The Pskov Judicial Charter (), also known as the Charter of Pskov, was the

legal code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the co ...

of the

Pskov Republic The Pskov Republic () was a city-state in northwestern Russia. It is traditionally considered to have won its formal independence from the Novgorod Republic in 1348. Its capital city was Pskov and its territory was roughly equivalent to modern-d ...

. It was issued in various redactions between 1397 and 1467. It, along with the Novgorod Judicial Charter, was an important source for the

Sudebnik of 1497 The Sudebnik of 1497 (), also known as the Sudebnik of Ivan III (), was a collection of laws introduced by Ivan III in 1497. It played a big part in the centralisation of the Russian state, the creation of all-Russian legislation, and the elimin ...

under

Ivan III Ivan III Vasilyevich (; 22 January 1440 – 27 October 1505), also known as Ivan the Great, was Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia from 1462 until his death in 1505. Ivan served as the co-ruler and regent for his blind father Vasily II be ...

, the first collection of laws of the unified state. It is considered to be a monument of

Russian law The primary and fundamental statement of laws in the Russian Federation is the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Statutes, like the Russian Civil Code and the Russian Criminal Code, are the predominant legal source of Russian laws. Hier ...

Description

Only one complete copy is known to have survived, while a smaller fragment, known as the Synodal Copy, was found and published by the historian

Nikolai Karamzin Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin () was a Russian historian, writer, poet and critic. He is best remembered for his fundamental ''History of the Russian State'', a 12-volume national history. Early life Karamzin was born in the small village of ...

in 1812. The full text of what is called the Vorontsov Copy was found and published by in 1847. The document is divided into 120 articles. A number of authors believe that the available texts were copied from defective copies. The preamble of the Synodal Copy says: Although the preamble refers to the year 6905 in the

Byzantine calendar The Byzantine calendar, also called the Roman calendar, the Creation Era of Constantinople or the Era of the World (, also or ; 'Roman year since the creation of the universe', abbreviated as ε.Κ.), was the calendar used by the Eastern Orth ...

(1396/1397), there were only two cathedral districts in Pskov at the time, while the fifth ''sobor'' was introduced in 1462 and the sixth in 1471, which suggests an enactment date somewhere between 1462 and 1471. The prevailing view is that the first redaction was finished in 1397 and the final redaction was completed during 1462–1471. The Charter reflected the most important aspects of socio-economic and political life in Pskov during the 14th and 15th centuries. It protected

private property Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental Capacity (law), legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from Collective ownership ...

, especially

feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

landownership, regulated procedures for official registration of landownership and court examination of land disputes, and defined the status of the so-called ''izorniki'' (a category of feudally dependent

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...

s). Many articles of the Charter were dedicated to trade relations, such as buying and selling, pawning, loans, and the hiring of workforce. The code provided for a

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

in case of a

political crime In criminology, a political crime or political offence is an offence that prejudices the interests of the state or its government. States may criminalise any behaviour perceived as a threat, real or imagined, to the state's survival, including ...

or regular

criminal offense In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane ...

Sources

The preamble refers to the chapters of the princes Aleksandr and Konstantin and to ancient Pskovian customs (''poshliny''), although nothing is known for certain about these. Only one prince by the name of Konstantin is known, a brother of Vasily Dmitriyevich of Moscow, who reigned in Pskov in the early 15th century. The identity of Aleksandr is disputed; the two likely candidates are considered to be Aleksandr Yaroslavich Nevsky (1220–1263) and Aleksandr Mikhailovich of Tver (1301–1339). Although Aleksandr Nevsky never reigned in Pskov, he was considered to be the liberator of Pskov, while Aleksandr Mikhailovich lost the title of grand prince when he became the prince of Pskov. Despite this, Pskov was a borough (''prigorod'') of Novgorod at the time of Aleksandr Nevsky's reign, and the grand prince of Moscow,

, refused to confirm the charters presented by the Pskovian ambassadors in 1474 due to them not being issued by the grand princes themselves; therefore, it is unlikely that Ivan would have denied the title to his direct paternal ancestor. It is likely that the Pskov Judicial Charter was compiled on the basis of earlier statutes, and principal subjects included commercial law, criminal law, debts, evidence, inheritance, the law of procedure, the legal position of peasant classes, as well as the rights of officials. The compiler also had some notion of legal collections such as the '' Merilo Pravednoye''. Several scholars have also noted the similarities between the Charter and the ''

Russkaya Pravda The ''Russkaya Pravda'' (sometimes translated as ''Rus' Justice'', ''Rus' Truth'', or ''Russian Justice'') was the legal code of Kievan Rus' and its principalities during the period of feudal fragmentation. It was written at the beginning of th ...

'', which is in the terminology and common legal institutions rather than direct borrowings. says that the Pskov Judicial Charter was edited in Moscow during 1484–1486 as part of the codification programme of

, and he believes that the surviving copy of the full text is based on this revision. The Charter is considered to be a principal source for the

, which was enacted during the reign of Ivan III, and this may explain the revision of the Charter in Moscow.

References

Bibliography

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External links

Full text of the charter in English

Full text of the charter
{{in lang, ru Legal history of Russia 15th century in Russia Medieval legal codes Pskov Republic Cyrillic manuscripts