Viktorin Kornel ze Všehrd

Viktorin Kornel of Vsehrdy
Viktorin Kornel ze Vsehrd 1862
Personal details
Born	1460 Chrudim, Bohemia, Czech Kingdom
Died	September 21, 1520(1520-09-21) (aged 59–60) Prague
Resting place	Prague, church of John the Baptist, Lesser Town, Czech Kingdom (now Czech Republic)
Nationality	Czech
Alma mater	University of Prague (now Charles University)

Viktorin Kornel ze Všehrd (of Všehrdy) or simply Všehrd (1460-1520), was a Czech humanist and lawyer, working towards the end of the 15th century as Vice-scribe at the Land Court in the Prague Castle. He is famous for the most penetrating analysis of the Czech common law that he has put forward on some 460 pages under the title “On the Laws of the Czech Land Nine Books” („O právích země české knihy devatery“). He has also translated some Latin texts.

Viktorin Kornelius was born in the burgher Utraquist (moderate reformed Hussite Church) environment of the East-Bohemian town of Chrudim in 1460. Having graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the then Utraquist University of Prague, Všehrd gained a wider outlook and capacities of generalization - preconditions for asking, reflecting on as well as answering a number of questions the previous authors of law books from the ranks of nobility had not arrived at.

After 1487 Všehrd held the Office of the Land Boards on the Prague Castle and from 1493 to 1497, during the vacant post of the slibe, he held the post of Vice-scribe at the Land Court in the Prague Castle. The Land Boards with rulings of the Land Court, which were to be burnt during the later great fire of Prague Castle in 1541, had decayed into a flimsy and bad state even before Všehrd´s activities. Lawyers in the land routinely used the mere digests of rulings in the form of subject- or alphabetically ordered registers. These attitudes and Všehrd´s recording of legal documents led to his dismissal from the Land Court in 1497. Nevertheless in the course of his appointment he had managed to collect enough material to write his scholarly treatise. Having finished the treatise in 1501, he offered it to the public to be copied freely. He explicitly granted the results of his work for the defense of good and just people “so that they would be able to protect themselves against evil and wilful people.” Having lost his position, Všehrd successfully carried on his legal and financial practice.

He died of plague on September 21, 1520 and is buried in historical Lesser Town of Prague, in the Romanesque-Gothic, church of John the Baptist (now Czechoslovak Hussite “”, Malá Strana.)