Statute of Grand Prince Vladimir

STATUTE OF GRAND PRINCE VLADIMIR

Allegedly authored by Grand Prince Vladimir (r. 980–1015), who is credited with the conversion of Kievan Rus to Christianity, the Statute established the principle of judicial separation between secular and clerical courts and forbade any of the Prince's heirs from interfering in the church's business. The Statute provided that all church personnel would be tried in church courts, no matter what the subject under litigation. The text scrupulously lists those who qualified for clerical jurisdiction, identifying not only monastics and members of church staffs, but also various social outsiders: pilgrims, manumitted slaves, and the blind and lame, for instance. In addition, the Statute granted church courts exclusive jurisdiction over certain offenses, even if secular subjects of the prince were involved. Divorce, fornication, adultery, rape, incest, disputes over inheritance, witchcraft, sorcery, charm-making, church theft, and intrafamilial violence were among the subjects assigned to church courts. Over and above the income generated by church courts, the Statute assigned the church a tithe from all the Rus land and a portion of various fees that the Prince collected. Finally, the text authorized bishops to supervise the various weights and measures employed for trade.

More than two hundred copies of the Statute survive, but none is older than the fourteenth century, a relatively late date for a document of such ostensible importance. In addition, the text includes some obvious errors that have helped undermine confidence in the legitimacy of the Statute. For instance, in the opening section the Statute reports that Grand Prince Vladimir accepted Christian baptism from Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died almost a century before Vladimir converted to Christianity.

The most recent study of the Statute, however, has concluded that, if not in Vladimir's own time, then very soon thereafter, something like the Statute must already have existed. Archetypes of different parts of the Statute probably did originate in the reign of Vladimir, but the archetype of the entire Statute seems not to have arisen before the mid-twelfth century. This document, no longer extant, fathered two new versions in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, and each of these, in turn, contributed to a host of local reworkings, especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As many as seven basic versions of the Statute survive, each evidently revised to correspond to local circumstances and changing times.

No later than early in the fifteenth century, however, the Statute had come to enjoy official standing in the eyes of both churchmen and secular officials. In 1402 and again in 1419 Moscow Grand Prince Basil I (1389–1425) confirmed the judicial and financial guarantees laid out in the Statute. As a result, most extant copies survive along with other texts of secular and canon law in manuscript books like the Kormchaya kniga (the chief handbook of canon law) and miscellanies of canon law. Medieval secular codes, such as the Novgorod Judicial Charter and Pskov Judicial Charter, confirm that church courts in Rus did exercise independent authority, just as the Statute of Vladimir decreed.

See also: kievan rus; novgorod judicial charter; pskov judicial charter; statute of grand prince yaroslav; vladimir, st.

bibliography

Kaiser, Daniel H. (1980). The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kaiser, Daniel H., ed., tr. (1992). The Laws of Rus': Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries. Salt Lake City, UT: Charles Schlacks, Jr.

Shchapov, Yaroslav N. (1993). State and Church in Early Russia, Tenth–Thirteenth Centuries, tr. Vic Shneierson. New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas.

Daniel H. Kaiser