Humanist Ondrej Rochotský and the Office of the Royal Public Notary. A contribution to the history of notaries in the Czech Republic

Abstract

In the presented article, on the example of the humanist Ondrej Rochotský, who comes from Nemecká Ľupča (today’s Slovakia), we will point out the method of obtaining the office of public royal notary in the Europe at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, with an emphasis on such a practice in Bohemia. We will focus on a series of six poems published in the occasional collection In obitum Samuelis Radeschini (Prague 1609), in which O. Rochotský reflected in poetic way – characteristic for this period – the acquisition of the office of public royal notary and at the same time an honorary title. Poems with a similar focus have no parallel in Slovak literature at the beginning of the 17th century.