Mitropoliche Pravosudie

Mitropolich’e Pravosudie 

Metropolitan’s Justice, a document of ancient Russian law written as a book of instruction for the episcopal court. It was preserved in the early 16th-century collection Tsvetnik. The sources for the Mitropolich’e Pravosudie included the Statute of laroslav, the extended edition of the Russkaia Pravda, and the Dvina Statute of 1397.

The Mitropolich’e Pravosudie provided a graduated series of punishments for “dishonoring” representatives of the ruling class; at the same time, it did not consider the slaying ofapo/nyi cheliadin (“full” slave) by a lord to be a crime. The Mitropolich’e Pravosudie is a valuable source for the history of feudal law in ancient Rus’, the study of which is still far from completion. Soviet researchers are divided on the question of the time and place of the writing of the document, dating it between the end of the 13th century and the early 16th.

REFERENCES

Iushkov, S. V. “Pravosudie mitropolich’e.” In Letopis’zaniatii Arkheograficheskoi komissii za 1927–28 gg., issue 35. Leningrad, 1929.
Pamiatniki russkogo prava, vol. 3. Moscow, 1955.
Tikhomirov, M. N. “Pravosudie mitropolich’e.” In the collection Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1963 g., Moscow, 1964.

O. A. SHVATCHENKO