Vasile Lupu's Code of 1646 at the intersection of legal cultures

The paper is devoted to a historical problem of legal sources and codification of medieval laws in Moldova. The author investigates the historical and cultural situation in the Principality in the 16th-17th centuries, when the main geopolitical feature consisted in convergence of three great cultures -Slavic, Latin and East - in the context of the break of world religions (Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim). The Slavic language was a priority in the government, office-work, church service and legal literature in the Principality. The author pays special attention to the reign of Hospodar Vasile Lupu (1634-1653), who was an ardent patron of the orthodox world and supported the construction of churches. The church constructed on his means in the capital of the Principality housed a printing house that in 1646 issued Pravila lui Vasile Lupu, the first secular collection of laws initiated by the Hospodar. It became the all-Moldavian codex based on the Roman-Byzantine legal rules and was applied for about two hundred years. Particular attention is paid to the objectives of legal reform and the reasons for codification in Moldova at that time. Pravila of 1646 legalised serfdom and peasantry enslavement and plunder of communal lands. It promoted the consistency and certainty of the medieval Moldovan law. The main sources of the Code were Byzantine (Greco-Roman) laws and the legal doctrine of Moldovan and Italian lawyers.They predetermined the secular orientation of Vasile Lupu's Code, with the prevalence of the criminal law.

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