Editing Dušan Code (section)

==Composition==
The first part, the Syntagma, was an encyclopedic legal collection, provided in alphabetical order. It drew from religious and secular law; ecclesiastical articles made up a majority of the Byzantine original.<ref name=Fine315/> The version of Dušan's manuscripts contained only a third of the original Greek version; it omitted most of the ecclesiastical material and contained mainly secular articles; Serbia already had an ecclesiastical code in Saint Sava Nomocanon.<ref name=Fine315/> The secular articles of the abridged Serbian version of the Syntagma were drawn chiefly from Basil I's law code and the Novella's of Emperors who succeeded him; they focused on laws governing contracts, loans, inheritance, marriage, dowries etc. as well as on matters of criminal law.<ref name=Fine315/> The second part, the Law of Justinian, was actually a shortened version of the 8th-century Farmer's Law, a code settling problems and disputes among peasants within a village.<ref name=Fine315/>

The third part, Dušan Code, added what was not covered in the other two parts and specific Serbian situations.<ref name=Fine315/> Since aspects of civil and criminal law were well covered in the two parts, Dušan's articles concerned with public law and legal procedures.<ref name=Fine315/> The Code also provided more material on actual punishments; in which there is a strong Byzantine influence, with executions and mutilations frequently replacing Serbia's traditional fines.<ref name=Fine315/> It touched on crimes or insults and their punishment; settlement of civil suits (including ordeals and selection and role of juries); court procedure and judicial jurisdictions (defining which cases to be judged by which bodies among Church courts,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stojanović |first=Stefan |date=2018 |title=The church court in Dušan's code |url=https://scindeks.ceon.rs/Article.aspx?artid=0350-85011881487S |journal=Zbornik radova Pravnog fakulteta u Nišu |volume=57 |issue=81 |pages=487–495 |doi=10.5937/zrpfni1881487S |issn=0350-8501|doi-access=free }}</ref> the Emperor's court, courts of the Emperor's circuit judges, and judgement by a nobleman); and rights and obligations, including the right to freely carry out commerce (articles 120, 121), tax obligations (summary tax and timeframe to pay), grazing rights and their violation, service obligations to the Emperor, exemption from state dues (usually for the Church), obligations associated with land, and the obligation of the Church to perform charity. 

The code also defined the different types of landholding (specifying the various rights and obligations that went with various categories of land), the rights of inheritance, the position of slaves, and the position of serfs. It defined the labor dues serfs owed to their lords (article 68) but also gave them the right to lay plaint against their master before the Emperor's court (article 139). The code also noted the special privileges of foreign communities (e.g. the ''Saxons'').<ref name="Fine316">{{harvnb|Fine|1994|p=316}}</ref>

Many articles regarded the Church status, thus supplementing the existing canon law texts. The Church received a very privileged position, on the whole, though it was given the duty of charity in no uncertain terms: "And in all churches the poor shall be fed ... and should any one fail to feed them, be he Metropolitan, bishop, or abbot, he shall be deprived of his office" (article 28). The code also banned [[simony]]. A clear-cut separation of Church and state was established in most matters, allowing Church courts to judge the Church's people and prohibiting the nobility from interfering with Church property and Church matters.<ref name="Fine316" /> 

Dušan Code did not look favorably upon the Catholic Church, though he, as his predecessors, was friendly and respectable to foreign Catholics (Saxons and coastal merchants).<ref name="Fine316" /> He referred to the [[Roman Catholic Church]] as the "Latin [[heresy]]" and to its adherents as "[[half believers]]." He prohibited [[proselytism]] by Catholics among the Orthodox, Orthodox conversions to Catholicism, and [[Interfaith marriage|mixed marriages]] between Catholics and Orthodox unless the Catholic converted to Orthodoxy. He also had articles strongly penalizing "heretics" ([[Bogomils]]). Only the Orthodox were called Christians.<ref name="Fine316" />

The code defined and allowed court procedure, jurisdictions, and punishment to depend upon the social class of the individual involved, supporting the existing class structure.<ref name=Fine316/> Articles touched on the status in society and in court of clergy, nobility, commoners, serfs, slaves, Albanians and Vlachs (the latter two for their pastoralist lifestyle, than for ethnic reasons), and foreigners.<ref name=Fine316/> The Code also guaranteed the authority and income of the state; it contained articles on taxes, obligations associated with land, and services and hospitality owed to the Emperor and his agents.<ref name=Fine316/> Greek, "Latin" or Italian, Ragusan, Bulgarian, Vlach, Albanian and Serbian merchants can freely trade without interference and in transit they are free to transfer their goods.<ref>Traian Stoianovich; (1960) ''The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant'' p. 236; The Journal of Economic History, {{doi|10.2307/2114856}}  </ref> 

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| quote = Articles like the ones just cited ''[Article 158]'' are also valuable sources on Serbian social history. However, they must be used with caution. For a series of laws is not the same type of source as a visitor's description of a society. A law code does not describe how things actually functioned but only how they ought to have functioned. In some cases articles may have been based on customary laws; in such cases the articles' contents were probably generally observed or practiced and thus can be taken as evidence about actual practices and conditions. However, an article could also reflect an innovation, a reform the ruler was trying to bring about through legislation. In this case it would not have reflected existing customs and we must then ask, was the ruler successful in realizing his reform or did it remain a dead letter? Thus a law code may at times more accurately depict an ideal than reality. And since certain—perhaps many—articles in Dusan's code may have been attempts to legislate change, attempts which may or may not have been successful (and even if successful in one place, possibly not in others), we must always be careful and avoid leaping to the conclusion that this or that article describes the way things were done in fourteenth-century Serbia.
| source = [[John Van Antwerp Fine]], author of ''The Late Medieval Balkans''.<ref name=Fine317/>
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| width = 400px
}}
The Code also maintained law and order, not limiting itself against crime and insults, but also gave responsibility to specific communities; it stated the existing custom that each territory was responsible and liable for keeping order; e.g. a frontier lord was responsible for defending his border: "if any foreign army come and ravish the land of the Emperor, and again return through their land, those frontier lords shall pay all [the people] through whose territory they [the army] came." (Article 49).<ref name=Fine316/> The control of [[brigands]], a constant problem in the [[Balkans]], was also widely addressed in articles 126, 145, 146, 158 and 191.<ref name=Fine316/> Article 145 says: "In whatsoever village a thief or brigand be found, that village shall be scattered and the brigand shall be hanged forthwith ... and the headmen of the village shall be brought before me [the Emperor] and shall pay for all the brigand or thief hath done from the beginning and shall be punished as a thief and a brigand." and continues in article 146, "also prefects and lieutenants and bailiffs and reeves and headmen who administer villages and mountain hamlets. All these shall be punished in the manner written above [article 145] if any thief or brigand be found in them." And article 126 states, "lf there be a robbery or theft on urban land around a town, let the neighborhood pay for it all." And finally article 158 requires that the localities bordering on an uninhabited hill jointly supervise that region and pay for damage from any robbery occurring there.<ref name=Fine317>{{harvnb|Fine|1994|p=317}}</ref> Fine concludes that these articles demonstrate a weakness in the state's maintaining of order in rural and border areas, which caused it to pass responsibility down to local inhabitants, by threatening them with penalties, the state hoped to force the locality to assume this duty.<ref name=Fine317/> Another reason for the strictness of the articles towards the locality was the belief that the brigand could not survive without local support, shelter, and food. Thus the brigand was seen as a local figure, locally supported, preying on strangers. As a result, the allegedly supporting locality shared his guilt and deserved to share the punishment. The strict articles were therefore intended to discourage a community from aiding brigands.<ref name=Fine317/>

The monarch had wide autocratic powers, but was surrounded and advised by a permanent council of magnates and prelates.<ref name=Anderson290>{{cite book|author=Perry Anderson|title=Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sP_2-y9zKfgC&pg=PA290|year=1996|publisher=Verso|isbn=978-1-85984-107-5|pages=290–}}</ref> The court, chancellery and administration were rough copies of those of [[Constantinople]].<ref name=Anderson290/> The Code named the administrative hierarchy as following: "lands, cities, [[župa]]s and [[krajište]]s", the župas and krajištes were one and the same, with the župas on the borders were called krajištes ("[[march (territory)|frontier march]]").<ref>{{harvnb|Radovanović|2002|p=5}}</ref> The župa consisted of villages, and their status, rights and obligations were regulated in the constitution. The ruling nobility possessed hereditary allodial estates, which were worked by dependent ''sebri'', the equivalent of Greek ''[[paroikos|paroikoi]]''; peasants owing labour services, formally bound by decree.<ref name=Anderson290/> The earlier title of ''župan'' was abolished and replaced with the Greek ''[[kephale (Byzantine Empire)|kephale]]'' (''kefalija'', "head, master").<ref name=Anderson290/>

The legal [[Legal transplants|transplanting]] is notable with the articles 171 and 172, which regulated juridical independence, taken from ''[[Basilika]]'' (book VII, 1, 16–17).

===Peasants===
{{Expand section|date=February 2012}}
Dušan Code is one of few sources on the position of Serbia's peasants.<ref name=Fine318>{{harvnb|Fine|1994|p=318}}</ref>

{{quotation|Commoners shall have no council. If anybody is found participating in council, let his ears be cut off, and let the leaders be singed.<ref>[http://www.ius.bg.ac.rs/informacije/Dusanov%20zakonik%20i%20pravni%20transplanti%20-%20N%20Selakovic.pdf Nikola Selaković, Dušanov zakonik i pravni translplanti: uporedno-pravna studija] (pp. 52)</ref>|On the Commoners Council}}
One aspect is the treatment of the position and rights of Serbia's peasants. In the context of the medieval social structure, peasants were the commoners who engaged in [[Agriculture|agricultural]] work and formed a substantial part of the population. Commoners, who were the peasants, were not allowed to form or participate in any council. Those found to be involved in any council-related activities were subjected to severe punishment. The code prescribes that the punishment for participating in a council would be cutting off the offender's ears, while the leaders or organizers of such councils would be subjected to [[Singe|singeing]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dušan |first1=Stephan | year=1950 |title=The Code of Stephan Dušan |journal=The Slavonic and East European Review |volume=28 |issue=71 |pages=516–539 |publisher=Malcolm Burr |jstor=4204151 }}</ref>