Introduction The sources of medieval Serbian law The legal system of the mid-fourteenth century Serbian Empire was a complex mix- ture of layers and influences. Traditional Serbian customary law was tightly inter- woven with influences from the East – the Rhomaian 1 (Byzantine) Empire and the Orthodox Church – along with occasional influences from other sources. While dis- cussing the normative sources, however, the reader has to have in mind that almost no sources showing the application of those norms (contracts, verdicts etc.) have been preserved in mainland Serbia due to the general destruction in the Ottoman conquest. The majority of Serbian monarchs passed only charters, the vast majority of them sources of particular law, issued to individual monasteries (only these have been preserved in large numbers), noblemen or cities. The first legal codification in Serbia was the Zakonopravilo (Nomocanon) of Saint Sava, passed when he became the archbishop of the newly founded autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church (1219), during the reign of his brother, King Stefan the First-Crowned. 2 It was an original compilation of Rhomaian imperial and canon law, composed with multiple Rhomaian sources as models (the most notable being the entire Procheiros nomos), written in Slavonic, as were all Serbian legal sources. How- ever, the scope of application of its secular norms is debatable. Firstly, because it was likely only applied by ecclesiastical courts (at least evidence to the contrary is lacking); secondly, because the Rhomaian norms implemented in it contained no stratification among free people, while Serbian society at the time was divided into estates – see section 1.2. 3 The second attempt at creating a general corpus of laws for the entire country was the tripartite codification of Stefan Dušan, passed in 1349 and 1354, passed after his coronation as Emperor (Tsar) in 1346. Having conquered a large part of Rhomaian territory (an endeavor started by his grandfather, King Stefan Milutin, at the turn of the century), Dušan needed to create a compromise between the old, northern, Serbian part of his Empire (where the sources outlined above were in use) and the more or less newly conquered ‘Greek’ lands in the South, which still applied Rhomaian written law. Of equal importance is the fact that his new title as Legal regulation of sex crimes in medieval Serbia and the Mediterranean communes under its rule Nina Kršljanin 6 DOI: 10.4324/9781003098430-9