The Humanist Lawyer David Hilchen in the Polish Livonian and Polish Courts 1600-1609: The Reflection of His Proceedings in Letters

Abstract

This article offers an insight to the Early Modern Polish history of law from an unusual perspective: namely, which was the contemporary view to the Polish legal and especially court system. For that, an almost unexplored Early Modern source, the unpublished Latin correspondence by the central humanist of Pol­ish Livonia David Hilchen (1561–1610), is used. In this paper, the principal issue touched by him, his own legal proceedings in the Polish-Lithuanian Common­wealth before the Livonian (Riga’s) and Polish courts against Riga City Council are dealt with. It presents a good example of how, despite many legal obstacles over an elongated period, a case could move from under city jurisdiction to state jurisdiction, even at a time when royal power was not at its strongest.