Medieval Serbian law

It is through their charters and various codes that punishments were introduced and status, civil, criminal and procedural law started developing.

The clergy had a privileged position because they were released from their obligations to the state for the reason that they prayed to God for the ruler and the entire nation, and not only for themselves.

The charters also mention various masters, craftsmen who worked in metal, wood, stone, earth, leather, textiles, etc.

There were also chandlers, butchers, innkeepers, bakers, barbers, primitive surgeons and merchants called peddlers.

Among all sources, three of them hold the greatest significance: the Charter of Hilandar, the Nomocanon Zakonopravilo and Dušan's Code, which will be elaborated on below.

In Serbia, customary law represents the most important legal source until the late 12th century, because it regulated how people lived.

A provision from Dušan’s Code made such a procedure illicit and punishable by making a culprit pay a fine called vražda.

[3][4] International treaties in Serbia during Middle Age were the means of establishing concessions for foreign merchants and regulating the relationships with them.

The main characteristics of those treaties were that they were used to guarantee the freedom of movement for the merchants, compensation for the damage done, inviolability of the merchandise and total ban on reprisals.

Our most renowned nomocanon is the one written by Saint Sava titled “Zakonopravilo”, created after the Serbian Church had been granted autocephaly in 1219 or 1220.

There are 11 more transcripts: of Raška, Sarajevo, Dečani, Pčinja, Chilandar, Peć, Belgrade, Sava, Morač, the canon of Jovan Zlokruhović and a nomocanon of Szentendre.

Sava favoured the interpretations of Aleksij Aristin and Jovan Zonara instead of tendentious commentaries by Teodor Valsamon expressing the idea of the Byzantine emperor’s omnipotence severely restricting the independence, i.e. autocephaly of other churches.

The Serbian nomocanon embraces the concept of “harmony” in the relationships between the Church and the state, rejecting all forms of “Caesaropapism” or “Eastern papism” (Constantinople patriarchate hegemony).

The author chose not to include such law texts which would restrict the scope of the monarch’s rule, both in the secular and ecclesiastical domain of his own jurisdiction.

As well as that, Sava left out all the excerpts from the Eclogue and Epanagogue where the submission of the Church to the state power was justified.

It was first taken to Bulgaria as early as 1262, where it was accepted as a general mandatory nomocanon, and from where its second transcript was sent to Russia, to the bishop of the Metropolis Kiril II.

Probably by order of emperor Dušan himself, the Syntagma was translated into the Serbian language in 1347 or 1348, but immediately after it, it was heavily abbreviated.

Matija Vlastar’s collection is based on Teodor Valsamon’s tendentious and one-sided commentaries emphasizing the omnipotence of the Byzantine emperor and his hegemony in the whole system of the states while denying the autocephaly of the Serbian and Bulgarian Churches.

This is why the Serbian editors, right after the whole text of Syntagma had been translated, performed abbreviations, leaving out all provisions stipulating secular and spiritual dominance of Constantinople.

Consequently, the majority of church-related provisions were left out, while only those relating to secular matters were kept, notably those from those law areas which were not regulated by Dušan’s Code.

Bearing these facts in mind, it remains unclear why the Serbian editors had opted for Syntagma by Matija Vlastar, and not Heksabiblos by Konstantin Armenopulos, because Armenopulos was a far better law expert than Matija Vlastar and his collection was made up of only secular provisions without any tendentious commentaries.

The greatest part of the Code of Justinian was devoted to the regulation of legal relationships in rural environments.

Traditional Slavic way of land cultivation and crop farming, as well as the forms of interpersonal legal relations within a community, after the Slavs had inhabited the Byzantine territory, were gradually changing.

Over time the influence of the Byzantine law started to grow even in regulating agricultural relations, but the old customs could not be eradicated completely.

Therefore, the Byzantine Code on Agriculture was a significant legal source used across a very large territory and by a multitude of nations.

It can only be assumed that the articles in questions were those damaged in the Serbian version so much that they became unreadable or that they originally were in the part of the text which has not been preserved at all.

Although the majority of the articles were intended for the regulation of legal relations in the countryside, some provisions of the Code of Justinian have more general scope of application, which means that they can be applied to everyday life in rural environments or to some other contexts.

Their task was to draft a new law and submit it to Despot Stefan for its confirmation and issuance in the form of a charter.

[11] The basic legal sources in the seaside communities such as Kotor, Budva, Skadar, Bar and Ulcinj were statutes.