The Cathedral Code of 1649, having generalized and absorbed the previous experience of creating legal norms, had its own sources . Sources of the Code are:
Code of Laws;
Decree books of orders;
Royal decrees;
Duma sentences;
Decisions of the Zemsky Sobors (most of the articles were compiled according to the petitions of the council's vowels);
- “Stoglav”;
Lithuanian and Byzantine legislation;
New decree articles on “robbery and murder” (1669), on estates and estates (1677), on trade (1653 and 1677), which were included in the body of legal norms of the Code after 1649.
The Council Code defines head of state status- king, autocratic and hereditary monarch. The regulation on the approval (election) of the tsar at the Zemsky assembly did not at all shake the established principles, but, on the contrary, substantiated them. Even criminal intent (not to mention actions) directed against the person of the monarch was severely punished.
The code contained a set of norms that regulated the most important industries government controlled. These norms can be conditionally referred to as administrative ones. Attachment of peasants to the land (ch. 11 "Court on the peasants"); township reform, which changed the position of the “white settlements” (ch. 14); change in the status of the patrimony and estate (Ch. 16 and 17); regulation of the work of local governments (ch. 21); the regime of entry and exit (Article 6) - all these measures formed the basis of administrative and police reforms.
Important transformations with the adoption of the Cathedral Code took place in the region judicial rights. The Code constituted a whole complex of norms regulating the organization of the court and the process. There is an even greater differentiation of the process into two forms compared to the Sudebniks: “trial” and “search”.
Chapter 10 of the Code describes in detail the various procedures of the court: it was divided into two processes - the actual “judgment” and “execution”, i.e. sentencing, decision. The trial began with the “introduction”, the filing of a petition. The defendant was summoned to court by the bailiff, he could introduce guarantors, and also not appear in court twice, if there were good reasons for that. The court adopted and used various proof of: testimonies (at least ten witnesses), written evidence (the most trustworthy of them are officially certified documents), kissing the cross (in disputes for an amount not exceeding one ruble), lot. To obtain evidence, a “general” (survey of the population about the fact of a crime) and “general” (about a specific person suspected of a crime) search were used. A kind of procedural action in court was the so-called “pravezh”. The defendant (most often an insolvent debtor) was regularly subjected to corporal punishment by the court (beating with rods on bare calves). The number of such procedures was to be equivalent to the amount owed. So, for example, for a debt of one hundred rubles, they were flogged for a month). “Pravezh was not just a punishment - it was also a measure that prompted the defendant to fulfill the obligation (himself or through guarantors). Judgment was oral, but recorded in the “judicial list”, each stage was drawn up with a special letter.
Search or “search” was used in the most serious criminal cases. A special place and attention was given to crimes, which were declared: “the word and deed of the sovereign”, i.e. in which the public interest is involved. The case in the search process could begin with the statement of the victim, with the discovery of the fact of the crime, or with the usual slander.
Chapter 21 of the Council Code of 1649 for the first time regulates such a procedural procedure as torture. The basis for its application could be the results of the “search”, when the testimony was divided: part in favor of the suspect, part against him. The use of torture was regulated as follows: firstly, it could be used no more than three times, with a certain break; secondly, the testimony given under torture (“slander”) had to be cross-checked with the help of other procedural measures (interrogation, oath, search).
In the area of criminal law the following changes have been made. First of all, the circle of subjects of the crime is determined: they can be either individuals or a group of persons. The law divides the subjects of the crime into main and secondary ones, understanding the latter as accomplices. In turn, complicity can be physical (assistance, practical assistance, committing the same actions as the main subject of the crime) and intellectual (for example, incitement to murder in Chapter 22). In connection with this, even a slave who committed a crime at the direction of his master began to be recognized as the subject of a crime. At the same time, it should be noted that the law distinguished from minor subjects of a crime (accomplices) persons who were only involved in the commission of a crime: accomplices (persons who created the conditions for the commission of a crime), conniving parties (persons obliged to prevent a crime and who did not do this), non-informers ( persons who did not report the preparation and commission of a crime), concealers (persons who hid the criminal and the traces of the crime). The Code, among other things, knows the division of crimes into intentional, careless and accidental. For a careless crime, the perpetrator is punished in the same way as for a deliberate criminal act (punishment follows not the motive of the crime, but its result). The law also highlights mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Mitigating circumstances include the state of intoxication; uncontrollability of actions caused by insult or threat (affect); and aggravating - the repetition of the crime, the amount of harm, the special status of the object and subject of the crime, the totality of several crimes.
The law identifies separate stages of a criminal act: intent (which in itself may be punishable), attempted crime and commission of a crime. The law also knows the concept of recidivism, which in the Council Code coincides with the concept of "a dashing person", and the concept of extreme necessity, which is not punishable only if the proportionality of its real danger on the part of the criminal is observed. Violation of proportionality meant exceeding the limits of necessary defense and was punished.
According to the Council Code of 1649, the objects of the crime were: church, state, family, person, property and morality. Crimes against the church were considered the most dangerous and that is why they were put in the first place, which was done for the first time in the history of Russian secular codifications. This change had a double meaning. On the one hand, the church occupied a special place in public life, and on the other hand, the acceptance of the church under the protection of state institutions and laws indicated their priority in the political system.
The Cathedral Code of 1649 brought great changes to the region real, liability and inheritance law. The scope of civil law relations was defined quite clearly. The legislator was encouraged to do this by the development of commodity-money relations, the formation of new types and forms of ownership, and the quantitative growth of civil law transactions.
The subjects of civil law relations were both private (individual) and collective persons. In the 17th century, the legal rights of a private person gradually expanded due to concessions from a collective person. For the legal thinking of this era, it was characteristic to consider the established relations as eternal relations. For legal relations that arose on the basis of norms regulating the sphere of property relations, the instability of the status of the subject of rights and obligations became characteristic. First of all, this was expressed in the division of several powers associated with one subject and one right (for example, conditional land ownership gave the subject the right to own and use, but not dispose of the object). With this, difficulties arose in determining the true full-fledged subject. Subjects of civil law had to meet certain requirements, such as gender (there was a significant increase in the legal capacity of a woman compared to the previous stage), age (a qualification of 15-20 years made it possible to independently accept an estate, bonded obligations, etc.), social and property position.
Things according to the Council Code were the subject of a number of powers, relationships and obligations. The main ways of acquiring property were considered to be capture, prescription, discovery, award and direct acquisition in exchange or purchase.
In the Code of 1649, regulation acquires grant of land. It was a complex set of legal actions, including the issuance of letters of commendation; drawing up a certificate (i.e., recording certain information about the endowed person in the order book); putting into possession, which consisted in the public measurement of land. The distribution of land, along with the Local Order, was also carried out by other bodies - the Discharge Order, the Order of the Grand Palace, the Little Russian, Novgorod, Siberian and other orders. The contract in the 17th century remained the main way of acquiring ownership of property, and, in particular, land. Ritual ceremonies lose their significance in the contract, formalized actions (participation of witnesses at the conclusion of the contract) are replaced by written acts (“assaults” of witnesses without their personal participation).
For the first time in the Cathedral Code of 1649, it was regulated institution of easements(legal restriction of the right of ownership of one person in the interests of the right of use of another or other persons). The legislator knew personal easements (restrictions in favor of certain persons, specially stipulated in the law), for example, the destruction of meadows by warriors in the service. Easements in rem (restriction of property rights in the interests of an indefinite number of subjects) included: the right of the owner of a mill for production purposes to flood the underlying meadow owned by another person; the opportunity to build a stove near the wall of a neighbor's house or build a house on the boundary of someone else's plot (ch. 10). Along with this, the right to property was limited either by the direct prescription of the law, or by the establishment of a legal regime that did not guarantee “eternal property”.
The Cathedral Code of 1649 is a set of laws of the Moscow kingdom, regulating various aspects of the life of Russian society. The fact is that after the end of the Time of Troubles, the Romanovs began active legislative activity: in just 1611-1648. 348 decrees were issued, and after the last Sudebnik of 1550 - 445 legislative acts. Many of them were not only outdated, but also contradicted each other. All the regulations of that time were scattered among different departments, which further increased the chaos in law enforcement. The urgent need to regulate the legal foundations of the state was realized by the Cathedral Code of 1649. The reason for the adoption of the long overdue Code was the Salt Riot that broke out in Moscow in 1648, the participants of which demanded its development. In the Council Code, for the first time, one feels the desire not only to form a system of norms, but also to classify them according to branches of law.
At the beginning of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, riots began in Moscow, Pskov, Novgorod and other cities. On June 1, 1648, an uprising broke out in Moscow (the so-called “salt riot”), during which the rebels held the city in their hands for several days. Following Moscow in the summer of the same year, the struggle of townsmen and small service people unfolded in Kozlov, Kursk, Solvychegodsk, Veliky Ustyug, Voronezh, Narym, Tomsk and other settlements. The socio-political crisis dictated the need to strengthen the legislative power of the country. Therefore, it was during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich that the evolution of the estate-representative monarchy (“autocracy with the boyar duma and the boyar aristocracy”) began to absolutism, which was associated, among other things, with the completion of the formalization of serfdom.
Although the Code was drawn up hastily, it was based on the existing law-making tradition. The legal sources of the Council Code were: Decree books of orders, Sudebniks of 1497 and 1550, the Lithuanian Statute of 1588, the Pilot Book and various petitions of the nobility, which contained demands for the abolition of school years. At the Zemsky Sobor, convened on July 16, 1648, the nobles filed a petition for the preparation of the Code, so that they could do all sorts of things forward according to that Coded Book. To develop a draft Code, a special order was created, headed by Prince N.I. Odoevsky, which included two boyars, one okolnichiy and two clerks. The hearing of the draft Code took place at the Council in two chambers: in one the tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral were present, in the other - elected people of various ranks. Deputies from nobles and towns had a great influence on the adoption of many norms of the Code. It is characteristic that the Code began with a preface, which stated that it was drawn up "by the sovereign's decree by the general council, so that the Muscovite state of all ranks to people, from the highest to the lowest rank, the court and reprisal would be equal in all matters to the zemstvo great royal cause."
The Cathedral Code, adopted in 1649, abolished St. George's Day and established an indefinite search for fugitives. A considerable fine was also introduced (10 rubles for each fugitive) for their reception and harboring. But at the same time, the possessing peasants have not yet completely lost their personal rights: according to the Code, they could own property and make transactions on their own behalf, be plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses in court, and also be hired to work for other persons. It was forbidden to turn serfs into serfs, and transfer local peasants to patrimony. A special article of the Code established a fine of 1 ruble for the "disgrace" of both the black-haired and the "boyar" peasant. It was, of course, 50 times less than the fine for insulting the boyar. But still, the legislation officially recognized the “honor” of the serf, which would no longer be possible for the noble state in the next century, when all the personal rights of the peasants were eliminated.
The Regulations fixed norms that reflected the beginning process of convergence of conditional landownership with hereditary patrimony: on the inheritance of estates, the permission to sell estates to a patrimony, the allocation of part of the estates for living, etc. This process of convergence of estates and patrimonies found its legal development in the decrees of 1667 and 1672 on mass transfers of estates to the patrimony of Duma Moscow and district officials for participation in the campaign of 1654, for the "Lithuanian" service and the Smolensk campaign. Edicts in the 1670s allowed the exchange and purchase of estates, which brought the estate as close as possible to the fiefdom.
It is significant that the first chapter "On blasphemers and church rebels" provided for liability for crimes against religion and the church. The next most important regulated provision is the protection of the honor and security of the sovereign. The Council Code determined his status as an autocratic and hereditary monarch. That is, his approval (election) at the Zemsky Sobor did not violate the established principles, but, on the contrary, legitimized them. Even criminal intent directed against the person of the monarch was severely punished. These provisions are developed in the third chapter "On the sovereign's court", which refers to the protection of the royal residence and personal property of the king.
The Code referred to criminal acts:
crimes against the Church: blasphemy, "seduction" to another faith, interruption of the course of the liturgy in the church, etc.;
state crimes: any actions directed against the person of the sovereign or his family, rebellion, conspiracy, treason;
crimes against the order of government: unauthorized travel abroad, counterfeiting, giving false testimony, false accusation, keeping drinking establishments without permission, etc.;
crimes against decency: maintenance of brothels, harboring fugitives, selling stolen or other people's property, etc.;
malfeasance: covetousness, injustice, forgery in service, military crimes, etc.;
crimes against a person: murder, mutilation, beatings, defamation;
property crimes: theft, horse theft, robbery, robbery, fraud, arson, damage to other people's property.
crimes against morality: “disrespect by children of parents”, pimping, “fornication” of a wife, sexual intercourse between a master and a “slave”.
From this followed a system of punishments, including: the death penalty, corporal punishment, imprisonment, exile, dishonorable punishments (deprivation of rank or demotion), confiscation of property, removal from office and fines.
Most of the "white" settlements were liquidated (the church was forbidden to expand its possessions without royal permission), and trade and fishing activities were declared a monopoly of the townspeople. Although the transition to the township for privately owned peasants freed them from personal dependence on the feudal lord, it did not mean complete liberation from feudal dependence on the state, since attachment to the place extended to the township man, as well as to the black-haired peasant.
If the principles of Domostroy continued to operate in the field of family law (the primacy of the husband over his wife and children, the actual community of property, the obligation of the wife to follow her husband, etc.), then in the field of civil law, the legal capacity of women increased. Now the widow was endowed with rights in the field of concluding transactions. The oral form of the contract is replaced by a written one, and for certain transactions (for example, the sale and purchase of real estate), state registration is mandatory.
That is, the Cathedral Code not only summarized the main trends in the development of Russian law in the 15th-17th centuries, but also consolidated new features and institutions characteristic of the era of the advancing Russian absolutism. In the Code, for the first time, the systematization of domestic legislation was carried out and an attempt was made to distinguish between the norms of law by industry. The Cathedral Code became the first printed monument of Russian law. Before him, the publication of laws was limited to announcing them in marketplaces and temples. The appearance of a printed law reduced the possibility of abuse by governors and orders.
In the economic sphere, the Code fixed the beginning of the formation of a single form of feudal landed property based on the merger of its two varieties - estates and estates. In the social sphere, it reflected the process of consolidation of the main classes and the establishment of a system of serfdom. In the political sphere, the Code characterized the initial stage of the transition from a class-representative monarchy to absolutism. In the field of court and law, this monument of law was associated with the stage of centralization of the judicial and administrative apparatus, unification and universality of legal institutions.
The code had no precedent in the history of Russian legislation, many times surpassing the voluminous Stoglav in the wealth of legal material. The Code had no equal in the European practice of those years. The Cathedral Code of 1649 was in effect until 1832, when, under the leadership of M.M. Speransky developed the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire.
Cathedral Code - the first code of laws of the Russian state in Russian history, adopted on January 29, 1649 at the Zemsky Sobor, held in 1648-1649. The monument itself does not have a heading, in the preface it is simply called "The Code". It is quite acceptable to use as definitions the Code of 1649, the Code of the Tsar and others used in historical and legal literature as synonyms.
Reasons for compiling the Code
The convocation of this council was caused by a series of uprisings that took place in Russian cities. The most powerful of them and dangerous for the authorities was the performance in Moscow in June 1648. Having ascended the throne in 1645 at the age of 16, the young Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich transferred a significant part of the power and responsibility to his "uncle" - educator B.I. Morozov. He failed to establish governance of the country, which was struck by corruption and arbitrariness on the part of the boyars, governors, and other officials. With reference to the 17th-century foreign traveler A. Olearius, in the historical tradition, the Moscow uprising of 1648 is often called the “salt riot”, but this does not reflect its real reasons, among which the increase in the price of salt was not among the main ones. The populace of Moscow (townsmen and archers, serfs and courtyards) who spoke out tried to submit a petition to the tsar with a complaint about bribes, extortions and an unfair trial by those in power. The rebels demanded the removal and severe punishment of especially hated dignitaries from the government headed by Morozov. The spontaneous rebellion began to take on organized forms with clearer demands, when nobles and other service people, gathered in the capital to be sent to guard the southern border, joined the movement a few days later. They, together with the top merchants, seized the initiative of negotiations with the tsar. This development of events put the supreme power in a difficult position. On the one hand, the service people were a privileged class and were not interested in continuing the rebellion. On the other hand, their interests and armed force could not be ignored. Simply suppressing speech became impossible. On July 16, the Zemsky Sobor was convened with the participation of elected representatives from nobles and merchants. The quintessence of their demands was the proposal to draw up a new Code to put in order and improve written legislation.
Preparation and adoption of the Code
The commission for the preparation of the preliminary text of the Code was headed by the close boyar of the tsar and governor, Prince N.I. Odoevsky (1605-1689). There is every reason to believe that he was not a nominal head, but a real leader of the work on the text of the Code, as a smart, firm, authoritative person. The commission included two more princes, the boyar F.F. Volkonsky and okolnichiy S.V. Prozorovsky, as well as two clerks, G. Leontiev and F.A. Griboyedov. The composition of the commission turned out to be very efficient and experienced, since it completed the task in a relatively short time (1.5 months). On September 1, 1648, as planned, the Zemsky Sobor in an expanded composition of delegates resumed work, having received a written draft of the Code. The work of the cathedral was carried out in two chambers. One included the tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral, that is, the highest church hierarchs. The other was called the Reply Chamber, it was dominated by nobles and representatives of the townships. Amendments were made to the preliminary text both at the meetings of the council and in the course of the ongoing work of the Odoevsky commission on the texts of the collective petitions that the elected representatives brought with them to the council as mandates of the voters. The situation in the country, which remained alarming and explosive, forced the rush to resolve issues of legislation. In the winter of 1648-1649, unrest intensified in various places. On January 29, 1649, the compilation and editing of the Code was completed, it was accepted and signed by all members of the cathedral. These signatures were left by 315 people: Patriarch Joseph, 6 bishops, 6 archimandrites and abbots, the archpriest of the Annunciation Cathedral - the confessor of the tsar, 27 members of the Boyar Duma (boyars, roundabouts, a printer and a duma clerk), 5 Moscow nobles, 148 city nobles, 3 "guests "- privileged merchants, 12 elected from Moscow hundreds and settlements, 89 townspeople from different cities, 15 elected from Moscow archery "orders" regiments.
Publication of the Code
The original of the Code is a scroll glued together from 959 columns - “staves”. The length of the scroll is 309 meters. The Code is currently stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in a gilded "ark" specially made for this purpose. Text is written on the front side, signatures are on the back. It is almost impossible to use such a scroll for practical purposes. An exact copy was made from it in the form of a handwritten book, and typographical typesetting was already carried out from it. Code of 1649 - the first printed monument of Russian law. The first edition of 1200 copies began printing on April 7, finished on May 20, 1649. Several copies were presented to the tsar, the patriarch, and the boyars. The main part of the circulation (up to 90%) was put on sale for institutions and individuals. For the first time in the history of Russia, the text of the code of laws could be read and even purchased by everyone. The price, however, was high - 1 ruble. The openness and accessibility of legislation was one of the main requirements of the participants in popular demonstrations and the Zemsky Sobor. The fact is that one could learn about the laws only when they were announced orally in the squares and in churches, from handwritten texts, in the original or a small number of lists stored in state institutions. In fact, officials had a monopoly on knowledge of the texts of laws, and they themselves were poorly informed about them. The publication of the Code in print and in mass circulation prevented the possibility of hiding and falsifying basic legal norms, committing the most flagrant abuses in the judicial part. The first edition did not satisfy the needs of the authorities and public demand. Copies put on free sale sold out rapidly from June 14 to August 7, 1649. In December 1649, a second edition was published in the same edition of 1200 copies. and at the same price for 1 rub. It was sold out (this time over 98% of the circulation went on sale) from January 1650 to August 1651. Great interest in the Code manifested itself abroad. This is evidenced by the purchases of its copies by foreigners, translations into Latin and French in the 17th century, into German and Danish - at the beginning of the 18th century.
Sources and content of the Code
Various sources were used to compile the Code: the Sudebnik of Ivan the Terrible of 1550, the Lithuanian Statute of 1588, the verdicts of the Boyar Duma, the collective petitions of nobles and townspeople, the registers of the Local, Zemsky, Robbery and other orders, which recorded the laws received by these institutions and orders. Separate norms and provisions from the monuments of Byzantine and ecclesiastical law were also used, primarily from the Pilot's book. In the new code of laws, issues of state, church, economic, inheritance, family, contractual and criminal law, judicial and procedural rules were developed. In total, the Code included 25 chapters and 967 articles. They are divided and named as follows:
Chapter I. And it contains 9 articles about blasphemers and church rebels.
Chapter II. About the state honor, and how to protect his state health, and there are 22 articles in it.
Chapter III. About the sovereign's court, so that there would be no outrage and abuse from anyone at the sovereign's court.
Chapter IV. About subscribers, and which seals are forged.
Chapter V
Chapter VI. About travel letters to other states.
Chapter VII. About the service of all military people of the Moscow state.
Chapter VIII. About the redemption of the captives.
Chapter IX. About myty and about transportation, and about bridges.
Chapter X. Of Judgment.
Chapter XI. The Court of the Peasants, and there are 34 articles in it.
Chapter XII. About the court of patriarchal clerks, and courtyards of all kinds of people, and peasants, and there are 3 articles in it.
Chapter XIII. About the Monastic Order, and there are 7 articles in it.
Chapter XIV. About the kissing of the cross, and there are 10 articles in it.
Chapter XV. About accomplished deeds, and there are 5 articles in it.
Chapter XVI. About local lands, and there are 69 articles in it.
Chapter XVII. About estates, and it contains 55 articles.
Chapter XVIII. About printing duties, and there are 71 articles in it.
Chapter XIX. About townspeople, and there are 40 articles in it.
Chapter XX. The trial of serfs, and there are 119 articles in it.
Chapter XXI. Court on robbery and tatin cases, and there are 104 articles in it.
Chapter XXII. And there are 26 articles in it, a decree for which faults to whom the death penalty should be imposed, and for which faults not to be executed by death, but to be punished.
Chapter XXIII. About archers, and there are 3 articles in it.
Chapter XXIV. Decree on atamans and Cossacks, and there are 3 articles in it.
Chapter XXV. Decree on taverns, and there are 21 articles in it.
Actually, there are few new norms in the Code. It basically put the existing legislation in order and into a certain system. However, the new and significantly edited norms included in the Code made a very significant contribution to social, economic, legal relations, since they became a direct response to the events of 1648, the demands of their participants, and the lessons that the ruling circles learned from them. The main ones are as follows. Legislatively, the church was taken under the protection and protection of the state; for blasphemy against the church and faith, the death penalty was imposed. At the same time, the control of the patriarchal court by the secular one was emphasized, the entire clergy was declared subject to the jurisdiction of the Monastic order, the clergy were forbidden to acquire estates. Orthodox hierarchs were dissatisfied with the introduction of such rules, and the patriarch Nikon, although he signed the Cathedral Code as a Metropolitan of Novgorod, after coming to the leadership of the Russian Church (1652) he began to call this code a “cursed” book, a “devilish” law. The status of the king as an autocratic and hereditary monarch was determined, not only criminal acts, but also criminal intentions against which were severely punished. The concept of state crime was developed, for actions against the king, the royal power and its representatives, "death without any mercy" was supposed. Manufacturers of false documents, seals, money were also extremely severely punished. In general, the criminal legislation in the Cathedral Code was distinguished by medieval cruelty. At the same time, it proclaimed the principles of impartiality and objectivity in the consideration of cases, provided for the removal of judges and bringing them to justice in the event of the acquittal of the guilty or the prosecution of the innocent for "promises" - bribes. Very important in socio-economic terms were the steps to bring together the two forms of land tenure, landownership and patrimony, among which was the assumption of inheritance under certain conditions of estates by the wives and children of landowners, the exchange of estates for estates. The most important rule of law was the abolition of "lesson years" - the period of investigation of runaway and unauthorized peasants who left the landowners. Most historians consider this norm to be evidence of the final enslavement of the peasants in Russia. For harboring fugitives, a fine of 10 rubles was introduced. Judicial representation of serfs in property disputes was abolished, since their property began to be regarded as the property of a landowner or patrimony. In the cities, the "whites", that is, privately owned, settlements and courtyards, which belonged to the patriarch, monasteries, boyars, and other patrimonial estates and were free from state taxes, were liquidated. All those who lived in them were now obliged to "bear the tax", that is, to pay taxes and bear duties, along with the rest of the townspeople. The township population itself was forever attached to the townships and the sovereign's tax. Like serfs, townspeople could not arbitrarily leave their place of residence or change their occupation. An indefinite search for runaway townspeople was introduced.
The value of the Code
The Cathedral Code became the most important event and stage in the history of Russian legislation. During the 17th century, it was repeatedly replenished with “new decree articles” (in 1669 - On tateb, robbery and murderous cases, in 1676/1677 - On estates and estates, etc.) In the 18th century, attempts were made to create a new Code, for which Special Legislative Commissions were convened, which ended in vain. The Cathedral Code played the role of a code of laws of Russia (with numerous additions and changes) for almost two centuries. Its text opened the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, published in 1830. To a large extent, it was taken into account in the development of the XV volume of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, which played the role of a criminal code, was released in 1845 and was called the “Punishment Code”.
Oslash; Sources and main provisions of the Council Code of 1649.
The Cathedral Code of 1649, summarizing the previous experience in creating legal norms, relied on:
Code of Laws;
Decree books of orders;
Royal decrees;
Duma sentences;
Decisions of the Zemsky Sobors (most of the articles were compiled according to the petitions of the council's vowels);
- “Stoglav”;
Lithuanian and Byzantine legislation;
New decree articles on “robbery and murder” (1669), on estates and estates (1677), on trade (1653 and 1677), which were included in the Code after 1649.
State administrative system.
The head of state, the tsar, was defined as an autocratic and hereditary monarch. The regulation on the approval (election) of the tsar at the Zemsky assembly substantiated these principles. Any actions directed against the person of the monarch were considered criminal and subject to punishment.
Attachment of peasants to the land (Ch. 11 "Court on the Peasants").
Posad reform that changed the position of the “white settlements” (ch.14).
Change in the status of estates and estates (Ch. 16 and 17).
Regulation of the work of local governments (Ch. 21).
The mode of entry and exit (Article 6) - all these measures formed the basis of administrative and police reforms.
Litigation.
The two main forms are court and search.
Court. The court procedure is described in chapter 10 of the Code. sentencing, decision. The trial began with the “introduction”, the filing of a petition. The court accepted and used various evidence:
Testimony (at least ten witnesses),
Written evidence (the most trustworthy of them are officially certified documents),
Cross kissing (on disputes for an amount not exceeding one ruble),
To obtain evidence, a “general” search was used - a survey of the population about the fact of a crime committed, and a “general” search - about a specific person suspected of a crime. The so-called “pravezh” was introduced into the practice of the court, when the defendant (most often an insolvent debtor) was regularly subjected to the procedure of corporal punishment (beating with rods) by the court. The number of such procedures was to be equivalent to the amount owed. So, for example, for a debt of one hundred rubles, they were flogged for a month. Pravezh was not just a punishment - it was also a measure that prompted the defendant to fulfill the obligation (himself or through guarantors).
Wanted or "search" was used only in the most serious criminal cases, and a special place and attention in the search was given to crimes in which the state interest was affected (“the sovereign’s word and deed”).
Chapter 21 of the Council Code of 1649 establishes for the first time such procedural procedure, like torture. The basis for its application could be the results of the “search”, when the testimony was divided: part in favor of the suspect, part against him. The use of torture was regulated: it could be used no more than three times, with a certain break; and the testimony given under torture (“slander”) had to be cross-checked with the help of other procedural measures (interrogation, oath, search).
The law has identified three stages of a criminal act:
Intent (which in itself may be punishable),
Attempted crime
And committing a crime
As well as the concept of recidivism, which in the Cathedral Code coincides with the concept of “a dashing person”, and the concept of extreme necessity, which is not punishable only if the proportionality of its real danger on the part of the criminal is observed.
Objects of crime according to the Council Code of 1649, the following were determined:
Church,
State,
personality,
Property
And morality. Crimes against the church were considered the most dangerous, and for the first time they were put in the first place. This is explained by the fact that the church occupied a special place in public life, but the main thing is that it was taken under the protection of state institutions and laws.
economic measures. The Code of 1649 specifically deals with the procedure for granting land. It was a complex set of legal actions, including:
Issuance of a letter of commendation;
Drawing up a certificate (i.e., recording certain information about the endowed person in the order book);
Putting into possession, which consisted in the public measurement of land.
Ø System of crimes.
The system of crimes according to the Council Code of 1649 looked like this:
Crimes against the church: blasphemy, seduction of the Orthodox to another faith, interruption of the course of the liturgy in the temple;
State crimes: any actions and even intent directed against the person of the sovereign or his family, rebellion, conspiracy, treason. For these crimes, responsibility was borne not only by the persons who committed them, but also by their relatives and friends;
Crimes against the order of administration: the defendant’s intentional failure to appear in court and resistance to the bailiff, the manufacture of false letters, acts and seals, unauthorized travel abroad, counterfeiting, keeping drinking establishments without permission and home-brewing, taking a false oath in court, giving false testimony, “snitches” ” or false accusation;
Crimes against decency: maintenance of brothels, harboring fugitives, illegal sale of property, illegal pawning, imposition of duties on persons released from them;
Official crimes: extortion (bribery, unlawful extortion, extortion), injustice (knowingly unfair decision of a case due to self-interest or personal hostility), forgery in service (falsification of documents, information, distortions in monetary papers, etc.), military crimes ( damage to private persons, looting, escape from the unit);
Crimes against a person: murder, divided into simple and qualified (murder of parents by children, murder of a master by a slave), mutilation, beatings, insulting honor (insult, slander, spreading defamatory rumors). The murder of a traitor or a thief at the scene of a crime was not at all punished;
Property crimes: simple and qualified crimes (church, in the service, horse theft committed in the sovereign’s court, theft of vegetables from the garden and fish from the garden), robbery (committed in the form of fishing) and ordinary or qualified robbery (committed by service people or children in relation to parents), fraud (theft associated with deceit, but without the use of violence), arson (the caught arsonist was thrown into the fire), forcible appropriation of other people's property (land, animals), damage to other people's property;
Crimes against morality: children disrespecting their parents, refusing to support elderly parents, pimping, “fornication” of a wife (but not a husband), sexual intercourse between a master and a slave.
3 Punishment system.
In the system of punishments under the Council Code of 1649, the main emphasis was placed on physical intimidation (starting from whipping to cutting off hands and quartering at the death penalty). Imprisoning a criminal was a secondary task and was an additional punishment.
For the same crime, several punishments could be established at once (multiplicity of punishments) - beating with a whip, cutting the tongue, exile, confiscation of property. For theft, punishments were set in increasing order: for the first - beating with a whip, cutting off an ear, two years in prison and exile; for the second - beating with a whip, cutting an ear and four years in prison; for the third - the death penalty.
In the Council Code of 1649, the use of the death penalty was provided for in almost sixty cases (even smoking tobacco was punishable by death). The death penalty was divided into simple (cutting off the head, hanging) and qualified (wheeling, quartering, burning, filling the throat with metal, burying alive in the ground),
In general, the system of punishments according to the Council Code of 1649 was characterized by the following features:
1. Individualization of punishment. The wife and children of the criminal were not responsible for the act he committed. However, remnants of the archaic system of punishments were preserved in the institute of third-party liability: the landowner who killed another peasant had to transfer another peasant to the landowner who suffered damage, the “righteousness” procedure was preserved.
2. Class character of punishment. This sign was expressed in the fact that different subjects bore different responsibility for the same crimes (for example, for a similar act, a boyar was punished with deprivation of honor, and a commoner with a whip. Chapter 10).
3. Uncertainty in establishing punishment. This sign was associated with the purpose of punishment - intimidation. The verdict could not indicate the type of punishment itself, and the wording was used: “as the sovereign indicates”, “through fault” or “punish severely”.
Even if the type of punishment was determined, the method of its execution remained unclear (similar formulations such as “punish by death” or “throw in prison until the sovereign decree”), i.e. uncertainty of punishment.
Uncertainty in establishing punishment created an additional psychological impact on the offender. The purpose of intimidation was served by a special symbolism of punishment: pouring molten metal into the throat of a criminal; applying to him such punishment as he would wish for the person he has slandered. The publicity of punishments had a socio-psychological purpose, since many punishments (burning, drowning, wheeling) served as if analogous to hellish torments.
4. Imprisonment, as a special type of punishment, could be established for a period of three days to four years or for an indefinite period. As an additional type of punishment (and sometimes as the main one), exile was assigned (to remote monasteries, prisons, fortresses or boyar estates).
Representatives of the privileged estates were subjected to such a type of punishment as deprivation of honor and rights, ranging from complete surrender of the head (turning into a slave) to the announcement of “disgrace” (isolation, ostracism, sovereign disfavor). The accused could be deprived of his rank, the right to sit in the Duma or an order, or deprived of the right to file a lawsuit in court.
With the adoption of the Code of 1649, property sanctions began to be widely applied (Chapter 10 of the Code in seventy-four cases established a gradation of fines “for dishonor” depending on the social status of the victim). The highest sanction of this kind was the complete confiscation of the criminal's property. Finally, the system of sanctions included ecclesiastical punishments (repentance, excommunication, exile to a monastery, imprisonment in a solitary cell, etc.).
Ø The significance of the Cathedral Code for the socio-political life of Russia.
With the adoption of the Council Code in 1649, for the first time in the history of Russian statehood, an attempt was made to create a single set of all existing legal norms, to cover all aspects of the socio-political and economic life of Russia, and not separate groups of social relations. - As a result of codification, the Cathedral Code was reduced to 25 chapters and 967 articles, there was a division of norms into sectors and institutions.
The Cathedral Code strengthened the judicial and legal system of Russia and was the foundation on which it subsequently developed and supplemented as a code of laws of feudal serf Russia.
The Cathedral Code, created by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649, is the first set of laws in Russia in the New Age.
Written in those days when Russia stood, so to speak, with one foot in the Middle Ages, this code existed for almost 200 years - until 1832.
Why, under the reformer tsar, the father of Peter I (both physical and psychological father), was it necessary to create the Code? Was there really no legislation in the country?
Reasons for the creation of the Code
Of course, there was legislation in the then Russia. However, over the period from 1550, when Ivan the Terrible's Sudebnik was written, to 1648, the Romanovs created 445 laws that bore little resemblance to a single system.
- Some laws were repeated, others directly contradicted each other.
- New laws were usually created at the request of a certain order (department) and recorded in the corresponding order book. Thus, there was no coordination and communication between the decrees, and the existence of new entries in the books was often known only to the heads of the orders.
- Causal law, characteristic of ancient Russian legislation, was outdated by the 17th century.
- The adoption of new legislation was prompted by popular demonstrations, especially the Salt Riot, the participants of which demanded that the Zemsky Sobor be convened and a new code be developed.
- Consistent legislation was also required following the results of the Time of Troubles, during which chaos reigned in the country.
What was the Regulation?
The new legislative code was a new type of document for Russia. He was the first to formalize laws into a system consisting of several branches of law. To carry out such a serious work, the Zemsky Sobor worked with sources for a long time. These were the former royal Sudebniks - 1497 and 1550, order books, petitions, as well as foreign samples - the Lithuanian Statute of 1588, the Byzantine Pilot Book.
From foreign codes, the basics of legal technique were taken - the composition of phrases, formulations, division into headings. The code may seem unusual in many ways. Thus, the section on criminal law prescribes not to punish the murder of a thief caught in the act. Horse theft is presented as a separate type of crime, and not a variety of ordinary theft.
As punishments, the death penalty of various types was often provided - hanging, quartering, burning at the stake, pouring red-hot metal into the throat, etc., as well as corporal punishment - cutting off the nose and ears, branding, beating with a whip. Many articles traced the influence of Domostroy: for example, a son or daughter who killed a father or mother was sentenced to death, and if parents kill their child, they were sentenced to a year in prison and subsequent repentance in the church.
What led to the creation of the Code?
As already mentioned, the code of laws compiled in pre-Petrine times continued to function in the new Russia, although its articles were modified and supplemented.
- The code was the result of the development of Russian law, starting from the 15th century.
- It formalized the new features characteristic of the social life of the 17th century and consolidated the existence of new legal and state institutions.
- It also secured absolute power for the Romanovs, a dynasty that by that time had relatively recently ascended the throne.
- The code was the first printed set of laws in the country. Prior to this, the promulgation of royal decrees was reduced to their announcement in squares and temples.
The new format of legislation ruled out the possibility of abuse by officials. The Cathedral Code, by the way, was one of the first codes of laws in Europe. An earlier one is perhaps the aforementioned Lithuanian Statute, which grew out of Casimir's Sudebnik of 1468; Western codes (Danish, Bavarian, Sardinian, etc.) appeared somewhat later, and French was adopted only under Napoleon.
In Europe, legislative codes were drawn up and adopted with difficulty, since the legal base of many countries was huge and it took many years to put it in order. The Prussian code contained almost 20 thousand articles, and the Napoleonic code contained “only” 2281 articles. The Cathedral Code clearly wins in comparison with these documents - it had only 968 articles, which made it possible to draw it up in a short time - in six months.
