Halfway Between Byzantium and Serbia: Marriage Provisions of the Second Žiča Charter .

Abstract

Marking the eight hundred years anniversary of the adoption of the Žiča Charter issued by Stefan Prvovjenčani is more than a good reason to closely examine the provisions of this Charter. If we think about the historical and political context of that time, it becomes clear that the Žiča Charter provides direct information on the formative processes of the Serbian state and church. Žiča was not only the seat of the new Serbian archdiocese, but also had a central role in building the cult of the Nemanjić dynasty and especially of Stefan Prvovjenčani as its first king. The Žiča Charter, one of the oldest Serbian legal monuments, represents the determination of the first Serbian king to create a powerful Serbian state and strengthen the Serbian Orthodox Church, which would be the base of the political and legal program not only for Stefan Prvovjenčani, but also for his successors. This is reminiscent of the „symphony doctrine” that was copied from Byzantium, and in that copying, no branch of law, including marriage law, was spared. The most important part of this Charter are definitely the norms dedicated to marital law, which show that general political tendencies had a huge impact on private law too. Many legal transplants such as the prohibition of arbitrary divorce, the prohibition of kidnaping as a way of separating spouses or dowry institutions have caused radical changes in Serbian marital law; however, they were not immune to transformations under the influence of customary law and attitudes of the society of medieval Serbia. It once again proves the thesis of professor Alan Watson who claimed that legal transplants have their own, independent life in the law system that accepted them. When it comes to Serbian medieval law, that life started very early. The influence of Roman-Byzantine and canon law was already felt in the Nomokanon of Sveti Sava, and then in the Žiča Charter; in later regulations of Serbian medieval law this influence becomes quite obvious. The main topic of this paper will be the process of legal transplantation in marital law from the Byzantine Empire to Serbia and the author will also try to discover and explain certain regularities and deviations in that process. Тhe analysis of the marital provisions of the Žiča Charter is naturally imposed here as a starting point.