Preliminary Programme

Rumour and reputation was undeniably important to the judicial praxis of early modern Scandinavia. In Sweden, dangerous rumours or ill reputation was routinely the basis of a legal investigation. This was the case for all manner of criminal charges, but especially in the investigations of serious crime, punishable by death. It is thus not surprising how these aspects attached themselves to individuals, crimes and investigations and followed them to the highest level of legal jurisdiction in early modern Sweden, the king’s revisional court, Justitierevisionen, in various forms.
By examining the prevailing role of reputation and rumour in the judicial system, this paper will explore the practices and uses of those concepts in petitioning, focusing on 1) reputation as a cause for petitioning, 2) rumour and reputation as narrative aspects of petitions for mercy, and finally, 3) how the revisional court processed such claims as legal or semi-legal argumentation. (Show less)

At the end of the Seventeenth-century and the beginning of the Eighteenth, the witch trials in Denmark began to decline and ultimately ceased to be brought before the court of law. However, it was not until 1866 that the law changed. The Regulation against witches and those who privy to them of 1617 remained in place, so in theory it should have been possible to still persecute and execute suspected witches according to the law. Rumours began not to be conceived as solid evidence, yet the prominent role of one’s reputation continued to be significant.
Instead of witch trials, cases with people signing away their souls to the Devil started to become more prominent. Here where cases with solid evidence of the diabolical contract, yet the accused did not receive a conviction to be burned. Some were executed for heresy, but with decapitation and not by burning, and the general opinion of the signing away one’s soul cases seems to have been progressively milder. The exceptions were the cases in which the people had a reputation for witchcraft or were educated enough to be perceived to have known better. It therefore indicates that one’s rumour and reputation continued to influence how an accusation of witchcraft or heresy resulted. (Show less)

In the last part of the eighteenth century, the Copenhagen prison workhouse contained a wide array of criminals: Beggars, vagrants, thieves and lewd women most frequently inhabited the prison workhouse, but from 1769, more serious offenders came to occupy the place, as well. Many of the convicts were serving sentences that were to last several years, and some were even facing a lifetime of coerced labour within the prison. Thus, an important aspect of the inmates’ lives was to have their sentence reduced in hope of an early release. However, such a release was depended on the prison overseer’s statement on their reputation; i.e. the reason they had been convicted, their behaviour within the prison and an estimation of their prospect of keeping an honest living if they were released. This paper explores how a good or a bad reputation could affect the punishment of imprisonment in the Copenhagen prison workhouse in the late eighteenth century. (Show less)