Highwayman’s Life: Extant Documents about Jánošík.

Abstract

Juraj Jánošík, a highwayman in the Habsburg monarchy in the early 18th century, became a Slovak, Polish, and Czech legend more a century after his execution. While modified, the legend entered historiography as a representation of Jánošík's actual life. There is, however, scanty or no evidence for some of the assertions accepted as descriptions of Jánošík's exploits and motivations, additional occasional confusion stems from cross-cultural Slovak-Polish misunderstandings. The article gives an account of the available hard and soft evidence and cross-cultural errors