Královské lesy v Maiestas Carolina: Monumentalita krajiny a právní pluralismus v procesu utváření suverenity českého království

Abstract

De juribus regiis silvarum (On the Law of the Royal Forests) is a segment of an unrealised constitutional project for the Kingdom of Bohemia from the mid-fourteenth century (Maiestas Carolina) which is usually interpreted as a law to protect the Royal Forests from arsonists and other criminals to maintain the forests as a source of the king’s revenue. This paper reinterprets the regulation with the emphasis on the interconnection between the Royal Forests and the constitutional mythos of the inalienability of the Kingdom. It suggests that the designation of the Forests to protect the wild (trees, beasts and outlaws) was based not merely on reverence for the king but also on the seclusion of the landscapes from intensive human use by means of a robust material, military-bureaucratic infrastructure (castles, roads...) which was equally meant to establish the Forests as an autonomous and constitutive pillar of the Kingdom’s sovereignty. It shows how the monumental landscape of the Royal Forests acquired a specific legitimacy function in terms of heterogeneous space and legal pluralism in the Kingdom, which is contrasted to the national territoriality and House metaphorics of modern State sovereignty. The paper further analyses the remarkable societal arrangement of the Maiestas Carolina Forest Court, which represents a unique configuration for the resolution of conflicts between various legal units and micro-sovereignties situated within the landscape of the Kingdom.