Pskov Judicial Charter
The Pskov Judicial Charter, also known as the Charter of Pskov, was the legal code of the Pskov Republic. 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 under Ivan III, the first collection of laws of the unified state. It is considered to be a monument of Russian law.
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 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, 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, especially feudal landownership, regulated procedures for official registration of landownership and court examination of land disputes, and defined the status of the so-called izorniki. 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 in case of a political crime or regular criminal offense.