Peripheral promises: political oaths as instruments of trust and control, Sweden 1520–1720

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how written culture influenced the relationship between kings and subjects during the seventeenth century by examining the use of political oaths. The use of political oaths dwindled in Europe at this time and researchers have placed the polemic scholarly debate on oaths in England at the centre of change. This article challenges this singular narrative by focusing on the peripheral state of Sweden and shows how underlying societal changes contributed to undermine oath-swearing. It argues that the performative nature of oaths was decisive in their usage. Oaths were aimed at guaranteeing coherence between actions and statements. The speech act’s objective was to establish trust between king and subjects. As such, oaths were adapted to an oral culture characterised by presence and spoken promises. During the seventeenth century, the emerging literate culture promoted written statements that enabled control that became diametrically opposed to such trust. Consequently, oaths lost their performative force to instill trust.

KEYWORDS:

• Performativity
• trust
• control
• coronations
• rebellions

Introduction

Political oaths between ruler and ruled were in active use across the early modern world.¹ During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they faced growing criticism and were eventually abolished as a constitutive feature of political culture in many European states. They were reduced to the status of “mere ritual”. Researchers explain the downfall of oaths as a consequence of ongoing processes of state formation as bureaucratization, nationalization, confessionalization and, later, secularization changed the prerequisites for the political contract, promoting implicit loyalty rather than explicit fidelity. England has often been identified as the epicentre of such changes. As Edward Vallance and David Martin Jones have convincingly argued, the many turns of the seventeenth century’s political struggles devalued the oath as an instrument.² In his pioneering study of the oath in European politics, Paolo Prodi argues that as the English crown increasingly used oaths to differentiate those subjects who were loyal to the crown from potential rebels, oaths accordingly lost their hitherto promissory character. Instead, political oaths were transformed into being assertory, that is, they confirmed loyalty rather than promised it. Subsequently, other instruments stepped in, more suitable for asserting subjects’ (and later citizens’) allegiance. In the surviving oaths, the state replaced God at the core of the oath, secularising it and thereby changing its metaphysical power.³

The aim of this article is to challenge this singular and unilinear narrative. Rather than an alternative explanation for the decline of oaths, I propose a complementary one, widening the gaze from the centre of change to its periphery: the early modern state of Sweden, where a similar proliferation of oath-taking and an ensuing debate on the nature of oaths did not occur. Nevertheless, oaths, following a period of decline, were eventually abolished in Sweden as well, during roughly the same period. Why did this happen? Moreover, the dominant narrative fails to account for the oaths that are still in use today, with the US being one of the more prominent examples.⁴ Oaths are being reinstated in other states: the UK introduced oaths for new citizens in 2004, Israel in 2010, and China for government officials in 2016.⁵ Similar policies for the reintroduction of oaths have been suggested for France in 1986 and for Sweden in 2014.⁶ Taken together, these examples suggest that the swearing of oaths is not contingent upon a religious (pre-)state system, but is compatible with modern – bureaucratised and secularised – nation-states. Whether assertory or promissory, they seem to have a place in politics. Previous models for explaining the use and decline of oaths in western society are clearly inadequate.

The present study suggests that inconsistencies in our understanding of oaths derive from a failure to appreciate what oaths accomplished. In order to explain why oaths were used and why this usage waned, I investigate the period leading up to their decline: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The apparent incompatibility between research on early modern oath decline and modern oath resurgence rests on the assumption that oaths are – and were – contracts. This assumption equates the oath with its articles, neglecting to pay attention to form and circumstances. In doing so, it fails to answer the question of why an oath is necessary once the articles themselves have been agreed upon. Part of what separates the oath from other promises or agreements, both during the early modern age and in some states today (e.g. the US), is its religious aspect. In the oath, God serves as witness and avenger if the oath is broken. According to the Christian beliefs of early modern Europe, this gave society an obligation to punish a perjurer to prevent God’s wrath from falling upon them all. A similar and related obligation was found in the legal system and the laws against perjury. However, as Giorgio Agamben argues, neither law nor religion can fully explain what an oath is and what it does. They are used to enforce the oath but cannot explain its originary, performative force.⁷ Instead, Agamben argues in favour of a performative understanding of oaths. By their self-referentiality – that is, by essentially creating what they state – oaths affirm the truth and trustworthiness of speech.⁸

The performativity of oaths represents the starting point for this article. However, there are problems with Agamben’s approach that need to be addressed. First, in his search for the “a-historical and immobile nucleus of the oath-event”, he fails to show how and why the usage of oaths changed over time. Second, although Agamben does explain how truth and trustworthiness are established in assertory oaths, he does not sufficiently explain how the same is done in promissory oaths.⁹ How did oaths establish a truth about future behaviour? Third, despite the importance Agamben assigns to oaths’ performativity, he fails to consider the performative situation as such. The oath is not just a linguistic act, it is an oral act.¹⁰ What relevance does this have to what an oath is and what it does?

Taking my cue from Agamben, I argue that political oaths in early modern societies were performative means of enabling trust. I also argue that oaths must be contextualised and that a study of what they accomplished needs to pay attention to both the circumstances surrounding any given oath – the “oath situation” – and the subsequent reinterpretation of that event. The political relationship between king and subjects was marked by uncertainty concerning the future actions of both parties. Such uncertainty can, in general, be managed in one of two ways: parties can either try to create mutual trust, or one can seek to establish control over the other. Oaths, I argue, enabled trust by establishing the swearer’s trustworthiness. However, as state formation escalated, royal powers gained more and more instruments to establish control over their subjects. Efforts to enforce control contradicted the previous ideal of a trusting relationship between king and subjects, and effectively diminished the usefulness of oaths, resulting in their demise. Their reappearance today can be understood as a reaction to present-day states’ reduced capacity for control and the perceived crisis in trust characteristic of contemporary politics. Furthermore, oaths’ demise is linked to the emergence of a literate society, which emphasised controllable oath-taking on paper and form, rather than its ability to establish trust through its performative force. My investigation suggests that the devaluation of oaths was related to the written form gaining superiority over their oral utterance.¹¹

In the following, I address first the issues of performativity, uncertainty, trust, and control. I operationalise these concepts for a historical study on oaths, showing how and why this perspective is better suited for understanding what an oath is and does in comparison to previous attempts. Then, I analyse the use of political oaths in Sweden. Similar to England, early modern Sweden had a long tradition of oaths being used widely in juridical and social settings.¹² Unlike England, however, oaths in Sweden were neither further politicised nor criticised during the seventeenth century. There was no public discussion on the interpretation of oaths. Doctrinal oaths were not used, only loyalty oaths. Sweden thus lacked the main ingredients that scholars have identified as crucial to explaining why the use of oaths waned. Still, usage did change, albeit quietly. Sweden thereby offers an opportunity to study the slow-working causes for the demise of oaths in European politics, which underlay the more rapid change in England, whose exceptional case has come to serve as the grand model explaining their downfall. I then present my findings chronologically, juxtaposing the use of oaths in the sixteenth century with that of the seventeenth century, and highlight significant alterations in practice. In the last section, I return to the performative force of words and discuss how the form and context of the oath situation steered this force towards either trust or control.

The performative force of oaths

In his speech act theory, J. L. Austin distinguishes between constative and performative utterances: while the former state facts about the world, the latter act on the world. This distinction is not as clear as Austin suggests at the beginning of his book – at the end, he makes the qualification that all utterances in fact have a performative potential.¹³ Some utterances are, however, more obviously performative than others. Oaths and promises are often claimed to be the ultimate performative actions.¹⁴

Performative utterances aim to create what is said; they are self-referential. By adding the words “I swear” to a sentence, it can be transformed from stating facts to changing reality. But the utterance itself is not enough for this to happen. The entire speech situation influences the performative force of an utterance and affects how it is received and understood by those listening. Declaring “I swear” on a theatre stage, for example, has a different meaning from announcing it at a coronation.¹⁵ This insight has led scholars such as John Walter and Laura Stewart to emphasise the social context of oath-swearing when discussing its effects on early modern political culture.¹⁶

All utterances risk failing to deliver the desired effect and becoming instead infelicitous utterances.¹⁷ According to Jacques Derrida, Austin does not acknowledge the full extent of this risk. Not only are speech acts subject to infelicities at the moment they are uttered, they are also subject to reinterpretations afterwards. In fact, the felicitousness of a performative utterance, such as an oath, can never be fully attained or guaranteed – a degree of uncertainty always remains.¹⁸ Derrida’s critique indicates that when studying a performative utterance, it is not enough to analyse the performative situation in which the utterance took place. It is also necessary to analyse the continuing reinterpretations of that utterance, that is, how its uncertainty has been handled over time.

The intended effect of an oath is to guarantee the truth of a statement. According to Agamben, oaths do this not through the threat of religious and societal damnation, but by transforming a statement of facts into a performative utterance, they redirect focus away from the object and towards the subject, that is, to the swearer.¹⁹ Agamben’s intricate theory of what an oath is and does aims to explain the oath’s performative force. But by focusing on the swearer, he neglects the fact that the oath is dependent upon at least two parties: the one who swears it and the other who receives it. Why, one must also ask, does the other party acknowledge the oath and accept it as truth?

I suggest that the reciprocity of the oath can best be explained by taking account of the entire speech situation and by introducing concepts of trust and trustworthiness into the equation. Trust can help us understand how promissory oaths establish a form of truth concerning future behaviour. If someone says “yesterday I worked until ten”, that someone is, in most cases, fully aware of whether this is the truth or not. Still, no one can guarantee the truth of statements such as “I swear to be loyal to you for the rest of my life”. The receiver of a promissory oath does not only have to trust the swearer to speak the truth – that is, trust the truth of the words themselves – but also trust that the swearer has both the intention and capacity to uphold the oath on an infinite number of future occasions. The focus of the speech situation needs both to guarantee the truth of the logos itself, as Agamben argues, and to establish and amplify the trustworthiness of the swearer.²⁰ Contrary to trust, trustworthiness is a personal trait. It is attached to the subject, not an assessment of that person’s future potential but of the person’s present intentions.²¹ The oath lets the swearer take on the position of a trustworthy subject by shifting focus from the object of what is sworn to the subject swearing it. In doing so, it shifts focus from potential future actions to the present state.

Trust has two further characteristics that are crucial for understanding oaths and their performative force. First, as established by Karen Jones and Richard Holton, trust has a normative dimension, which separates it from the mere reliance on someone. If a person breaks our trust, we are entitled to blame that person.²² Second, when we trust someone, we refrain from other ways of seeking ensurance for ourselves of their future actions. Trust is deemed sufficient.²³ These characteristics will prove valuable when investigating how early modern society used and assessed oaths.

The above suggests that to examine oaths, we need to pay attention to the speech act and investigate how uncertainty was kept at bay. But we also need to extend our investigation to later reinterpretations of that initial speech act. In early modern terms, this moves us away from scholarly debates and instead to concrete historical circumstances: that is, to coronations – the oath-taking speech act par excellence – and to rebellions and wars when the meaning of these same oaths were recalled by kings and rebels alike. I have examined sources from Swedish coronations, rebellions, and wars from 1520, the date of the earliest preserved coronation oath of Sweden, up until 1718, the fall of absolutist rule.²⁴ The main source materials, apart from the oaths themselves, are the ordines for coronations and other oath settings, parliamentary records, and letters and communications between the crown and subjects during these defining moments in Swedish history. In Sweden, all four estates (Nobles, Clergy, Burghers, and Peasants) had representation in parliament during the early modern period, although the peasant estate did not keep its own protocols until the eighteenth century. The burgher estate has left only the occasional short note. We sometimes find the opinions of the lower estates in the fuller protocols surviving from the higher estates, but only a limited number of first-hand accounts are available. Letters written during rebellions provide somewhat better material for the lower estates’ opinions on oaths, but are often limited to discussing those opinions that conformed to the public ideal. Despite these limitations, the available source materials do allow us to form a coherent understanding of how oaths were used and what motivated the usage of oaths during two centuries of Swedish politics.

The sixteenth century: trusting the word

Sweden’s sixteenth century was a tumultuous one, starting with a series of conflicts that led to the break up of the Kalmar Union with Denmark-Norway, followed by the Reformation and the deposition of two kings. Partly because of these conflicts, coronations acquired significance as occasions to show political unity. All Swedish coronations of the sixteenth century – Gustav I’s in 1528, Erik XIV’s in 1561, Johan III’s in 1569, and Sigismund’s in 1594 – took place in the cathedral of Uppsala, Sweden’s ecclesiastical centre. Although they were outshone by their European counterparts, this was not for lack of effort, but rather for lack of funds; the crown’s ambition was to keep up with the status displayed by other royal houses.²⁵ The cathedral was richly decorated for all coronations and every nobleman as well as select representatives from other estates were obligated to attend.

The swearing of oaths took centre stage during these ceremonies. After a sermon, the king was clothed in his coronation robe and fell to his knees, placed one hand on the Bible, and then recited his oath. Afterwards, he received the crown and was anointed, before taking his place on the throne.²⁶ The king’s oath thus preceded that of the subjects, indicating that the king had to recognise his obligations prior to receiving the right to rule. Such was the established procedure in most European countries, and had been since the late Middle Ages.²⁷ A few notable men swore their oaths to the king personally during the ceremony. For other groups, oaths were sworn during the homage ceremonies, following the coronation.²⁸

Despite the key role played by oaths in these coronations, the oaths themselves are not preserved. Surviving written and signed oaths from sixteenth-century Sweden are in fact rare; not even the kings’ oaths are preserved, and they are only available to us as formularies or in accounts and reports from those in attendance at the coronations. While this is partly due to the loss of source material over time, attrition does not provide the whole story.²⁹ Intriguingly enough, in the laws, letters, and coronation ordines, little mention is made of written oaths. Instead, references to the oaths focus on memories of the oral act, suggesting that speech rather than documents were what mattered when historical actors deliberated about oaths. Furthermore, several different versions of the kings’ oaths are mentioned, with significant discrepancies in key phrases. Not only did kings and their subjects sometimes disagree on what had been sworn, there are also examples of kings remembering their oath differently on different occasions. King Gustav I’s oath exemplifies this. One short oath is preserved, written inconspicuously on a piece of paper without a signature. It does not correspond to the form of the king’s oath as prescribed by the Country Law of Cristopher, the law that was in effect throughout the period studied here. Nor does it correspond to what rebels accused Gustav of swearing a few years after his coronation, nor to what the king himself claimed to have sworn in response. All in all, these statements provide us with four different versions of his oath.³⁰ It is likewise unclear what Erik XIV and Johan III swore at their respective coronations; neither of them seems to have faithfully adopted the oath according to the form provided in the laws.³¹

To understand this paradox – that oaths were debated but still not preserved verbatim – we need to pay close attention to the speech act itself. According to both coronation ordines and reports, the oral act seems to have been the decisive moment; frequent attention is given to the utterance as such. First, the body of the swearer received careful attention. In 1561 and 1569, it is noted that Erik XIV and Johan III respectively knelt on a prayer stool and placed one hand on the Bible during the swearing of the oath. The noblemen, who also swore oaths during the ceremonies, likewise kneeled, and raised their right hands to the sky with two fingers extended.³² According to Swedish law, the king was to “swear his oath on the Bible and hold relics in his hand”. Relics seem to have been eliminated from coronation ceremonies during the sixteenth century, likely a consequence of the Reformation, which started in Sweden with Gustav I’s accession to the throne.³³ Although reinterpreted, the gestures surrounding oath-swearing retained an air of submission to spiritual powers.³⁴

Secondly, swearers were required to speak loudly and clearly and without hesitation. The position of the oath-swearer at the centre of the room ensured that all participants could observe the event. Bystanders thus seem to have worked as witnesses to the ceremony, demonstrated by their recollections of it in later letters.³⁵ Moreover, the participants actively ensured that the swearer displayed trustworthiness by examining his behaviour and assessing his intentions. This is most noticeable from King Sigismund’s coronation in 1594. Sigismund, who was a Catholic, inherited the Swedish throne the year before, when the outcome of the Swedish Reformation was still uncertain. He was immediately suspected of Counter-Reformation inclinations. The oath should have been an instrument to help build trust in this volatile situation. Instead, in February 1594 at the coronation in Uppsala, the performative situation failed. It was reported that the king’s uncle, Duke Karl, interrupted the ceremony by stepping forward from the audience. He did so because of the king’s failure to hold his hand steady in the air while swearing the royal oath. The duke commanded him to keep his hand and fingers raised during the entire oath and then stepped back in line.³⁶ Although Karl interrupted under the pretence of wanting to enable trust between king and subjects by making sure that the King’s oath was sworn correctly, he effectively exposed the utter lack of trust between him and the king, openly questioning Sigismund’s actions and, hence, his intentions. Displays of mutual distrust between the two continued, both at the homage ceremony – during which Karl insisted against tradition that the King’s full oath should be proclaimed to those present, so that they would know what had been promised – and throughout the entirety of Sigismund’s short reign (1592–1599).³⁷ Karl repeatedly questioned Sigismund’s ability as ruler and his commitment to upholding his oath. A few years after the coronation, distrust erupted into a full-blown rebellion, during which Karl overthrew Sigismund and claimed the throne for himself. Sigismund’s failure to uphold his oath was, again, one of the main accusations levelled against him.³⁸

The 1594 coronation differs significantly from others in the sixteenth century, during which there do not seem to have been any interruptions. Instead, all participants seem to have followed the given order of the ceremony. In following an established tradition, the oath-swearers signalled their honest intentions and their willingness to conform to the norms of the political community. The use of the Bible, which called upon God as witness and avenger, can be interpreted as working in this direction as well, since the swearer showed himself willing to submit himself to severe punishment should he break his oath. As Russell Hardin observes, by making the costs of breaking a promise high enough, we are forced to take these costs into consideration, influencing our present intentions.³⁹ Future punishments can thereby inflate the trustworthiness of the person swearing.

The swearing of a coronation oath thus appears to have been a primarily oral performance, deemed essential in ratifying the position of the crown. Despite its many shortcomings in providing an accurate memory of a situation, oral communication has certain advantages over written communication. Most importantly, it provides the speaker with additional tools to convey sincerity, such as gestures, intonation, and eye contact – in other words, bodies talk. The same tools can also be used by the receiver to assess the sender’s intentions, and, should uncertainty linger, the receiver can question the sender directly.⁴⁰ As a result, oral communication enhances the performative force of an utterance and excels in establishing the sender’s trustworthiness.⁴¹ Seen from this perspective, the oral dimensions of coronation oaths helped create trust between king and subjects, as the oath situation enabled the parties to performatively establish their mutual trustworthiness.

With the oral oath, body, voice, and witnesses were used to ensure the trustworthiness of the swearers during coronation ceremonies in sixteenth-century Sweden. The oral act seems to have been the decisive moment in these oaths. But why was the oath not preserved in written form, if it was continuously questioned and debated, as I have suggested? In order to understand this, we need to go deeper into the facets of oral communication and examine how historial agents subsequently interpreted the coronation oaths they had witnessed. While orality provides performative speech acts with a further means to convey intention, it also has certain limitations. First, it requires presence, whereas the written form enables communication in absence. During the sixteenth century, especially the first half, the kings of Sweden still led an itinerant life, meeting their subjects at markets and other meeting places.⁴² These personal meetings reflect the dynamics of power relationships in this period, when the state and the person of the king were not separate. As Jack Goody argues, personal meetings between ruler and the ruled are fundamental to oral societies. They enable subjects to confirm their submission and to show themselves as non-threatening towards the ruler. Absence, on the other hand, can be perceived as threatening behaviour because it implies a lack of trust or control.⁴³

Another limitation of orality is its ephemeral character. To be remembered, oral oaths were dependent on reiterations. Numerous letters of the sixteenth century, both during peace and war, recall previously sworn oaths, including their oath situations. Oaths were said to have been sworn “with hand and mouth”, bringing the actions of bodies to mind.⁴⁴ While such references could signify written signatures on oath documents, we have only sparse mentions elsewhere of these documents. Such statements therefore more likely refer to the gestures involved in the swearing and might have worked as a sort of mnemonic device. When specific articles of the oath were referred to in these letters, it was most often in vague and general terms, enabling the parties to reinterpret them for current purposes.⁴⁵

During peacetime, letters from Swedish peasants and burghers alike affirmed their trust in the king, who was presented as honest and truthful. The political relationship was intact. During wars and rebellions, however, the king’s failure to live up to commonly held ideals was scrutinised. One of the main accusations against him was that the he had broken his coronation oath.⁴⁶ Gustav I’s accusatory letter denouncing Christian II in 1521 serves as an example:

He has thus not only tarnished his royal dignity and honour, and sunk it in innocent blood and thrown it away, but also forgotten, and in public betrayed, his royal oath, which he has sworn on the holy Sacrament … .⁴⁷

The letter evoked the original act of oath-swearing, while referring to the actual wording of the oath only in general terms to explain how the trust between Christian II and his subjects had been broken. Similar accusations were made against Erik XIV after he was deposed by his two brothers in 1568.⁴⁸

The argument went both ways. During rebellions, rulers frequently accused the rebels of breaking their oaths as subjects, prompting the ruler to punish them. Consider the following letter in which Christian II accused Gustav of starting an unlawful rebellion, describing the rebels’ actions as

this great harmful upheaval and revolt, that Gustav [I] Eriksson and others with him … have started against the homage, Christian faith and honour that Swedish common men have declared and sworn to our most beloved merciful lord King Christian … .⁴⁹

After Gustav became king, he would repeatedly use similar arguments against rebels as he urged them to stand down and remember the oaths they had sworn, as indeed would subsequent rulers.⁵⁰ Open letters such as these were sent nationally and internationally during the sixteenth century, by kings and rebels alike, in order to legitimise both the rebellions and their often brutal suppression.⁵¹ As seen from the examples above, kings and subjects emphasised that breaking an oath was both blasphemous and dishonourable, alluding to the religious and social damnation that followed a broken oath. Together, the quotations portray the reciprocity that oaths entailed. If one party broke the oath, the other party was allowed to react.

Reciprocity and the potential for retribution have led scholars to argue for the contractual nature of the oath. Accordingly, researchers have interpreted references to oaths in times of conflict as accusations blaming one party for failing to live up to individual articles contained in the oaths.⁵² However, a closer look at what was actually said in these letters reveals a different focus. Rebels and rulers only seldom reiterated articles of the oaths. Instead, they concentrated on the relationship that the oath had created and claimed that this relationship had now been broken. They presented the other party as worthy of blame and claimed that they could no longer trust him. The breaking of trust was in fact described as one of the worst offences, such as in the following example from 1522 in which Christian II is compared to heathen tyrants:

Where in Christianity, or even under heathen tyrants, have you heard or read such gruesome tyranny about a king or prince? … Because even if they have caused saints and Christians many pains and torments, they still have not broken their offered promise and trust.⁵³

To break an oath was a worse offence than simply violating the individual articles of the oath because it destroyed the basis of the political relationship: the trust between king and subjects. In rebellions, accusers directed attention to the oaths taken at the coronation and reinterpreted the former speech situation as dishonest and infelicitous. Events were thus interpreted in normative terms.

Despite the introduction of printing and the wide use of letters, sixteenth-century Sweden was still a predominantly oral society, like the rest of Europe. Literacy levels outside of society’s elite were very low, and “the literate mind” had not yet taken hold.⁵⁴ The investigation of the use of oaths in coronations, wars, and rebellions of sixteenth-century Sweden demonstrates that oaths were adapted to this oral society and that their oral, performative dimensions enhanced the ability of oaths to instill trust by establishing the swearer’s trustworthiness. Gestures served as aides-mémoires, extending oaths’ force in time and battling the constant uncertainty that lingered around performative actions.

The seventeenth century: control of the written form

Whereas the use of oaths formed a key topic of debate among and within the political communities of the major powers of seventeenth-century Europe, such as Spain, England and France, there is little evidence for this debate reverberating in Sweden. At first glance, as the internal turmoil of the sixteenth century settled, oaths became institutionalized: their formulation ossified into written forms and were kept in archives for future use and reference. They were regularly used in coronations and referred to during wars and rebellions without anyone questioning their raison d’être.

At second glance, however, certain aspects of them were questioned, more subtly than they were in England, but also earlier in time. When oaths for the upcoming coronation of Gustav II Adolf in 1617 were discussed at the parliament, the noble estate declared in their joint answer to the king,

It may be considered to be unnecessary to ask or request that He [the king] confirms His subsequent regiment by oath … as everyone and each for himself has carefully learned and experienced that His Royal Majesty’s words and discourse have been as steady and firm as oaths.⁵⁵

According to the estate, the king’s oath was superfluous because he had already proven himself trustworthy. Significantly, the Nobles did not question the utility of an oath in general, only whether they needed to demand one from this particular monarch. They nevertheless appreciated Gustav’s offer to perform the oath, and in the ensuing coronation, all oaths were sworn according to formulas that were now referred to as traditional.⁵⁶ The tradition was in fact invented. At the previous coronation of Karl IX in 1607, oath formulas were still being altered at the last minute, and because Karl had dethroned Sigismund, his coronation was mostly designed to legitimise his position before a world that still regarded him as an unlawful usurper.⁵⁷ With all the force of a successfully invented tradition, oath formulas remained unchanged until the end of the century, although the need to swear the king’s oath was again questioned during the parliament that preceded Queen Christina’s coronation in 1649. Like Gustav, Christina swore her oath all the same.⁵⁸

The institutionalization of oaths and perceptions of the superfluity of the king’s oath both indicate that the function of oaths had indeed changed. One reason for the transformation was the timing of the coronations. Most Swedish monarchs of the seventeenth century ruled the country for several years before their actual coronations, which were postponed due to minority as well as the many costly wars in which Sweden was engaged. Gustav II Adolf became king as a minor in 1611, but was not crowned until 1617. Christina received the crown as a minor in 1632 and was declared of age in 1644, but crowned only in 1650. Karl X was an exception, crowned on the same day he took rule in 1655, following Christina’s abdication; conversely, Karl XI became king in 1660, reached his majority in 1672, and was crowned in 1675. The final ruler, Karl XII, gained rulership as a minor in 1697, but was quickly declared of age and crowned as a sovereign king half a year later. Postponing coronations was possible because the relationship between king and subjects was already, according to the Estates, established and characterised by trust. Oaths were therefore unnecessary.

Other arguments suggest that the change in the role of oath-taking was more fundamental, rather than merely responded to practical circumstances. In 1650, the Council deliberated over whether servants of the appointed successor, Karl Gustav, should present oaths to Queen Christina. Before yielding to tradition, the senechal of the realm, Per Brahe, argued that “the oath accomplishes nothing, we are still pledged to the King and our fatherland”.⁵⁹ Moreover, during the coronation parliaments of 1654 and 1675, it was proposed that oath formulas that no longer corresponded to the mode of procedure should be changed, so as not to entice anyone to swear falsely. The suggestions were rejected. Such changes were deemed “unnecessary”, since everyone was familiar with the new procedures anyway.⁶⁰ Slowly, oaths became increasingly detached from processes aimed at shaping political relationships and henceforth acquired a symbolic meaning instead. They were no longer perceived as establishing a future bond – they affirmed a pre-existing one. This transformation did not follow a lively debate stimulated by an excessive use of oaths; rather, it preceded that debate.

Nevertheless, some oaths were still considered necessary and may therefore help us understand better the causes of the transformation. The wars of the seventeenth century resulted in the significant expansion of Sweden’s borders, and at the height of its power, the Swedish empire encompassed present-day Finland and Estonia, as well as parts of Russia, Latvia, and Germany, surrounding the Baltic sea. The provinces in the south and southeast of present-day Sweden (Halland, Bohuslän, Scania, and Blekinge) as well as some provinces in the northeast (Jämtland, Härjedalen, and, for a short period, Trondheim) were also conquered during this century. Sworn oaths were considered to be crucial to fully incorporate these areas into the Swedish realm.⁶¹

Oaths were sworn as soon as possible after a successful territorial conquest or following the conclusion of a peace treaty. For example, after the conquest of Jämtland in 1645, Queen Christina urged her governor to “promptly travel [to Jämtland], to accept said province on our behalf, and receive the oath from its inhabitants”.⁶² Similar haste was recommended for other provinces and conquests over the century.⁶³ The practice shows us that oaths could still be used to initiate and structure a relationship between subjects and their monarch, but that new subjects were now singled out specifically for practices of oath-taking, not least because there was no presumption that new subjects would feel a tacit loyalty towards their new monarch. Such trust had to be created, and oaths were used for this purpose. As in the sixteenth century, these oaths were presented orally to the king’s representative.⁶⁴

Still, there is evidence that this procedure also transformed over time, albeit in a somewhat different way. In a letter from 1644, when Jämtland had just been conquered but not yet ceded by the Danish king, Queen Christina insisted that oaths should be collected from inhabitants of the province in both oral and written form: “So that Her Royal Majesty may rest even more assured of the country’s inhabitants’ fidelity and steadfastness, Her Royal Majesty considers it necessary to compose the oath in writing in its correct form”.⁶⁵

Since war soon erupted again, we do not know whether these oaths were actually written down. But the oaths of 1645 were, and they are preserved to this day with the signatures of the twelve representatives of each district. According to the queen’s letter, the written form was used to guarantee the inhabitants’ loyalty towards her. But she also provided other reasons. The oath was to be written in two copies, one to be kept on site “to remind and correct the peasants”, and the other to be sent to Stockholm.⁶⁶ The queen was not satisfied with the previous measures employed to remind peasants of their obligations in case of trouble, so she sought to forestall such trouble by ensuring that local communities had a constant, verbatim reminder of the oath they had sworn. The written form was used to provide her with ways of handling future disobedience and enforcing responsibility. It was thus used to facilitate some measure of control.

During the seventeenth century, written oaths were on the rise in Swedish society. This is evident not only from requests for written oaths from new territories, such as the one above, but also from the growing number of oaths preserved in the archives from this period onwards. A small number of these consist of coronation oaths, which are better preserved for this period than before, and oaths from new territories.⁶⁷ However, the majority of the preserved oaths are those of civil servants and military personnel.⁶⁸

Oaths of office were sworn when an office-holder assumed his position. For higher positions, oaths were sworn orally in front of the king himself, but for lower positions, the king’s representative or a supervisor would do. Certain offices, such as that of the bailiff, had included a written oath even in the sixteenth century. However, during the seventeenth century, written oaths were becoming the rule rather than the exception. One reason for this was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide the growing administration with personal meetings with the king. Practices of itinerant kingship declined during the second half of the sixteenth century, and during the seventeenth century, meetings increasingly took the form of parliaments in Stockholm.⁶⁹ As the administration itself grew, the sheer number of civil servants made it impossible for the king to personally meet everyone. Written oaths provided a way to overcome these difficulties.

The transition from oral to written oaths changed the nature of oaths, as more attention was paid to their formulas and wording. In 1687, shortly after the introduction of absolutism in the Swedish realm, the opening lines for all civil and military oaths were updated in order to better align with the altered power structure. In these lines, the king’s indisputable claim to power and the “unreserved right of the royal house to inherit the kingdom” was asserted.⁷⁰ The scope of this reform should not be underestimated. For Karl XI, it was considered significant enough to request that all civil and military servants, not only the newly instated, retake their oaths of office according to the new formula.⁷¹ As the civil administration included more than 1000 people and the military sector even more, this was a massive enterprise. In instructions sent out to all regions, King Karl XI stressed that while oral oaths could wait until the office-holder had other businesses to attend to in the town where his superior was stationed, written oaths were to be sent to the chancellery in Stockholm immediately.⁷² There, assigned administrators devoted their meticulous attention to the written oaths. Were any major or even minor errors found, the servant had to retake the oath and send a new copy to the chancellery. The administrators’ commitment to their task is evident from a stray document containing remarks on colonels’ oaths:

In Åke Ulfsparre’s, on the second page, final row, it says “rightness” instead of “rights”; N: on the third page, instead of “field battle”, it says “battle field”! …

In Per Stålhammar’s, instead of “most powerful”, it says “powerful” et in lieutenant-colonel von Schaar’s … .

In Axel von Schaar’s … on the fourth page, “shall” is left out and “have” should be “has”. On the 5^th page, it says “excepting”, should be “excluding”.⁷³

Every word was to be identical to the wording of the formulary and it needed to be spelled correctly. When everything was in order, the oaths were placed in the archive for safekeeping. According to Karl XI, this was done “so that when in one way or another a shift of office occurs, those who follow shall know by what they have to abide”.⁷⁴ Even so, every successor to an office had to swear and sign oaths of their own, according to the same letter. The preserved oaths should thus be understood as constantly available reminders of what had been sworn and as a way to make sure that if someone abused his office or misused his authority, he could be held accountable on the grounds of his oath.

Together, the use of coronation oaths as well as oaths of loyalty from the people in newly acquired territories and government officials indicate that oaths no longer served simply as a means to instill trust in a political relationship. Instead, they gradually came to be used to establish control over subjects, and, as a result, they came to resemble contracts. A final example of altered oath usage strengthens this conclusion. Sixteenth-century monarchs issued regular reminders to peasants about the oaths they had sworn and the risks of violating royal trust should they engage in rebellion. Seventeenth-century monarchs ceased to issue reminders of such oaths. In fact, Swedish monarchs ceased to write letters directly to peasants around the kingdom altogether. Instead, communication went through governors, district court judges, priests, and the like, who were urged to quell uprisings and discontent. If they failed, their ability to uphold their oaths of office and to discharge the duties of their positions was brought into question.⁷⁵ Royal communication was thus no longer aimed at reestablishing trust between king and people, but was redirected towards the civil administration and aimed at ensuring control, through officials, over local communities.

Notably, the change from trust to control followed a shift from oral to written oaths. But how should we understand the causality behind this shift? On the one hand, the emergence of a predominantly written culture depended on the expanding network of civil administration and military presence. The growing administration demanded paper trails and archives in order to function properly, which in turn served to make control of local communities possible. On the other hand, the written form constituted another form of control. Each word and article stood out as significant in and by themselves, and the text separated them from the swearer. Thus, focus in the oaths shifted from the persons swearing them to the words stated in them – from subject to object – as shown by the zeal with which written oaths were scrutinised.

Conclusions

During the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, political oaths were ultimately abolished in Sweden, as well as in many other countries. Their slow demise displays their great symbolic value for political relationships, a value still seen today. Their position is, however, weak compared to their fundamental standing in medieval and early modern political culture. In this article, I have investigated how oaths lost their place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by turning my gaze to a country on the periphery of European political debate: the Swedish Empire. I have shown that in a polity largely built upon oral, direct communication, with an itinerant kingship and limited capacity for control, oaths were used to establish the trustworthiness of both ruler and ruled, enabling trust. When oaths were broken, both parties argued that trust either had to be restored or was unattainable, thereby legitimising rebellions or the harsh punishments meted out to rebels.

Yet, while trust is one way of handling the uncertainty of political relationships, it is not the only way. During the seventeenth century, the monarchs of Sweden sought to establish control instead. The use of oaths was profoundly influenced by this transformation. Concurrently, oaths were transformed into written testaments affirming the loyalty of subjects and office-holders – they became affirmatory, as previously acknowledged by Prodi and others. The written form made it easier for the state to enforce responsibility from its servants and subjects. An expanding bureaucracy and rising levels of literacy accompanied this process. In Sweden, the rise of the latter was particularly rapid. Already by the end of the seventeenth century, a high proportion of the population had basic reading and writing skills, and in some counties the figure was as high as 75%.⁷⁶ Other European countries followed closely behind.⁷⁷ Intriguingly, investigations of seventeenth-century literacy levels in England show that the change was accompanied by an increased frequency of written oaths there as well.⁷⁸

What did the transformation of the oath situation, from a predominantly oral institution to one defined by written culture, entail? As shown in this article, more weight was given to the specific wordings of the oaths, suggesting that the articles themselves became increasingly important. Focus shifted from the person swearing the oath (the subject) to what was promised in them (the object). As stated in the beginning of this article, trustworthiness is a trait pertaining to the subject and demonstrated in the oral act by close monitoring of the person’s conduct while swearing. In the written oaths, no extra measures seem to have been taken by the crown to ensure the swearer’s trustworthiness. Instead, the temporal framework in which the oath operated was extended, as efforts were later made to enforce the terms of an oath. The rulers were content so long as the written promises could be examined if a conflict were to arise. The written oaths thus overcame the ephemeral aspect of oral oaths, enabling control over time and space.

Consequently, a main conclusion from my investigation is that literacy and the emergence of a predominantly written society had a decisive impact on the use of oaths. It has previously been suggested by Walter J. Ong that utterances are likely to have different illocutionary forces and meanings in predominantly oral as opposed to written cultures.⁷⁹ The findings of this article support Ong’s hypothesis. Written documents lack several ways of enhancing and steering the performative force of an utterance, such as intonation, body language, and eye movements. According to David R. Olson, during the rise of literacy in the early modern period, these deficiencies were tackled by the invention of new performative terms used to define the writer’s intentions, such as “I assert”, which gradually became more common during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the English language.⁸⁰ The development of new performative terms suggests that literacy challenged a previous way of demonstrating trustworthiness and, in effect, of establishing trust.

My investigation furthermore shows that the search by Agamben and others for the “a-historical and immobile nucleus of the oath-event” conceals the oath’s historical contingency. Previous studies of changes in oath usage have failed to acknowledge how oaths acquired their performative force. In addition to focusing singularly on the words used in oaths and the words used for demanding them, this study has brought attention to the performative situation and the uncertainty surrounding performative force. In doing so, I have shown that oaths not only turned from being promissory to being assertory, but that they also shifted from being used for instilling trust to establishing control.

Internet

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38355373 (visited 5 July 2021)

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/10/israel.loyalty.oath/?hpt=T2(visited5 July 2021).

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-07/02/content_21160295.htm (visited 5 July 2021)

Archival sources

Swedish National Archive (SNA)

Det odelade kansliet: A1 RP vol. 65

Eder vol. 8, 317

Royal Archive (RA) vol. K13, K14, K16, K17, K19

Royal Registry (RR) vol. 38, 40, 214, 222, 229, 270, 313, 320, 509, 532

Riksdagsacta vol. R4777, R4778, R4808

Acknowledgments

First, I am grateful for the very helpful responses that I received through the peer review process. I am also most grateful to prof. Maria Sjöberg and prof. Leif Runefelt for their many helpful and stimulating comments on this project, and to Wojtek Jezierski for his astute remarks on a previous draft. Thank you also to Johan och Jakob Söderbergs stiftelse and Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for example, Esders, “‘Faithful Believers’”; Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy; Prodi, Das Sakrament der Herrschaft.

2. Vallance, “State Oaths”; Jones, Conscience and Allegiance. For other excellent works on the decline of oaths in England and other centre-stage European countries, see Condren, Argument and Authority; Hill, Society and Puritanism; von Holenstein, “Seelenheil und Untertanenpflicht”; Questier, “Loyalty, Religion and State Power”. This conclusion is questioned in Walter, Covenanting Citizens, p. 260, but not investigated.

3. Prodi, Das Sakrament der Herrschaft, pp. 375–440.

4. Byrne, Making Citizens, pp. 38–71; Orgad, “Liberalism, Allegiance, and Obedience”.

5. Regarding Great Britain, se Goodman, Immigration and Membership Politics, pp. 29–30 and p. 146. See also http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38355373. Regarding Israel, see http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/10/israel.loyalty.oath/?hpt=T2. Regarding China, see http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-07/02/content_21160295.htm.

6. For the proposition in France, see Goodman, Immigration and Membership Politics, 189. For the proposition in Sweden, see Lång and Jansson, “Medborgarskapets betydelse”.

7. Agamben, The Sacrament of Language, pp. 32–4.

8. Agamben, The Sacrament of Language, p. 65. See also Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, p. 89; Walter, Covenanting Citizens, pp. 197–8.

9. Assertory oaths affirm past or present doctrines or states of affair, whereas promissory oaths promise a certain behaviour in the future, see Kolmer, Promissorische Eide im Mittelalter, pp. 52–4.

10. See for example Agamben, The Sacrament of Language, pp. 5–6; Prodi, Das Sakrament Der Herrschaft, pp. 20–1; Benveniste, “L’expression du Serment”, pp. 81–2.

11. See for example Uslaner, “The Study of Trust”, p. 6.

12. On the use of oaths in England, see Jones, Conscience and Allegiance, pp. 14–62; Vallance, “State Oaths”, pp. 4–35; Spurr, “A Profane History”. On the use of oaths in Sweden, see Ankarloo, “Kommentar til Hans Eyvind Næss”; Nauman, “Winning a War”; Nauman, “Från ära till skuld”.

13. Austin, How to Do Things, pp. 133–47.

14. Ibid., p. 9; Felman, The Scandal, pp. 3–4.

15. Austin, How to Do Things, pp. 138–9.

16. Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution, pp. 89–121; Walter, Covenanting Citizens, pp. 197–243.

17. Austin, How to Do Things, pp. 18–19.

18. Derrida and Düttman, “‘Perhaps or Maybe’”; Derrida, Limited Inc, pp. 15–19. For other critiques of Austin, see Searle, Speech Acts; Fish, “With the Compliments”.

19. Agamben, The Sacrament of Language, pp. 55–6.

20. Ibid., p. 59.

21. Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, pp. 28–53; Cook et al., “Introduction”, pp. 1–5.

22. Jones, “Trust and Terror”; Holton, “Deciding to Trust”.

23. Gillespie, “Contact without Transformation”, p. 213; Luhmann, Trust and Power, pp. 73–4.

24. In total, the source material encompasses ten coronations, 45 rebellions and several wars. For each coronation, coronation oaths of king, council, and the four estates of Sweden (nobles, priests, burghers and peasants) have been considered, as well as documentations on preparations, negotiations, and eye-witness reports. The studies of rebellions and wars are based on letters between king, council, rebels, subjects, and enemies, as well as court protocols, sentences passed, and declarations. Furthermore, protocols of the Swedish riksdag (parliament) in connection to these events have been examined for additional information. In all, the sources amount to several thousand pages, hand-written as well as published. For this article, references are limited to the essential, but a fuller report is available in Nauman, Ordens kraft.

25. Grundberg, Ceremoniernas makt, pp. 75–94 and pp. 120–5.

26. Sources regarding the coronation of Gustav I are scarce, see Westman, “Ett par fynd”. Regarding the other coronations, see Swedish National Archive (hereafter SNA), the Royal Archive (hereafter RA) vol. K13, “Berättelse om Erik XIV:s kröning”, fol. 6–7; SNA, RA vol. K14, “Konung Johan den III:s Cröningsprocess”; SNA, RA vol. K16, “Acta Coronationis Konung Sigismundi”.

27. Gieysztor, “Gesture in the Coronation Ceremonies”, pp. 157–8; Hoffmann, “Coronation and Coronation Ordines”, pp. 133–6; Hunt, The Drama of Coronation, p. 26; Le Goff, “A Coronation Program”, pp. 53–5; Monod, The Power of Kings, p. 42.

28. SNA, RA vol. K13, “Berättelse om Erik XIV:s kröning”, fol. 9–12; SNA, RA vol. K14, “Konung Johan den III:s Cröningsprocess”; SNA, RA vol. K16, “Acta Coronationis Konung Sigismundi”.

29. For example, in 1697 the royal palace Tre Kronor was demolished in a fire which devoured countless archival records. It is possible that this archive contained coronation oaths but copies should also have been kept in other places.

30. See Christopher of Bavaria’s Law of the Realm, Konungabalken (the King’s Code), Ch.VI; Konung Gustaf den Förstes registratur (hereafter GR) VI, pp. 143–52, pp. 168–9, pp. 358–9 and pp. 361–2.

31. See the discrepancies between the different versions in Svenska riksdagsakter 1, II:1, pp. 33–4 and p. 94; Svenska riksdagsakter 1, II:2, pp. 399–400; SNA, RA vol. K14, “Kyrkio Ceremonier wthi K: M. Crøning”. Several scholars have debated the various versions, see for example Janzon, “Erik XIV:s kröningsritual”; Hermansson, Karl IX och ständerna, pp. 303–5; Sjödell, “Johan III:s kröningsed”; Nilsson, Kampen om de adliga privilegierna, pp. 33–6 and p. 111.

32. SNA, RA vol. K13, “Berättelse om Erik XIV:s kröning”; SNA, RA vol. K14, “Konung Johan den III:s Cröningsprocess”. See Kolmer, Promissorische Eide im Mittelalter, pp. 241–6 and pp. 352–3.

33. Christopher of Bavaria’s Law of the Realm, Konungabalken, Ch. IV §8.

34. See SNA, RA vol. K17, Petrejus Ubsaliensi, “Then Sthormächtigste Högborne Furste”.

35. See for example GR VI, p. 58; GR XV, p. 114; Svenska riksdagsakter 1, II:1, pp. 94–5, pp. 267–8; GR IV, p. 178; Hausen (ed.), Finlands medeltidsurkunder 8, pp. 72–3.

36. “Acta ecclesiastica et politica apud Svecos”, in: Svenska riksdagsakter 1, III:1–2, p. 293.

37. “Acta inexpectatæ prolongationis”, in: Svenska riksdagsakter 1, III:1–2, p. 296.

38. See for example Stiernman, Alla riksdagars och mötens beslut 1, pp. 472–80, pp. 542–6 and pp. 585–94.

39. Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, p. 41.

40. Cohen and Twomey, “Introduction”, pp. 8–13; Finnegan, “Not by Words Alone”, pp. 278–81; Jezierski, “Verba Volant, Scripta Manent”, p. 33.

41. See Olson, The World on Paper, pp. 91–114; Koziol, “Making Bozo the Clown”, pp. 49–51.

42. Retsö, “Med hand och mun”.

43. Goody, The Logic of Writing, pp. 106–8.

44. This was one of the most common tropes in letters adressing oaths. Examples include, but are not limited to, GR VI, 58; GR X, p. 347; GR XV, p. 114.

45. See for example GR VI, pp. 47–8; GR XV, p. 15; SNA, the Royal Registry (hereafter RR) vol. 38, Letter to Nils Person, 23. 7. 1568, fols. 169–70.

46. In addition to the examples below, see Reinholdsson, Uppror eller resningar?, pp. 233–64; Johansson, “The Lords from the Peasants”, p. 84.

47. GR I, p. 23. All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated.

48. See, for example, the letters from Johan III and the estates, respectively, in Svenska riksdagsakter 1, II:1, p. 195, p. 237, pp. 292–7, and pp. 317–42. For another example, see SNA, RR vol. 40, fols. 27–8.

49. Almquist, Stockholms stads tänkeböcker, p. 336. For other similar examples, see GR IV, p. 135; Svenska riksdagsakter 1, II:1, p. 237.

50. See, for example, GR IV, p. 178; GR VI, pp. 47–8; GR XV, pp. 16–18; RR vol. 48 fols. 169–70. For more examples, see Nauman 2017, pp. 61–70.

51. I have examined the correspondence of all eight major rebellions and wars during the period. From the reign of Gustavus I, all correspondence is printed in GR. For the following years, I have used the RR at SNA.

52. Harnesk, “Konsten att klaga“, pp. 62–5; Hallenberg, Kungen, fogdarna och riket, p. 100; Johansson, “The Lords from the Peasants”, 84; Reinholdsson, Uppror Eller resningar?, pp. 233–53; Schück, Ture Jönsson, p. 90.

53. GR I, pp. 23–4.

54. On Sweden, see Ågren, Att hävda sin rätt, pp 183–7. On Europe, see Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe; Fox, Oral and Literate Culture.

55. SNA, Riksdagsacta (Parliamentary records) vol. R4777, Adeln Stockholm Sept 1617: “Concepter”.

56. On the coronation of Gustav II Adolf, see SNA, RA vol. K19, “Axel Oxenstiernas concept”; Nauman, Ordens kraft, pp. 95–102. On the remarks that oaths were according to tradition, see SNA, Riksdagsacta vol. R4777, “Adeln Stockholm Sept 1617: Concepter”.

57. Hermansson, Karl IX och ständerna, p. 241; Ahnlund, Sveriges riksdag 3, p. 87.

58. “Riksdag resolution, Stockholm 20. 3. 1649”, in: Stiernman, Alla riksdagars och mötens beslut 2, pp. 1120–1; “Supplement E”, in: Sveriges ridderskaps och adels riksdagsprotokoll (hereafter SRAP), 4:2, pp. 473–4.

59. “Ed gör intet, vi är likväl obligerade konungen och fäderneslandet,” Svenska riksrådets protokoll 14, p. 325.

60. Quote from SRAP 5:1, p. 202. For the full discussions, see SNA, Det odelade kansliet A1, Records of the royal council (hereafter RRC) vol. 65, 8. 9. 1675, fols. 101–5; Prästeståndets riksdagsprotokoll 3, pp. 234–9 and p. 263; SNA, Riksdagsacta vol. R4778, “Rikzdagz och Chröningz Acta”, fols. 5–67.

61. Sanders, Efter roskildefreden 1658, pp. 122–8; Tarkiainen and Tarkiainen, Provinsen bortom havet, p. 161; Njåstad et al., “Landet i midten”, pp. 277–331 and pp. 324–5.

62. SNA, RR vol. 229, 1. 10. 1645, fol. 648.

63. SNA, Eder vol. 8. See also Nauman 2017, pp. 102–6; Sanders 2008, pp. 122–8.

64. See, for example, an oath-ceremony ordine of 1658, printed in Weibull, “Efter Roskilde fred”, pp. 178–87.

65. SNA, RR vol. 222, Letter to Hindrich Flemmingh, fol. 347.

66. Ibid.

67. The coronation oaths of 1617 and 1675 are kept in the parliamentary decisions of the same years, printed in Stiernman, Alla riksdagars och mötens beslut 2, pp. 724–33 and pp. 1738–46. The coronation oaths of 1650 are kept in SNA, Eder (Oaths), and those from 1654 in SNA, Riksdagsacta vol. R4808. Regarding oaths from new territories, see, for example, Freden i Brömsebro 1645; SNA, Eder vol. 8; SNA, RR vol. 270, Letter of 24. 1. 1651, fol. 168; SNA, RR vol. 320, Letter of 5. 6. 1658, fol. 1174.

68. These oaths are kept in SNA, Eder, as well as in the archives for each specific office. For a fuller list of these oaths, see Nauman, Ordens kraft, pp. 134–8.

69. Ahnlund, Sveriges riksdag 3, pp. 107–380.

70. “[D]et kungliga husets fullkomliga arvsrätt till riket”, in SNA, Eder vol. 317, Edsformulär för överstar och andra.

71. On this reform, see Nauman, Ordens kraft, pp. 134–8.

72. SNA, RR vol. 509, fols. 662j–3; SNA, RR vol. 532, fols. 67–8; Schmedeman, Kongl. Stadgar 2, pp. 1127–8.

73. SNA, Eder vol. 317, “Remarquer wid collationerandet af Officierarnes inkomne Eeder”. For other examples, see SNA, Eder vol. 317, “Pro memoria angående de passager, uti hwilke Kyrckioheerden i Gränna […]”; SNA, Eder vol. 317, Letter of 21. 2. 1691.

74. SNA, RR vol. 509, 20. 7. 1687, fol. 663.

75. See, for example, SNA, RR vol. 214, Letter to the mayor, 15. 9. 1642, fols. 1023–4; SNA, RR vol. 313, Letter to Erich Sparre, 29. 7. 1657, fols. 1532–3; SNA, RR vol. 320, Letter to Governor Per Ribbing, 29. 7. 1658, fols. 1503–4.

76. Johansson, “Kyrkan och undervisningen”.

77. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe.

78. Cressy, “Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England”; Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe, pp. 120–9; Schofield, “The Measurement of Literacy”.

79. Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 166–7.

80. Olson, The World on Paper, pp. 91–114 and pp. 179–94. See also Traugott, “Literacy and Language Change”, pp. 37–40. No similar investigation has been conducted in Sweden.