Bequeathing in Medieval Serbian Law

Abstract

The sources on Serbian medieval law show a lack of wills. Some information on testamentary inheriting is found in the Nomocanon of St. Sava, which systematically replicates the legal provisions of the Procheiros nomos from the Middle Byzantine period. Two unusual features are noteworthy. The first concerns the fact that Dušan’s Code fails to regulate the institution of testament, while the accompanying sources give it no more than a passing mention. On the other hand, the few surviving testaments written in the Cyrillic script and the Serbian recension of Old Church Slavonic date precisely from the period of Emperor Dušan, i.e. from the first half of the fourteenth century. From the end of the twelfth century the influence of Byzantine written law began to spread in medieval Serbia, supplementing and transforming the previous system of customary law. The legal regulations that the old Serbs inherited from the Byzantines reveal that they were sometimes outdated and dichotomous. Old Serbian laws on testamentary bequeathal of property were shaped in the interplay of current Slavic customary law and largely obsolete Byzantine written law.