THE DELICT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC PROSELYTISM IN MEDIEVAL SERBIA

Abstract

This paper deals with crimes associated with the conversion of Orthodox Christians to Roman Catholicism. Special attention is devoted to the question of which norm is referred to in Articles 106 and 108 of the Code of Tsar Dušan, when it provides the punishment for these delicts from the “zakon(ik) svetih otaca”, i.e. what the punishment was and what the innovation of this matter in the Mining Code of Despot Stefan consists in. The results show that Tsar Dušan, in his Code, probably provided analogous application of the norms of Zakonopravilo about conversion to manicheism, i.e. Bogumilstvo, to conversion to “the Latin heresy”. Renegade who does not return to Orthodoxy suffered capital punishment, as well as the one who converted him to Roman Catholicism. According to the provisions of the Zakongradski (Prochiron) of the Zakonopravilo, the same punishment was inflicted on the man who knew about the conversion of another and did not report it to the authorities. It seems that around half a century later Despot Stefan Lazarević reduced these punishments in the area of Novo Brdo. Thus, Roman Catholics who deceived an Orthodox Christian were given the opportunity to “ransom their head” with a fine determined in the law, which was accompanied with confiscation of property in Novo Brdo and exile from “the area of the city”. If a member of Roman Catholic clergy was involved, he was probably punished additionally with mutilation of the nose. For the renegade himself, if he did not return to Orthodoxy, the provision of Tsar Dušan on capital punishment still applied. The applied methods are linguistic, systemic and historical interpretation of the provisions of the Zakongradski of the Zakonopravilo, the Abridged Syntagma of Matthew Blastares, the Code of Tsar Dušan and the Mining Code of Despot Stefan.