Johannes von Gelnhausen Characters

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Johannes von Gelnhausen was a lawyer, mining scribe and archivist of the imperial chancery.
As the second-born son of a German noble family, he went to study and before 1365 he secured the post of mining scribe in Kuttenberg. In the following years, he served the most powerful men of his time and travelled throughout the empire with the imperial court of Charles IV. Later, as an expert in both types of law, he led the office of Bishop John of Neumarkt in Olomouc and subsequently was a city scribe in Brno until 1389.
It was only towards the end of his life that he created his seminal work known as the Gelnhausen Codex. An illuminated legal treatise for the mining town of Jihlava, Johannes made full use of his experience here, taking inspiration from the Mining Code of Kuttenberg, Ius regale montanorum.

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