Heavenly and Earthly Princes in Old Rus’: From Theological Reflection to Practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2022.1.664Keywords:
medieval Rus’, judgment, punishment, reprisal, revenge, Last Judgment, penanceAbstract
The system of punishment in medieval Russian law cannot be considered sufficiently studied. Researchers single out types of punishments that are not found in legal documents, but, obviously, were applied in practice. Punishments can be divided, with some degree of conventionality, into judicial and extrajudicial. However, God can also punish, both in this life and at the Last Judgment. This article is devoted to the problem of “rivalry” between the earthly and heavenly courts in the ideas of the people of pre-Mongol Rus’. The article resolves the issue of the applicability of the non bis in idem principle within the framework of the problem posed and considers key plots from The Tale of Bygone Years and The Kievan Caves Patericon. This analysis makes it possible to single out issues that were decided by an earthly court and those disasters that befell society and individuals which contemporaries saw as punishment. Among the legal sources, the author refers to the Russian Pravda and the Сharters of princes Vladimir, Yaroslav, and Vsevolod. The author also compares different methods of punishment with the way they are reflected in the sources. Since the imposition of fines prescribed by legal documents is not reflected in the narrative sources, an emphasis is made on extrajudicial punishment (the surviving practices of blood vengeance or “potok i razgrablenie”). An attempt is made to determine the line after which the imposition of punishment for this or that injustice (and, more often, for the totality of acts) was beyond the rights and opportunities of the princes. This is when the chronicler saw an intervention of God, which could be qualified as “revenge” or “punishment”. In addition, the author reveals a connection with the punishments of the penitentiary discipline of the sacrament of confession. However, it is impossible to completely abstract the earthly court and the punishment it imposes from the punishment imposed by God in medieval Rus’.
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