Облици кривичног дела крађе у неким српским споменицима византијског порекла
The Criminal Offence of Theft in some Serbian Monuments of Byzantine origin

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses fifteen transcripts (dating from the 15th to 18th century) of the Justinian Law, a compilation of Byzantine origin incorporated in the codex of medieval legal and religious manuscripts. The important parts of the codex are the Code of Tsar Stefan Dusan and the Syntagm of Matija Vlastar, which together with the Justinian Law make the codex of Serbian and Byzantine law. The analysis included six older transcripts – Athos, Chilandar, Bistrica, Prizren, Baranja, Hodoš, as well as the specific Rakovac transcript, and seven more recent transcripts – Sophia, Ravanica, Tekelija, Kovilj, Paštrovići, Grbalj, Bogišić and one Romanian from the 18th century. In the older transcripts the criminal offence of theft is determined only in Article 28 and it referred to the theft from church. The later transcripts refer to the criminal offence of theft in 14 articles, and according to the numbering of the transcript of Sophia, those are articles 8-10, 29, 35-36, 52, 70-76. The provisions of these articles envisage sanctions for various types of this offence, such as theft of things from church, theft of farming products, theft in extraordinary circumstances, common theft, engaging in theft as a profession, keeping of a lost thing as equal to theft, theft in the army and theft from graves. The law also envisages the possibility of seizing the stolen thing from the thief and a reward for that. It includes a general provision intended as a general deterrent, which states that thieves shall be tortured at the place of wrongdoing so that others could see it and be frightened. The source of such legal provisions can be found in The Syntagm of Matija Vlastar, The Farmer’s Law and Eclogue. The Serbian version and the Byzantine original differ as regards some legal provisions. The Romanian transcript is similar to the Serbian version and contains the same types of theft, but also deviates somewhat from both the Byzantine and Serbian versions. It is obvious that Byzantine legal influence was present in the Balkan countries and that their legislature was to some extent based on the Byzantine law of different times. Also, the transcribers took into account different circumstances in these countries and tried to adjust the legal provisions to the country for which this compilation of law was intended.

• Details
• Contents