Justice in Medieval Russia: Muscovite Judgment Charters (Pravye Gramoty) of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Studies dealing with medieval Russian legal and administrative history have tended to picture the Muscovite judicial system of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as guilty of arbitrariness and class justice. But my examination of the judgment charters (pravye gramoty), the records of trial and statements of decisions of the courts, has led me to reappraise this generally accepted view of how the medieval Russian judicial system worked. 

These documents are the fullest, but hitherto largely neglected, source of information on trial procedure, types of evidence, the roles of judges and litigants, and, generally, the processes by which the courts reached their decisions. Although there is abundant evidence of shortcomings in a legal and administrative system still in the early stages of centralization and standardization, my analysis of these charters shows that the decisions in most cases were in accord with the evidence presented in court and the traditional rules of procedure that had evolved over the preceding centuries

CONTENTS: 

The judgment charter as a document of medieval Russian law 

Courts and officials

Litigants and their claims

Trial procedure: testimony of witnesses

Trial procedure: documentary evidence

Trial procedure: “God’s justice”

Trial procedure: doklad as a final step

The role of litigants and judges

The court’s decision