Competition of Legal Norms in the Russian Church from the 10th to 13th Centuries? Tithe and Weregild

Abstract

The article discusses two key differences between pre-Mongol Rus’ and Byzantium in the field of church legal institutions. The author shows that the introduction of tithes from princely incomes instead of fixed payments for the churches was provoked by the absence of the Greek hierarchy in Russia at the moment of the consecration of the Kiev Tithe Cathedral in 995–996, as well as by only partially monetary nature of the Old Russian economy and the general crisis of the Byzantine model of financial support for the Church. However, it was part of civil legislation and did not contradicted Byzantine canon law. However, the practice of monetary penalties for sins introduced by Yaroslav Vladimirovich directly contradicted not only the canons of the Eastern Church, but also the essence of its law. They were introduced to make it easier for newly baptized Russia to adopt the norms of Christian morality by likening punishments for its violations to monetary penalties for civil crimes, which also distinguished the legal system of Old Rus’ (as well as Northern Europe) from the Greco-Roman one.