Some remarks concerning the reception of Byzantine law in Mediaeval Serbia

Abstract

Roman law was not introduced into Slavic countries directly by the activity of lawyers educated in Bologna or somewhere else, but indirectly through Byzantine law. Essentially Serbian legal compilations are strict translations of the Byzantine ones, but in several cases one can find some variations that change the sense of the text. Sometimes provisions of Byzantine law were not in accordance with Serbian customary law, so that Serbian lawyers had to add some explications. In this paper the author exposes some of the most interesting examples.