This thesis examines the way in which members of the Bohemian estates showed their epistemology and claimed authority for the legal provisions they used in legal texts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Moreover, this thesis has a supplementary comparative element aimed at placing Bohemian laws and institutions in a broader European context. The thesis looks in particular at three legal texts from the Jagiellonian period (1471-1526) in Bohemian history. The three texts under consideration here are the 1500 Land Ordinance (Vladislavské zrízení zemské), the St. Wenceslas Day Agreement of 1517 (Svatováclavská smlouva), and the 1524 Ordinance Concerning Handguns (Zrízení o rucnicích). The 1500 Land Ordinance is particularly noteworthy, for it was Bohemia’s first authoritative law code. The St. Wenceslas Day Agreement of 1517 aimed at ending a long running conflict between the kingdom’s nobles and burghers. The 1524 Ordinance Concerning Handguns was an effort to control, rather than ban, the use of handguns in the kingdom. This thesis explores the techniques the drafters of each document employed to show that, when they looked back to customary provisions, they were using accepted and valid law. We also examine how consistently the drafters used authenticating apparatus to draw attention to the fact they were using laws that were already part of Bohemia’s legal architecture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:625994 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Nicholson, C. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1405396/ |
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