Open AccessThe Influence of Byzantine Law on Serbian Medieval Law
Author(s) -
Srđan Šarkić
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
slověne/slovene
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.165
H-Index - 2
eISSN - 2305-6754
pISSN - 2304-0785
DOI - 10.31168/2305-6754.2015.4.2.5
Subject(s) - serbian , byzantine architecture , law , byzantine studies , history , political science , classics , philosophy , linguistics
Serbian law from the early 13th century developed under the direct influence of Byzantine law. Serbian jurists adopted Byzantine law through translations of Byzantine legal compilations. The first such translation was the Nomokanon of St. Sabba of 1219. St. Sabba’s Nomokanon contained ecclesiastical rules together with the canonist’s glosses, a translation of part of Justinian’s Novels, and the whole of the Procheiron of Basil I. Between 1349 and 1354, Serbian lawyers created a special Codex Tripartitus, codifying both Serbian and Byzantine law. The Russian scholar T. Florinsky noticed this as long ago as 1888, pointing out that in the oldest manuscripts, Dušan’s Code is always accompanied by two other compilations of Byzantine law: the abbreviated Syntagma of Matthew Blastares and the so-called Code of Justinian. In addition to translations of Byzantine legal miscellanies, Serbian lawyers also adopted a great number of the institutions of Roman law. However, Serbian jurists were not educated in Bologna so, as a consequence, Roman law was adopted in an indirect way, i.e., through Greek (Byzantine) translations and not from original Latin texts. Dušan’s Code, as the most important legal source of medieval Serbian law, took about sixty articles directly from the Basilica: the most important are articles 171 and 172.