Law codex of Vinodol

Last updated April 17, 2019

Law Codex of Vinodol or Vinodol statute (Croatian : Vinodolski zakonik) is one of the oldest law texts written in the Chakavian dialect of Croatian language and is among the oldest Slavic codes.^[1]^[2]^[3] It was written in the Glagolitic alphabet. It was originally compiled in 1288 by a commission of 42 members in Novi Vinodolski, a town on the Adriatic Sea coast in Croatia, located south of Crikvenica, Selce and Bribir and north of Senj. However, the codex itself is preserved in a 16th-century copy.

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a city, state, or country. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by legislative bodies; they are distinguished from case law or precedent, which is decided by courts, and regulations issued by government agencies.

Croatian is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and other neighboring countries. It is the official and literary standard of Croatia and one of the official languages of the European Union. Croatian is also one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a recognized minority language in Serbia and neighboring countries.

Novi Vinodolski Town in Primorje-Gorski Kotar, Croatia

Novi Vinodolski is a town on the Adriatic Sea coast in Croatia, located south of Crikvenica, Selce and Bribir and north of Senj. The population of Novi is 3,988, with a total of 5,131 people in the city administered area. The city area became a Frankopan property in the 13th century, marking the period to which the most valuable heritage is dated, including the Law codex of Vinodol. City hinterland is dominated by the Vinodol Valley, used for agriculture and winemaking. Economy of the city is dominated by tourist industry, as Novi Vinodolski is well known tourist centre situated in an area largely unaffected by other types of industry and it offers a wide variety of tourist amenities. The Vinodol Valley is also the site of a hydroelectric power plant utilizing water collected in Gorski Kotar reservoirs. Transport links of the city are substantially dependent on the nearby city of Rijeka.

The statute

A paragraph was set to define the relation between the dukes and the peasantry of the region.^[4] It is the oldest among all Croatian city statutes, which represented an agreement between the people of Vinodol and their new liege lords, the Princes of Krk. It contains important information about the feudal law in this area which had replaced the tribal customs of an earlier period. The Vinodol Statute provides a rare contemporary picture of the life and political conditions in medieval Europe. The oldest regulations concerning public health in western Croatia are preserved within the Vinodol Statute. Today, it is stored in the National and University Library Zagreb.

A duke (male) or duchess (female) can either be a monarch ruling over a duchy or a member of royalty or nobility, historically of highest rank below the monarch. The title comes from French duc, itself from the Latin dux, 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank, and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province.

The Principality of Krk was a semi-independent principality on the Croatian-Adriatic island of Krk that existed from 1451 to 1480 during the Late Middle Ages. Previous to the principality's foundation, Krk and the surrounding lands were ruled by several Frangipani (Frankopan) counts. In 1451, count Ivan VII, who ruled parts of Krk and parts of the nearby mainland, in a dispute with his brother, traded all his land on the mainland for his brother's land on the rest of the island, forming a Krk under the single ruler Ivan VII. During Ivan's reign (1451–1480) many religious structures and monuments were formed, improving the towns on the island greatly. The island's semi-independence came to an end when the Republic of Venice invaded in 1480, when they tricked Ivan VII into leaving the island. The Frangipani family never had the title of Prince but only of Counts.

Middle Ages Period of European history from the 5th to the 15th century

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

The Vinodol Statute confirms status of the Vinodol as an administrative and political center from the 13th century. The text of the statute is preserved as a copy from the 16th century.

Editions

The first printed edition was prepared in 1843 by Antun Mažuranić in the third yearly volume of the journal Kolo . Osip Bodyansky translated it in 1846 to Russian and Anna Mikhailovna Evreinova edited the 1878 edition in Saint Petersburg, with facsimile of the original as well as Latin and Cyrillic transliteration. Vatroslav Jagić published it in 1880, both the original and a Russian translation with philological and legal commentary. Wacław Maciejowski translated it in 1856 to Polish, Jules Preux translated it in 1896 to French, Mark Kostrenčić translated it in 1931 to German and Lujo Margetić translated it in 1981/1982 to Italian, and in 1983 to English. Josip Bratulić edited the 1988 facsimile edition with commentary and a dictionary.

Antun Mažuranić was Croatian writer and linguist, brother of Croatian Ban Ivan Mažuranić and writer Matija Mažuranić.

Osip Maksimovich Bodyansky was a notable Russian Imperial Slavist of Ukrainian Cossack descent who studied and taught at the Imperial Moscow University. Bodyansky's close friends included Nikolai Gogol, Sergey Aksakov, Mikhail Katkov, Taras Shevchenko, Mikhail Maksimovich and Pavel Jozef Šafárik. He was elected a corresponding member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1854.

Russian is an East Slavic language, which is official in the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as being widely used throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 25 December 1991. Although nearly three decades have passed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian is used in official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states, as well as in Israel and Mongolia.

Related Research Articles

Glagolitic script oldest known Slavic alphabet

The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a Byzantine monk from Thessaloniki. He and his brother, Saint Methodius, were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. The brothers decided to translate liturgical books into the Old Slavic language that was understandable to the general population, but as the words of that language could not be easily written by using either the Greek or Latin alphabets, Cyril decided to invent a new script, Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of the Slavic tribes from the Byzantine theme of Thessalonica.

Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic, also known as Old Church Slavic or Old Slavic, was the first Slavic literary language. It is also referred to as Paleo-Slavic (Paleoslavic) or Palaeo-Slavic (Palaeoslavic), not to be confused with the Proto-Slavic. It is often abbreviated to OCS.

The Corpus JurisCivilis is the modern name for a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, issued from 529 to 534 by order of Justinian I, Eastern Roman Emperor. It is also sometimes referred to as the Code of Justinian, although this name belongs more properly to the part titled Codex Justinianus.

Chakavian or Čakavian, , is a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by a minority of Croats. It has a low mutual intelligibility with Shtokavian. All three main Serbo-Croatian dialects are named after their most common word for "what?", which in Čakavian is ča or ca. Chakavian is spoken mainly in the northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley of Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.

The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the Masoretic Text and Tiberian vocalization. It is dated 1008 CE according to its colophon. The Aleppo Codex, against which the Leningrad Codex was corrected, is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since 1947, making the Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day.

The Codex Theodosianus was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Emperor Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian III on 26 March 429 and the compilation was published by a constitution of 15 February 438. It went into force in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 January 439. The original text of the codex is also found in the Breviary of Alaric, promulgated on 2 February 506.

Byzantine law was essentially a continuation of Roman law with increased Christian influence. Most sources define Byzantine law as the Roman legal traditions starting after the reign of Justinian I in the 6th century and ending with the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century.

The Codex Zographensis is an illuminated Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript. It is composed of 304 parchment folios; the first 288 are written in Glagolitic containing Gospels and organised as Tetraevangelium, and the rest written in Cyrillic containing a 13th-century synaxarium. It is dated back to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century.

The Codex Marianus is an Old Church Slavonic fourfold Gospel Book written in Glagolitic script, dated to the beginning of the 11th century, which is, one of the oldest manuscript witnesses to the Old Church Slavonic language, one of the two fourfold gospels being part of the Old Church Slavonic canon.

Hval's Codex or Hval's Manuscript is a Cyrillic manuscript of 353 pages written in 1404, in Split, for Duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić. It was illuminated by Gothic artists from the Dalmatian littoral.

The Glagolita Clozianus is a 14-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon miscellany, written in the eleventh century.

Missale Romanum Glagolitice is a Croatian missal and incunabulum printed in 1483. It is written in Glagolitic script and is the first printed Croatian book. It is the first missal in Europe not published in Latin script. Its editio princeps, unique in the achieved typographic artistry, was published only 28 years after the Gutenberg bible's 42-lines, bears witness of high cultural attainment and maturity of Croatian Glagolites and Croatian mediaeval literature.

The Glagolitic script is older than Cyrillic script which also uses some of its letters. The exact nature of relationship between the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic scripts has been historically a matter of great study, controversy and dispute in Slavic studies, especially pertaining to the question of chronological precedence and mutual influence. Several traditional accounts on the origin of the Slavic script they describe are ambiguous in their statements of what particular script they pertain to, which is furthermore complicated by the occasional mixture of terms used for them in some sources.

The Kastav Statute is a 14th-century Glagolitic city statute of Croatian city Kastav.

The Vrbnik Statute is a 14th-century Glagolitic city statute of the Croatian city Vrbnik.

Croatian literature refers to literary works attributed to the medieval and modern culture of the Croats, Croatia and the Croatian language. Besides the modern language whose shape and orthography was standardized in the late 19th century, it also covers the oldest works produced within the modern borders of Croatia, written in Church Slavonic and Medieval Latin, as well as vernacular works written in Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects.

The Codex Vindobonensis 751, also known as the Vienna Boniface Codex, is a ninth-century codex comprising four different manuscripts, the first of which is one of the earliest remaining collections of the correspondence of Saint Boniface. The codex is held in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

References

↑ Russkaya Pravda is the only older code in Slavdom.
↑ Brozyna, Martha A. (2005). Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages: A Medieval Source Documents Reader. McFarland. p. 115. ISBN 0786420421 . Retrieved 2013-10-14.
↑ Sedlar, Jean W. (1994). East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500. 3. University of Washington Press. p. 436. ISBN 0295972912 . Retrieved 2013-10-14.
↑ Dvornik, Francis (1962). The Slavs in European History and Civilization. Rutgers University Press. p. 139. ISBN 0813507995 . Retrieved 2013-10-18.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Russkaya Pravda is the only older code in Slavdom.

[2] Brozyna, Martha A. (2005). Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages: A Medieval Source Documents Reader. McFarland. p. 115. ISBN 0786420421 . Retrieved 2013-10-14.

[3] Sedlar, Jean W. (1994). East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500. 3. University of Washington Press. p. 436. ISBN 0295972912 . Retrieved 2013-10-14.

[4] Dvornik, Francis (1962). The Slavs in European History and Civilization. Rutgers University Press. p. 139. ISBN 0813507995 . Retrieved 2013-10-18.