Soupis listin uložených v korunním archivu na Karlštejně z počátku 16. století
This volume makes available to scholars a somewhat underappreciated source from the early sixteenth century. It is an inventory of documents preserved in the archive of the Bohemian Crown at Karlštejn, compiled by the estates of the realm after the completion of the legal code known as the Vladislav Land Ordinance (Vladislavské zřízení zemské). The resulting inventory is known in Czech historiography as the Registrum of Ten Chests of the Privileges of the Kingdom of Bohemia.
Closer examination of the document, however, reveals that the inventory was not conceived merely as an archival tool, but rather expressed the estates’ understanding of the constitutional structure of the Bohemian Crown. For the estates, it provided an accessible overview of the rights and privileges of the Bohemian king, the territorial extent of the Crown, and the treaties concluded by Bohemian and other European rulers.
Following the restoration of the Bohemian Crown (1490), the estates aligned themselves with this constitutional legacy of the Luxembourg kings and regarded it as their responsibility to uphold it. In other words, in the name of the bonum terrae (“the common good of the realm”), they demanded that the monarch respect and observe these provisions. For them, the inventory functioned as a kind of thesaurus—a repository to which one could return, draw argumentative support from, and employ in practice—and access to it was not limited to the king, but extended also to representatives of the estates.
Editors:
Lenka Bobková – Tereza Hejdová – Mlada Holá – Tomáš Velička – Lenka Vodrážková
Publisher: Filosofia
Series: Archiv český 45
Language: Czech
Place: Praha
Year: 2025
Pages: 906
ISBN: 978-80-7007-801-3
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