the amelioration of manners the church exerted a
powerful influence. Personal revenge was
discountenanced ; all holidays, and periods of some length
at the great festivals, were consecrated to peace.
This was called God’s halidom (helgd) or peace,
phrases still used among the common people on
entering a house. Other seasons were also sacred
to peace, as those of sowing and harvest. To steal
fi’om a field is called in the laws to break God’s
lock. Through the influence of the church the
condition of women was improved ; the wife
received her legal share of the chattels, and the sister
was permitted to inherit with the brothers. With
extended rights, women were also subjected to legal
responsibility, so that king Magnus Ericson in his
Eric’s-gait of 1335 made a general ordinance, that
" the woman should make compensation for offences
like the man, especially those touching life." On
the same occasion thraldom was abolished, which in
Sweden seems to have existed anciently in a mild
form 5, hence its eradication was effected here much
earlier than in other countries. The sale of a
Christian had been already forbidden by the law of
Upland, and manumissions, which through the
exhortations of the clergy were viewed as works of
Christian piety, were made " for the soul’s sake."
As a multitude of causes were brought before the
episcopal courts, which, in so far as they were not
of purely spiritual concernment, must be
adjudicated with relation to prevailing forms of law,
occasion thus arose for the developement of its
rules.
It was chiefly by the efforts of the church that
the so-called " judgments of God " were abolished,
the abuse of compurgators restricted 6, and public
8 The raefst was the ordinary, the raettare-ting (or court of
error) the extraordinary tribunal, in which the king’s
judgment wa» delivered. They were of different natures : the
former was the royal court of the province, under the
presidency of the king, and not as usual of the lawman, for
which assessors or neemdemen were chosen out of thelagsaga
or shire ; the latter, on the other hand, was a court appointed
for a specific case, the naemd of which was taken from the
same hundred wherein the court was held, and was
therefore, so to say, a royal hundred-court.
9 Law of East-Gothland, Drap. B. f. 3.
’ Olaus Magnus, de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, xiv. 17.
2 See before, p. 51.
3 Olaus Magnus, vii. 4.
4 This was called thralbiirja, and was an infamous crime
if committed upon a freeman and causing his death.
5 We may conclude from the governing maxim of all our
old provincial laws, that if either of the parents was free, the
child also was ("gangin barn a baettree halvo," let the bairn
go to the better half); while in Germany and France,
children so born were thralls (" das kind folgt der argern hand,"
the child follows the worse hand ; en formariage le pire
em-porte le bon). In Denmark the offspring of a female slave
were thralls.
6 Ferventis aquae vel candentis ferri judicium, sive
duel-lum, quod monomachia dicitur, Catholica Ecclesia, contra
quemlibet etiam, nedum contra episcopum, non admittet,
says Pope Alexander II. in a letter to the Swedish bishops.
Ilonorius VII. in a letter of 1218, denounces the malpractices
to which compurgation gave rise even among the clergy:
" Unde contigit, quod quandoque ad purgationem suam sui
similes criminosos adducunt, ut eis debeant in similibus
opportuno tempore respondere," which, "pestis contraria
omni juri," it behoved the priesthood to abolish, and to
adduce in proof the evidence of irreproachable witnesses.
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