Townsmen in mediaeval Serbia

Abstract

Urban population in mediaeval Serbia was legally and actually heterogeneous class. Their name - građani (townsmen) comes from Serbian word grad, meaning town, city. Grad (town) was originally the fortified place where the population could find the shelter. Later on, the people were settling around the fortress, occupying themselves with trade and artisans. The majority of the population lived in podgradije (suburbs), that is to say under and around the city walls. Besides the towns Serbian legal sources mention the market-towns (trgovi, singular trg), unfortified settlements where the goods were exchanged. Towns and market-towns are mentioned side by side in several articles of Dusan's Code, so we can suggest that they had the identical legal status. Urban population in entirety did not represent in the mediaeval Serbia the unique, autonomous class (tiers etat), like it was case in the West-European monarchies. Trying to explain the legal status of Serbian towns and its population we can speak on three different types of towns: 1) towns in interior of Serbia; 2) maritime towns, and 3) towns conquered from Byzantium. In the towns in interior of Serbia lived the Serbian population and foreigners. Serbian population living in towns was equal in legal rights to the commoners. That fact could be clearly sees from the article 94 of Dusan's Code that mentions a commoner, whether in a city, county or in a mountain district... Special legal status had the population of littoral cities that made a part of the mediaeval Serbia, such as Drivast, Ulcinj, Bar, Budva and Kotor. Legal rights of those townsmen were regulated by the city statutes, from which survived only the statutes of Kotor and Budva. Tsar Dusan confirmed to the towns conquered from Byzantium all the privileges they had under the Byzantine Emperors. Although the citizenry did not represent the autonomous class in the mediaeval Serbia, Tsar Dusan several times in his Code shows the care for towns as military, administrative and economic centres.