ДРЖАВНОПРАВНЕ РЕФОРМЕ СТЕФАНА ДУШАНА И РОМЕЈСКО ДРЖАВНО ПРАВО ПАЛЕОЛОГА
STATE LAW REFORMS OF STEFAN DUŠAN AND THE RHOMAIAN STATE LAW OF THE PALAIOLOGIANS

Summary/Abstract: After the conquest of important Rhomaian territories by the Serbian rulers, an increasingly strong influence of Rhomaian law appeared in the Serbian state order. It reached its peak with Emperor Stefan Dušan’s legislative and legal-reform work in general, which steadily rested on Roman foundations. The purpose of this paper is to show that such a path of legal reorganization is not only carried out in principle, i.e. the way of relying on the thousand-year history of the Eastern Roman legal system, but that in many respects it is directly connected with the latest facets of Roman law, embodied above all in its development from the era of the first emperors of the Palaiologian dynasty, up to Dušan’s contemporary, Emperor Andronikos III. Their rule brought an attempt to centralize the Eastern Roman state, which is seen in the closer subjugation of fragmented territories to the imperial power, through administrative measures, and diplomatic and military action, with variable success. At that time, the Blastares’ Syntagma was drawn up (around 1335), the jurisdiction of the secular and ecclesiastical courts was more precisely defined, and the position of the highest imperial judges (universal judges) was redefined – who served as likely models for the “judges of the empire” of Dušan’s Code. These and other parallels, primarily administrative and legal, will be viewed in ahistorical and comparative legal framework, in order to better understand the connection between Dušan’s and previous reforms in the Roman Empire.

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