This code, I believe, lost its legal force almost immediately after the death of its author. Notwithstanding this, it retained a considerable importance, as a work of a remarkable Servian tzar, as a monument dear to the people of its past grandeur, as a depository of manners and customs, although very insufficiently formulated, and of some religious and moral rules. This, in my idea, and not its continued legal value, as usually supposed, was the real cause of its frequent transcription and of the renewal of its style in the later MSS.1

1 The history of this code could be written only on the basis of the study of its MSS., because we have no trustworthy testimonies of its appearance. The eminent scholar Schafarik laid the foundation to a critical edition in Památky drevního písemnictví Jihoslavanuv (Monuments of the Old Literature of the Southern Slavs'), Prague, 1851, 2nd ed., 1872. St. Novakovitch published in 1870 the MS. of Prizren, but changed the order of the articles. F. Sigel gave in 1872 a new edition of the same important MS., with a preface on the sources, system, the future fate of the code, and the analysis of a part of its private law. But the most detailed description and estimation of all the MSS. of the code and some other important legal monuments belongs to Prof. Th. Florinski, Pamjatniki zakonodatelnoj dejatelnosti Doushana ( Monuments of the Legal Activity of Doushan, of the Tsar of the Serbs and Greeks'), Kiev, 1888. F. Sigel was authorized by the Russian Academy of Sciences to give a critical account of this work; he completely acknowledged the philological part of the work, but made objections as to the relation of the code to some monuments of Greek origin (Petersb., April, 1890). A new critical edition with a valuable preface and important explanations of the Serbian text appeared in Belgrad, by St. Novakovitch, Zaconik Stephana Doushana tsara srpskog 1349 i 1354 ('The Legal Code of Stephen Doushan, Tsar of the Serbs, 1349 and 1354'), 1898; it is the most necessary help for the study of this interesting monument. Finally, the eminent Prof. Const. Jirecek, of Vienna, gave a very instructive account of the last edition, with a survey of

We pass on now to the productions of the juridical Slavonic activity in the Balkan peninsula. We have said that the Ecloga, rural laws, Prochiron, were probably translated in the age of Simeon. Novella of Constantine Porphyrogenitus of 922, Synopsis Basilicorum, Prochiron Auctum, were perhaps turned wholly or partially into the Slavonic language also in Bulgaria in the tenth century. All these laws were very important for the Slavs, because they contained Byzantine family, inheritance, and criminal law in its most condensed form, and probably also Slavonic customs. The Byzantine influence is evident in these three parts of law in the Slavonic Orthodox world, because these parts stood in the closest relations to the moral and religious ideas, completely changed by the conversion to Christianity.

We have also said that compilations were probably made from all these translations even in the age of Simeon. This sort of literature agreed so much with the wants of the Southern Slavs that we have until now in Russian libraries many such compilations under the names, books of law' (knigi zakonnyja), 'right measure' (merilo pravednoje), code of Tsar Justinian,' and so on. Some of these compilations were probably effected under the influence of kings and tsars, were consequently semi-official, and contained therefore accommodations to the local conditions, whilst a private compiler could most certainly give to these modifications no force. All this interesting juridical literature has not been yet sufficiently sifted; some MSS. may be lost, but some are possibly not yet dis

the whole literature and a great many important elucidations, valuable also for lawyers, in Archiv für slav. Philologie, von V. Jagic, Bd. xxii, 1900.

covered; it is also difficult to determine their native country, whether it was Bulgaria, or Servia, or even if we have to do with a pure translation from Greek. It can only be taken for granted that the so-called 'law of Tzar Justinian' in its short edition is a work of the Servian lawyers, made under the direction of the Tsar Doushan. It follows almost always his code in MSS., and shows considerable modifications of the Byzantine laws for their adjustment to the Servian conditions. This law, not being a part of the legislative activity of the tsar, was a useful instruction for the unlearned Servian judges, making them acquainted with the legal inferences from several juridical evidences (inferences from minority, fraud) and legal notions. On the contrary, the large edition of the just mentioned law,' which is found in the later MSS. combined with the code of Doushan, seems to be a private work, in which the short edition of the law of Justinian is filled up principally with extracts from the epitomized Syntagma and other sources, partially even unknown to us1.

1 Hubé, Droit romain et gréco-byzantin chez les peuples slaves, Paris, 1880, pp. 21–7; V. Bogisic, Pisani zakoni na slovenskom jugu (Statute Law in the Slavonic South'), u Zagrebu, 1872, pp. 56-67. The literature above cited on p. 6, n. 1, and p. 23, note. Knigi zaconnyja of Prof. Pavlov, Petersb., 1885. All these questions are not yet settled, partially on account of the lack of positive materials.

THE

LECTURE II

RUSSIA

HE Russian law1 possesses some interesting peculiarities for the universal history of law. It is the only Slavonic law which shows a continual development

1 I shall draw the attention of the reader only to the books which include the whole Russian history of law and to the writers, important for some greater parts of it. Two professors, one of Petersburg, Sergejevitch, another of Kiev, VladimirskiBudanov, have treated the whole history. Both of them acknowledge the existence of the natural laws which rule social life, but their points of view are different. Prof. Sergejevitch in Lekcii i izsledovanija po istorii russkago prava (Lectures and Studies on the History of the Russian Law), 1889, 1890, seems to take for granted that the social life not only happens by laws, but also that the course of social events is more or less the same everywhere, viz. even that the history of the Russian law repeats partially the history of law in the West; therefore Sergejevitch likes to elucidate the Russian events by a comparison with the German, French, or English legal history. Prof. Vladimirski-Budanov in Obzor istorii russkago prava ('A Sketch of the History of the Russian Law'), 1900, on the contrary, supposes the existence of legal ideas proper to the Slavs, and therefore expounds the Russian events by a comparison with the history of the other Slavonic nations. This difference of views proceeds, I think, from a different extent of knowledge. Mr. Sergejevitch is a profound connoisseur of the history of the Western law; on the contrary, Mr. Vladimirski-Budanov has made independent studies in the history of the Polish and Croatian law. And so the two writers often complete one another: the national

during more than a thousand years, and two states were formed on the territory of the Russian tribes principally from the Russian ethnographical elements in the fourteenth century, Moscow and Lithuania. Whilst the first grew under Byzantine influence, the second lived under the dominion of Western ideas. The law of Moscow evolved itself little by little from the old traits of the Russian law are explained by other Slavonic laws in Budanov's work, and features common to the other laws, and proceeding from universal human nature, are made clear by Sergejevitch. Besides, Prof. Vladimirski-Budanov has published A Chrestomathy of the History of the Russian Law, where the most important monuments are printed according to all scientific needs (three volumes, including the juridical monuments from the tenth century to the year 1649, many editions). Prof. Samokvasov, of Moscow, as an archaeologist, is worthy of note, but his lectures, published in 1896, are destined more for students than for the public. Prof. Leontovitch, of Warsaw, has great importance as an investigator of the history of the Lithuanian law, and is now preparing a publication of his whole course of lectures. Prof. Latkin, of Petersburg, principally treats the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Uchebnik istorii russkago prava perioda imperii (' A Manual of the History of the Russian Law of the Period of the Empire'), 1899. Prof. Zagoskin, of Kazan, after some important studies on the history of the Moscow period, has published a very full bibliography of the history of Russian law (Naouka istorii russkago prava, Kazan, 1891), and laid in the year 1899 the foundation to a monumental history of the Russian law in twelve volumes: Istorija prava russkago naroda ('The History of the Law of the Russian Nation'), vol. i, Kazan. Finally, the English public has a very good history of Russia, written by Prof. Morfill (Russia, by W. R. Morfill, London, 2nd ed., 1891); the author has laid great stress on the evolution of Russian society, and described it with a wonderful understanding of the Russian relations even in points most difficult to conceive for a foreigner. In the following pages I shall not cite the editions of the monuments; they can be very easily found in Budanov's Chrestomathy, with a survey of the whole literature and many important elucidations.