Criminality in Early Modern Bohemia. The Case of Říčany (1667-1757)

THESIS ABSTRACT PhDr. Jan Šimek Criminality in Early Modern Bohemia. The Case of Říčany (1667-1757) This work is a contribution to understanding of criminality in Bohemia in early modern period, which is conceived as a part of social history by the Czech historiography of the last decades. The main source comprises six volumes of court manuals that originated from the activities of the court for capital crimes in a serf town of Říčany u Prahy, and that cover time span of 1667-1757 and consist of 289 records of criminal trials. If we consider the structure of criminality analyzed by the established methodological schemes, the torts of property prevail unequivocally (37%), a considerable part is made up by the honour disputes (26%), and a lesser part is formed by offences against life and health (12%) and offences against morality (8%). Apart from the quantitative processing of the sources the attention is paid also to the characteristic features of the individual offences and the respective culprits in the perspective of historical anthropology. The very functioning of the court in Říčany in relation to the patrimonial administration, which was very tight till the beginning of the 18th century is analysed, too. A boundary marker is the court reform of Josef I. in 1707 - from that time the determinant role of..