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  • A Domestic Secret:Marriage, Religion and Legal Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Sweden*
  • Maria Ågren

Visiting Sweden in 1674, the Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti characterized the Swedish constitution as aristocratic although disguised as monarchic. He shrewdly observed that, even though the king's government was commonly believed to depend upon the approval of the four estates, in reality this was mere 'comedy'. According to Magalotti, Sweden was governed by a small group of aristocrats who exerted their power through their roles as royal councillors. Depicting themselves as 'mediators' between the king and the people, they were able to play off the people against the king (and vice versa), thereby keeping the political initiative. Their use of the legal code was very important, Magalotti pointed out, as it imposed a number of restrictions upon the king's scope for action. As the aristocrats well knew, it would endanger the king's position not to pay attention to these provisions, since the people 'love their laws and will not easily tolerate having them trampled on'.1

We do not have to rely on Magalotti's words alone to claim that Sweden was a highly legalistic society in the early modern period. Indeed, Sweden's legalistic nature is one of the main features to emerge from the massive research into early modern court records carried out from the 1980s onwards. The historical development of Sweden as of the Nordic countries in general has been described as one characterized by 'extensive popular support for the law and the normal judicial forums'.2 Not only was the law codified from the Middle Ages onwards, but ordinary people [End Page 75] possessed a surprisingly high level of knowledge about its content, and used this knowledge actively to assert their rights in the regular courts and in the political arena. It has also been argued that the general attitude to law and to legal change was conservative: since the law was believed to epitomize the 'good old order' to which one should adhere, there was little enthusiasm for legal revision.3 Magalotti's words about the popular abhorrence of anything that expressed contempt of the law support this view.

Still, we know that Swedish law did undergo change in the early modern period. New interpretations of codified law were gradually introduced through legal practice, often under the pressure of changing economic and social realities. The legal code was also continuously amended and modified by royal statute law. Roman law exerted a certain influence. For instance, the gradual introduction of prenuptial marriage agreements in the seventeenth century has been ascribed to this legal tradition.4 Major legal reform, in the sense of revising the whole legal code, was contemplated from the early years of the seventeenth century, and it was definitely on the agenda from the 1680s, resulting finally in a new and comprehensive code in 1734. Even though this code has sometimes been described as essentially 'medieval', the characterization is flawed, as it does not acknowledge the substantial changes that were in fact carried through. For instance, whereas the medieval legal code said almost nothing about the recovery of debts, a full section devoted to this theme was now introduced.5

All this adds up to a rather intriguing problem. How are we to make sense of legal change in a society which manyobservers have described as legally conservative? How was it possible to alter the words ofwritten lawin a society where ordinary people knew what was present in the old law, and not only stuck to it but saw it as a guarantee of equity, and as an expression of the social contract [End Page 76] upon which society rested? How are legal conservatism and legal change to be simultaneously accommodated?

To solve this conundrum, it is of vital importance to understand the ways in which the authority of law worked. As Magalotti also pointed out, not everyone abided strictly by the law in seventeenth-century Sweden.6 Its strong authority did not mean that it was never infringed upon but, rather, that all infringements had to be explained and supported by arguments that respectfully took heed of the law, even when departing from it.

If...

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