ABSTRACT
Victims of parents or husbands who resorted to excessive violence sometimes lodged a complaint. More often such matters were dealt with by church courts and during visitations than in secular courts. In these cases the courts tried to re-establish a normative hierarchical situation, with the parent or the husband in charge but using their power sensibly – and the seventeenth century courts must have thought that a return to a sensible authority was a viable option even though it now hardly seems that (Karlsson Sjo¨gren, 1998). During the later centuries, at least, outsiders rarely ventured to intervene in the father’s or parent’s authority with in the family (Waris, 1999, 51). Ending up in a court for family violence was already a loss of honour for the violent person and a sign that the church courts and admonition by the minister had failed in their duty to stop the violence (Jokiaho, 2002; Roper, 1989, 191-192). There were no books on etiquette or appropriate conduct, no catechisms or folk tales recommending casual violence – even if one had a theoretical right to it – they all thought it better to command by a mental and spiritual authority based on sense and righteousness. Therefore, violence was both a right and a shame of the socially superior in domestic relationship.
