There were many ways of bordering manliness during the historical period covered by my research. Borders have been metaphorically understood as those invisible, often non-enunciated limits that have safeguarded manliness. There were borders separating masculinity from femininity and from childishnes, but there is also a more distant border, separating masculinity from the bestial. The term un-manliness is a useful concept for this analysis, for it can be used to illuminate the different ways in which masculinity has been interrogated. The concept can also be used in comparative analyses of how tolerance towards men deviating from ideas of ideal masculinity has differed according to situation and culture. It has been my ambition to elucidate the particular attitudes, values, customs, knowledge and requirements that influenced the view of masculinity at both individual and the group level. The clearest-cut aspects of manliness and un-manliness expressed in court proceedings were those having to do with sexuality, relations within the household, and the subordinate and dominant masculinities displayed by different court-room actors. The latter, in turn, reflected contemporary social structures, including the social gap that divided the Livonian peasantry’s serfs or former serfs from the ruling Baltic-German elite. Records from the court proceedings have shown the subordinate masculinity of the defendants, subordinate not only to that of the officers of the court but to that of the witnesses. This subordination was an inevitable consequence of the nature of the accusations, regardless of whether they were deemed well-founded or false.  The defendants were placed in a situation where they were forced constantly to be on the alert, ready to defend themselves and show their best sides. As a result, they would often give extremely clear expression to their views of proper masculinity. Such actors stressed, consciously or unconsciously, certain manly traits and behaviour patterns that characterised themselves and others. Their arguments provide insights into what they thought of each other and how they conceived a man should generally be, behave and act in different situations. By the same token, they clearly showed what kinds of behaviours were considered undesirable or outright unmanly. The positioning of the borders of manliness was linked both to time and to space. Deviations have helped different societies set the borders for what they considered acceptable behaviour. There was a clear cultural and geographical border between Sweden as such, and the Swedish province Livonia. This emerges clearly when one compares Livonian results with earlier studies on bestiality in Sweden. This shows that the view of manliness and the tolerance towards certain kinds of behaviour changed as one moved East.

Through a diplomatic transcription and contextualisation of two poems from Geistliche und Weltliche Poemata (1650) by Anna Ovena Hoyer (1584-1655) it is suggested that two contexts are highly relevant and fruitful for understanding the polemical nature of the Early Modern Era. The two examined contexts are anti-clericalism  ̶  the negative stance towards Lutheran clergymen  ̶  and the conditions for writing as a female in Early Modern times. By offering comments and providing information regarding these two contexts, it is demonstrated how they successfully explain and motivate how a lay uneducated poetess develops rhetorical strategies to express radical criticism of the discourse of Lutheran clergymen. Notably, the authors of the two poems, Werdenhagen and Hoyer, legitimise a morally superior poetess by constructing a feminine authority derived analogously from the story of Martha and Mariam in the Bible. Furthermore, Hoyer uses this claim of being a mouthpiece for godly wisdom to delegitimise the bookly and rational knowledge acquired in the universities by the Lutheran clergymen. By using the politically charged term “der gemeine Mann”, she appeals to the political defeats of the great majority of laymen in the Early Modern Era. In her polemic against the Lutheran clergymen, it is implied that the expected silent subservience of the laymen towards the clergymen is problematic, since the clergymen due to their blind faith in bookly knowledge are neither righteous nor Christian. Thus, it is suggested that the examined pieces of poetry could be understood as radical criticism of the Lutheran social model. / Genom en diplomatisk utgåva och kontextualisering av två dikter från Geistliche und Weltliche Poemata (1650) av Anna Ovena Hoyer (1584-1655) föreslås två kontexter som särskilt relevanta för att förstå den tidigmoderna tidens prägling i polemiken. Dessa två undersökta kontexter är antiklerikalismen - den negativa attityden gentemot lutherska kyrkomän - och villkoren för att skriva som kvinna i tidigmodern tid. Genom att bidra med kommentarer och information kring dessa två kontexter påvisas att dessa framgångsrikt kan förklara vilka retoriska strategier som den outbildade poeten använder för att rikta en radikal kritik mot lutherska kyrkomän. Det är anmärkningsvärt att de två diktarna Hoyer och Werdenhagen legitimerar bilden av en moraliskt överlägsen diktande kvinna genom att konstruera en feminin auktoritetsfigur ur berättelsen om Marta och Mariam i Bibeln. Därutöver använder Hoyer denna konstruktion av att vara Guds språkrör och förmedlare av vishet för att avfärda kyrkomännens rationalism och bokkunskap som de fått från sin universitetsutbildning. Genom att använda den politiskt laddade termen "gemene man" hänvisas implicit till tidigmoderna politiska förluster för den stora icke-klerikala allmänheten. I polemiken kritiseras dessutom att den tysta lydnaden till kyrkomännen hos den icke-klerikala allmänheten är problematisk, då kyrkomännen till följd av sin blinda tro på bokkunskap varken är rättfärdigade eller kristna. Därigenom föreslår analysen att den undersökta poesin kan förstås som en radikal kritik av den lutherska socialmodellen.