Abstract
Jan Človíček of Popovice, a burgher of the Prague Old Town, earned his living as an "orator", i.e. in today's words an advocate who represented his clients mainly at the Land Court and the Chamber Court. The uniqueness of his life story, however, lies in the fact that he was first accepted twice in succession to the estate of knights (in 1556 and 1561) at the Land Diet of the Bohemian Kingdom, only to be expelled again in 1573. He thus joined the small group of individuals who suffered such a degradation of status. While for most of them the reason was really serious offences and misconduct (the machinations of the imperial chamberlains Filip Lang and Jeroným Makovský, forgery of documents by the former Rosenberg secretary Teobald Hok), Jan Človíček lost his noble status for what seems to be a much more trivial reason. In one of his legal cases, he stood against the powerful sub-chamberlain Burian Trčka of Lípa, who got into a verbal quarrel with him and felt so offended that he subsequently exercised his political influence and convinced the assembled knights at the Land Diet to expel Človíček from their midst. He thus became once again a noble coat of arms.
In addition to a more detailed description of these events, as far as the surviving sources allow, the study also tries to outline Človíček's life story. There are no surviving records of his childhood and youth, nor is his origin entirely certain. However, he can most probably be considered the son of Viktorin Človíček, a knifemaker from Old Town, who was granted the coat of arms and the predicate "of Popovice" by Ferdinand I in 1542 (together with several other, probably related townsmen). However, only a few years later, in 1547, in connection with the resistance of the Bohemian Estates, Viktorin compromised himself and was sentenced by the same king to be scourged and expelled from the Bohemian Kingdom and its incorporated lands. At the same time, Jan Človíček appears in the sources (for the first time in 1544). First he was an officer of urbura (the king's share of the profits from mining) in Kutná Hora and from the mid-1550s firmly established himself in Prague, where, as already mentioned, he practised law. This study also focuses on the legal regulation of this practice by land law as well as municipal law.
Jan Človíček represented his clients in the courts even after his expulsion from estate of knights and died only in 1582. He had two daughters with his wife Katherine of Všejam, of whom Johanna died shortly after him, Anna married another armorial burghers Daniel Švík of Lukonosy. The study also briefly recapitulates other genealogy of Človíček's descendants, which includes especially the family Voříkovský of Kunratice, who gradually managed to take over a large part of Človíček's heritage after the White Mountain. In any case, Jan Človíček himself is one of the very interesting figures of the early modern period and his story is also an important contribution to the understanding of how the estates' corporations functioned at that time. It also shows the risks that may have been associated with the practice of law in ancient times.