Mikuláš Puchník

This monograph presents a critical edition and a summary of the legal treatise Processus iudiciarius secundum stilum Pragense written by Mikuláš Puchník, a vicar-general at the Archdiocese of Prague and an elected archbishop of Prague, striving to place it in the context of the canon law at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. Puchník’s text belongs to the ordines iudicarii genre, a very common and widespread type of legal ecclesiastical literature throughout the Middle Ages in Europe. The examined treatise dates from the 1390s (as yet only 15 manuscripts in 12 libraries known) and as the number of manuscripts preserved in libraries around Europe attest, it was a very useful theoretical and practical handbook of procedural law, used by students as well as the archdiocesan clergy, plaintiffs and defense lawyers during disputes.
The monograph consists of Puchník’s biography, an analysis of the text from legal and ecclesiastical, paleographic and codicologic perspectives, and the text’s critical edition, which includes four 14th-century manuscripts (with Munich 677 being the main text).