110 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES

■ An Historical Conspectus of the Sources of Byelorussian Law

BY

STANISLAŪ SAVICKI

The extraordinary complexity of the political organisation and cultural development of the inhabitants of the Eastern Slavic lands are reflected in the growth of legal norms, in the concepts of law and order, and in the judicial organisation which prevailed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Its history presents an interesting picture — several distinct cultural traditions competing with each other in an endeavour to form a cohesive whole, a political body, out of different ethnic groups, and to formulate a common civilisation, whilst allowing each distinct group to weave its own pattern into the common fabric, The development and organisation of the State were influenced both by the culture of the Latin West and by Greek Orthodoxy. Its national components included over half a dozen variegated ethnic and religious groups, — Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Poles, Jews, Tartars, Germans and a small number of Greek traders. The first Byelorussian State, Polotian Ruś, was created in the middle of the XIth century by Prince Ūsiaslav, with Polack as its capital. The other Slavic principalities contemporary with Polack were, in the South, Kievan Ruś with Kiev as the capital, and Novgorod in the North. The period from the Xth to the XIIth century was marked by an almost perpetual struggle between the two predominant dynasties, — those of Polack and of Kiev. Little is known about politico-juridicial structure of society at this time, though it was characterised by the dominance of primitively democratic ideas in the social structure of the country, by social equality, and by an absence of class strife. As Doūnar-Zapolski observed: "We know of no other Slavic tribe in which these characteristics were so well developed as among our ancestors."1 The Principality of Polack was an important centre of Eastern- Slavic culture, and its scholarly and literary achievements may be compared to those of Kiev and Novgorod. In the XIIth century it produced Saint Cyril of Turaū, a man of great learning, the writer Clement Smolatič, and Euphrosyne of Polack — a distinguished spiritual guide. The history of the next two centuries is somewhat confused. In the XIIIth century, the Lithuanians, — wild and pagan tribes inhabiting

1) N. Vakar, Byelorussia, the Making of Nation, Cambridge (Mass.) 1956, p. 42.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access SOURCES OF BYELORUSSIAN LAW 111 the forests of the lower banks of the Nioman and Dzvina, — trans­ formed themselves from a tribal to a national society, organised themselves politically and, under the leadership of the powerful Prince Hedymin and his family, conquered and annexed the principality of Polack. By the middle of the XVth century, annexa­ tions and accessions included Vilnia and Horadnia in the West, Viciebsk in the North and Kiev and Orel in the South East. In fact, the domain of the Lithuanian State extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Towards the end of the XIVth century the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State was joined to the Kingdom of Poland, the union being sealed by the marriage of the Grand Duke Jahajlla to the Queen Jadwiga of Poland. Thereafter the Grand Duchy and the Kingdom of Poland were bound together in the personal unity of the King and Grand Duke which ensured that Jahajlla and his successors would at the same time remain Kings of Poland. The organisation of administration and of justice however were not affected. Constitutionally the Grand Duchy remained independent of Poland for the next hundred and fifty years, until the Lublin Union. Its sovereign rights and independence was affirmed in a series of acts during the XVth century and enshrined in the preamble of the First Lithuanian Statute 1529. Save for the acknowledgment of a common dynasty with Poland, the Grand Duchy retained its own government, laws, currency and army and a separate department for diplomatic relations with Poland. The latter was treated as a foreign power, not even at all times as a friendly power. * * * The history of legal institutions and of the organisation of the courts in the Lithuanian-Ruthenian State in the Middle ages suffers generally from, a lack of reliable sources. It is impossible to describe legal norms, the organisation of the courts and court procedure in any systematic form. Written records were initially sparse and have been preserved only in fragmentary form. It is not until one reaches the period of centralised government that one has a chance of survey­ ing legal developments with any degree of certainty. For our knowledge of the earliest forms of customary law, judicial organisation and court procedure, we are constantly thrown back upon legal and political documents of the Grand Duchy, on the accounts of foreign chroniclers, envoys or travellers, and on the works and collections of ethnographers. Such material provides only an incomplete picture of the legal organisation of society and hints at legal norms. The great variety of parallel systems of personal laws which prevailed within the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania renders the task of presenting a coherent picture of Byelorussian law a formidable one indeed. Although from the late Mediaeval period onward the Feudal Privileges, subsequently codified in the Lithuanian Statute,

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access 112 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES and the Magdeburg Laws enjoyed considerable prestige, they were by no means the sole, or even the predominant sources of Byelo­ russian Law during the Grand Ducal period. Both local customs, which varied from province to province, and a body of case-law, Litoūskaja Metrika and the Court Records, form an essential part of the whole structure of the Byelorussian legal system. A student of the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in particular of the specifically Byelorussian aspects of the law, is handicapped first by the considerable confusion which exists in much of the available source material, which frequently deals with diplomatic administrative and religious matters as well as judicial questions, and secondly by the very incompleteness of that material. This was the result of centuries of neglect, dispersion and sometimes deliberate destruction. Much of the most valuable material, and in particular the Records of the Courts, remain in manuscript form merely because, after the disappearance of the old Grand Duchy in 1796 and the abolition of the Grand-Ducal legal system in 1840, the publication of these records presented no immediate practical interest for the ruling powers. It was left to historians and archeologists to include some of these Records in the series of ancient documents which they were able to publish from time to time. This task was fulfilled in the course of the late XIXth century, principally by the Archeological Commissions of Vilnia, Kiev, St. Petersburg and Moscow. As these Commissions were made up principally of historians rather than lawyers, the collections they edited included much non­ judicial matter, such as acts of administration, minutes and briefs of the executive authorities, and inventories of churches. Moreover, as these collections were published at a time when the use of the term "Byelorussian" was not only discouraged, but actually prohibited by the Imperial authorities on political grounds, the documents were described either as "West-Russian", "North-West Russian", "Russo-Lithuanian", "Russo-Livonian" or by some similarly misleading circumlocution, or else they were classified among documents which gave no indication of the juridical nature of their contents, e.g. Smolenskaja Starina and Vitebskaja Starina.2 Although a large number of Judicial documentation is to be found in the collections of historical Akty published in St. Petersburg and Moscow and Kiev (thanks largely to the efforts of Byelorussian scholars such as M. Doūnar-Zapolski), the most valuable work was done in Vilnia, where between the years 1865 and 1915 some thirty- nine volumes of Court records and Acts of the Judicature were published by a Commission of archeologists and historians, which included the distinguished Byelorussian Jurist Zm. Daūhiała. They included the Records of the Land Tribunals of Horadnia, Bieriaście, and Slonim, of the Municipal courts of Bieriaście, Horadnia, Vilnia, Mahiloū and Vilkamer, of the Magdeburg jurisdictions of Bieriaście,

2) В. Пичета, Белоруссия и Литва XV-XVI вв., Москва 1961 л. 418-425.

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Kobryn, Kamieniec, and Vilnia, as well as Acts relating to certain privileged classes of citizens such as the Bojars, the Tartars and the Jews.3 No coherent picture of the legal system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania can accurately be traced without some reference to a capital source of Byelorussian law, the vast compilation known as the Litoūskaja Metrika or Lithuanian Register, of which parts were published by the Archives of the Imperial Ministry of Justice in Moscow under the editorship of Doūnar-Zapolski in 1897. This was the Register of the Chancery Court of the Grand Duchy, and was considered by Daūhiała as the richest source of historical knowledge of the former Byelorussian State. It contains more than one thousand volumes.4 The most celebrated body of Law relating to the Grand Duchy was undoubtedly the Lithuanian Statute or Litoūski Statut of 1588, a codification of feudal rights and dues, which had previously been defined in a succession of individual land-grants and grants of privileged rights. The Statute was first promulgated in 1529, but it was revised and amended in 1566 and finally in 1588. In its definitive form it gained the high regard of the Byelorussian nobility. They stoutly resisted proposals to displace it by a unified Code of Laws which would apply both in the Kingdom of Poland and in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. That it was also much esteemed by the lower social orders is clear from the fact that the Ukrainian Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyj sought to apply the Statute to his Cossacks in 1648.5 It formed the basis of the Ukrainian Code of 1743 drafted by a Commission of Jurists appointed under the Hetman Rozumovskyj at the time of the restored Hetmanate, and attempts were made to extend the effects of the Statute to the peasants.6 In Byelorussia the Statute remained in force until 1840 when the Grand-Ducal legal system was suppressed by the Russian Emperors, but it still continued to be applied in the Government of Čarnihaū until 1917.7 The Statute, the various Privileges, and the law enshrined in the decisions of the Courts, were systems of Justice applied only to

3) В. Пичета, op. cit, p. 420. 4) Зьмітро Даўгяла, Літоўская Мэтрыка, Рыга 1933 л. 12-13. 5) М. Hruševskij, A History of Ukraine, New Haven 1941, p. 405. 6) Ibid., p. 406. 7) A. Plateris, Codification of the Law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Lituanus, Vol. II, p. 35.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access 114 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES certain sections of the community or to specified minority groups. The vast majority of the people, and in particular the peasantry, were subject not to any law or "jurisdiction d'exception"; their rights and duties as to- persons and their property were governed by the local customary law. Custom has always been recognised as a source of law. The Common Law of England was, as Plucknett points out, the custom of the King's Court; even then, the Common Law did not extend to all persons and places, and frequently gave way to local custom.8 Many modern Codes of Civil law expressly defer to custom on a number of specified points.9 Although custom is, by its very nature, a system of unwritten law, in many West-European Countries customs have been collected into written Custumals, particularly in pre-Revolutionary France. In Byelorussia there are no custumals as such, but a considerable amount of research was conducted in this field of customary law by XIXth century historians and ethnographers such as Shein, Sapunaū, Doūnar Zapolski, Brandt, Romanaū and others. Some of their works are in fact presented as textbooks of local customary law.10 In other more general studies there lies a considerable mass of unclassified material, which no doubt one day will be synthetised to form a coherent pattern of Byelorussian customary law. As evidence of the great prestige enjoyed by common usage, suffice it to say that it received recognition, not only in the Courts, but even in the texts of the Privileges and in the Statute of Lithuania itself.11 In seeking to determine the specifically Byelorussian character of any given aspect of the law, one must bear in mind the great variety of outside influences which affected the development of law within the former Grand Duchy. Indeed these foreign influences are significant in that, by their continuity and scope, they illustrate the very deep ties existing between Byelorussia and the West throughout the Middle-ages and the Renaissance period. Whilst allowing, on the level of family law and property law, for a great deal of basic similarity between the customs of the various Slavonic peoples, it must be recognised that the development of customary rules is a highly diversified process. French and German customary law share a com­ mon source, and in particular the institutions of the Frankish tribes. Over the centuries these traditions diverged, and there is little to support the view that the customs of Normandy, Beauvais and St. Omer were merely variants of Germanic customs from across the Rhine.

8) Th. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law (4th Ed.), London 1948, p. 296. 9) Cf.: Art. 1135 of the French Code Civil. 10) M. Довнар-Запольский, Очерк семейственнаго обычнаго права крестьян Минской губернии, Иследования и статы, Том I, Киев 1909. 11) Cf.: Дневник Новгородского подсудка Феодора Евлашевскаго, Киевская Старина, Том XIV, Киев 1886, л. 130; О. Backus, Motives of West Russian Nobles in deserting Lithuania for Muscovy (1377-1514), Lawrence (Ka.) 1957, p. 35

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access SOURCES OF BYELORUSSIAN LAW 115 In view of the political links with Poland, it is only natural that the Grand Ducal Laws and customs should have undergone a certain amount of Polish influence. This is particularly noticeable in the Privileges of the Nobles of 1413, 1432, 1434 and 1447, which tended to place the Polish and Lithuanian Magnates on an equal footing before the Law. Similar influences can be traced in the Charter of the Jews (1388), which was modelled on the privileges granted by Casimir of Poland and Boleslaus of Kalisz in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. The Statute of Lithuania itself, which has for long been considered as the fundamental Law of the former Grand Duchy, was, particularly in the 1529 and 1566 editions, much influenced by Czech law. Jakovliv shows that there are many striking similarities in language and form between the text of that Statute and the Zřizeni Zemski of 1500 and other earlier Czech enactments.12 Influences of Roman law are clearly discernible not only in the Statute of Lithuania of 1588, but also in the works of the jurists who attended Italian Universities in the XVth and XVIth centuries. When a dispute arose in 1562 between the Polish and Lithuanian nobles over the constitutional aspects of the projected Act of Union between the two States, the nobles of the Grand Duchy irritated the Poles by insisting on their right to confer with the Doctors of Bologna and to ask for their opinion. Indeed it was a Doctor of Laws of Bologna, one Pedro de Ruiz, who participated in the reconstruction and reform of the Vilnia Municipal Courts and the Court of Appeal in the latter half of the XVIth century. German Law undoubtedly exercised a strong influence on the development of Byelorussian law in the cities enjoying the privilege of the Magdeburg Statute, particularly in the field of commercial usage, and in the procedure before the Court of the Voit and Laūniki. Three main sources of Byelorussian law emerge from the somewhat confused mass of available material, — namely Statute law, the practice of the Courts, and finally the vast mass of the heterogenous rules of local custom. * * *

The appearance of a system of written laws was a relatively tardy development. Initially Byelorussian law was administered by the local princes and their agents in accordance with local custom, which varied widely from one part of the Grand Duchy to another, and which might even vary within the bounds of a single principality. Custom by its very nature is an unwritten law, and the Byelorussian Princes, in dispensing justice, would have to rely on the advice of

12) А. Яковлів, Впливи старочесъкого права на право украïнсъке-литов­ ськоï доби XV-XVI в., Прага 1929, б. 38-62.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access 116 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES the elders or boni homines of a given region to determine what the local custom was. As the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded by treaty, marriage or conquest, more and more Byelorussian Principal­ ities came under the Grand Ducal crown, but apart from the occasional replacement of a hostile ruler by a more reliable supporter of the House of Hedymin, and the garrisoning of frontier towns by Grand Ducal forces, little change was made in the administrative organisation and in the substantive law of those principalities.13 However, with regard to the actual exercise of the Judicial power within the constituent principalities of their domains, the Grand Dukes sought to impose a strict control. It must be remembered that the payment of Court fees by litigants was an important source of revenue, and became the subject of considerable negotiation in the treaties of alliance between the Grand Dukes and the semi-indepen­ dent Byelorussian Princes or Udielnye kniazi. Thus in the Treaty of alliance signed between the Grand Duke Casimir and Prince Todar Novosilski on the 20th February 1442. One of the major provisions of the treaty was that Prince Todar should retain the right of rendering final judgments in all cases arising within his lands; litigants within his domains were expressly denied a right of appeal to the Grand Ducal Court in Vilnia. Moreover, — and this was indeed a curious feature of the expanding Lithuanian State, particularly in its Eastern territories, — where Novosilski had entered into joint Court arrangements with the rulers of the neighbouring principalities of Pronsk, Pereslaū and Moscow, such arrangements were to continue under the treaty, subject to the right of Casimir to act as arbitrator between the three princes, in the event of any disagreement between them.14 During the last decades of the XIVth century, it became customary for the Grand Dukes to derogate from their absolute power to grant Privileges and rights in land to the more powerful magnates, and to certain cities, in order to encourage them to give their entire loyalty and support to the central authority in Vilnia. These privileges frequently took the form of grants of ownership in land to a given prince or magnate "for his faithful services", together with a grant of military rights, usually a dispensation from military service, and with express judicial rights, in particular, jus jurandi, absolvendi et defendendi. It frequently occurred that such right were subjected to some form of Grand Ducal control. Thus in the Privileges granted to individual Byelorussian magnates during the reign of Casimir Jahajłłončyk (1442-1492), judical rights were often restricted to a right to act as judge jointly with the Grand Duke or one of his accredited agents. Generally the Grand Ducal agents would only intervene to rectify some obvious injustice suffered at the hands of the feudal Court.15 Similar rights were not infrequently sub­

13) A. Plateris, op. cit., pp. 29-30. 14) Cf: Акты, относящиеся к истории Западной России, СПбг. 1846-1853, Том I, § 41. 15) Ibid., §63, 80; О. Backus, op. cit, p. 24.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access SOURCES OF BYELORUSSIAN LAW 117 delegated by the magnate to some lesser noble who owed him allegance, or to a religious foundation such as a monastery. Thus Princess Kobrynskaja granted certain judicial rights to the Spaski Monastery of Kobryn which she had endowed, but she insisted on participating in any legal proceedings, so that all lawsuits would be handled "with me, in one awful Court before Merciful God."16 Again Prince Alexander Chadkievič, in his grant to the Monastery of the Annunciation of Suprasl insisted on retaining the right to acquit an accused person, although the Court of the Abbot and his monks had found such a person guilty.17 Extensive political rights, independent of any grant of land, were conceded to the Catholic nobility of the Grand Duchy in 1413 by the Privilege of Horadla, and these were extended to the Orthodox nobility in 1432 and 1434. Those rights did not, however, include the right of judging lawsuits, though they did provide certain safe­ guards in the administration of Justice by the Grand Dukes, in particular that no man should be tried and punished in secret. The Privileges also conferred on the nobility certain rights pertaining to their personal capacity, and to their property; they were entitled to own land and goods and to dispose of them freely. They could inherit or receive legacies, and assign dotal property or holdings to their wives. A widow could claim an usufruct in her deceased husband's estate until her re-marriage or death. An heir could not divert himself of his inheritance to the detriment of his own descendants. However the powers of the nobility were further extended by the Privilege of 1447, which granted to the nobles the general right to judge lawsuits, subject to the right of the Grand Duke to intervene "and if they do not do justice, our ministeriales ought to be sent, and they must atone to no other."18 This was a somewhat paradoxical development: the right of holding feudal courts was granted to nobles who had not previously enjoyed that right, and at the same time they found their freedom curtailed by the overriding powers of the Grand Duke to review cases which in his opinion had been wrongly decided. This trend again became manifest in the Sudebnik or Criminal Code promulgated by the Grand Duke Casimir in 1468. Matters involving a dispute between a Grand Ducal official and an officer of any Prince, magnate or nobleman were to be referred to the Court of the Grand Dukes agent at the defendants place of residence, — either the Niamiestnik or bailiff. Other matters relating to the Nobleman's own officers and private individuals were to be referred to the feudal Court.19 * * *

16) Акты относящиеся к истории южной и западной России, СПбг. 1862- 1892, Том I, § 32, 17) Ibid., § 53 (13 October 1509). 18) T. Dzialinski, Zbiór Praw Litewskich od roku 1389 do roku 1528, Poznań 1841, p. 34. 19) Законодательные Акты Великого Княжества Литовского XV-XVI вв., Л. 1936, стр. 12-13; Акты... Зап. России, Том. I, § 67; М. Krasauskaite, Die litauischen Adelsprivilegien bis zum Ende des XV Jahrhunderts, Borna-Leipzig 1927, ss. 44-46.

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Alongside the rights reserved to the nobility, the Grand Ducal authority gave a special legal status to certain national minority groups, and in particular to the Jews and Tatars. The status of the Jews, who were generally treated with tolerance, was specially protected by the Great Charter of 1388. The document was not an original piece of legislation, since it follows closely the provisions of other Charters granted to the Jews in Bohemia, Poland and Germany. It did however present distinctive features which reflected those tendencies underlying the development of Byelo­ russian law. Jews were subject to the jurisdiction of their own rabbinical tribunals in purely Jewish litigation. Where a dispute involved a Jew and a non-Jew, it was to be referred in the first instance, not to the local feudal Court, but to the Court of the Grand Ducal deputy-starosta, and on appeal to the Court of the Starosta himself, sitting as the judex judaeorum. The personal capacity of Jews was confirmed by the Charter which granted them the right to buy and sell goods and merchandise on the same footing as ordinary traders. They were also granted the right to lend money to Christians, charge interest, and dispose of unredeemed pledges after one year, provided the Starosta gave his fiat. The benefit of the Charter was granted to the more important Jewish communities in Bieriascie, Troki, Horadnia, and Ūladzimier, with some additions or variations. The Charter of Horadnia provided that the Jews of that city could hold land and engage in agriculture. All these rights were confirmed in the Lithuanian Statute of 1529.20

* * *

The special character and needs of traders has always been recognised in European legal systems, which have granted a certain autonomy to merchants in matters relating to their business. Consular Courts and Pie-powder Courts developed and flourished alongside the ordinary civil jurisdictions. There is only scant information about the beginning of towns in Byelorussia. The sites on which the towns developed generally were focal points of trade routes and the early township settlements did not lose their immediate rural character. In the early period of its existence a town was distinguished from the surrounding district only in its demographic and economic aspects. From the legal stand­ point it scarcely differed. The constitutional development of the towns was conditioned by two main factors, — internal economic pressure and the influence of external colonisation.

20) Cf.: Lithuania, Jewish Encyclopedia, N.Y., 1902.

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Some of the towns developed spontaneously on the land owned by a lord in response to the changing economic organisation, mainly the widening scope of commerce and trade. The growth of these towns did not free them from tutelage of the local ruler. Whether the lord was an ecclesiastical or secular magnate, he sought to consolidate his hold over the embryonic township in order to participate in its material prosperity. In the period from the XIth to the XIIIth centuries the Germanic traders had settled on the shores of the Baltic and established trading ports along the coast. It was a great era in the founding of towns in North Europe. From the Baltic shores the German merchants, followed by Flemish, Frisian and Swedish traders reached out to establish kontory or setlements at the great centre of Vilnia, Polack, Viciebsk and Smalensk as the local points of the trans-Baltic trade with the Northern cities of Western Europe. The Hanseatic Cities of the Baltic coast became great centres of trade and cultural exchange with the East. Under their influence, the less materially developed townships of Western Byelorussia, on the banks of the rivers Niomen, Dzvina and Dniepr, grew and flourished. The Western colonisation of the Byelorussian cities altered their character not only in their economic organisation but also by shaping the law and influencing the administration of justice. As early as 1229 Prince Mscislaū Davidovic of Smalensk granted rights of free trade to a number of German merchants from Riga, Lübeck, Gotland, Munster, Dortmund and Bremen, and allowed them a large measure of autonomy in settling their disputes.21 By the end of the XlVth century, special privileges were being granted by the Grand Dukes to the more important trading centres in a form which was modelled on the Magdeburg Charter, also known as the Sachsisches Weichbildrecht or Jus municipalis. The Magdeburg privileges were granted to the citizens of Vilnia in 1384, and later to Bieriascie (1390), Horadnia (1391), Polack (1498), Miensk (1499), Smalensk (1505), Navahradak (1511), Mahileū (1577), Pinsk (1581) and Viciebsk (1597). The government of the cities under the Magdeburg privilege was in the hands of the chief municipal officer, known as the Voit or hospadar. He was assisted by a council or Rada of laūniki or sworn aldermen, whose numbers under the Privilege was fixed at 12, though it could vary; some cities had councils of 7, 6 or only 3 laūniki. The

21) E. von Kngelhardt, Weissruthenien, Berlin-Prag 1943, p. 36.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 01:27:09AM via free access 120 THE JOURNAL OF BYELORUSSIAN STUDIES policing of markets, the raising of public funds and the determination of all civil and commercial disputes between citizens, were matters for the Municipal administration, and not for the ordinary courts.22 As to the character of the law applied in the Magdeburg courts, conflicting views have been expressed. Antonovič held the view that only the structural organisation of the municipality followed the original Magdeburg statute, but that the authorities governed the city in accordance with local usage and applied Byelorussian customary law in the courts.23 Vladimirski-Budanov took the opposite view, maintaining that the substance of the law was Germanic.24 Others have adopted the intermediate theory according to which the Courts applied both Magdeburg law and local customs, the latter not infrequently supplanting the former.25 The controversy has yet to be settled. Even in the towns, which owed their development to the colonizing drive of the Hanseatic merchants, the lex mercatoria as such was only remotely comparable to that of the great Florentine cities. The forms of business associations were very rudimentary. Partnerships were not uncommon, but such arrangements essentially applied to single ventures. The law of contract lacked refinement and subsisted on a few maxims borrowed from the Roman Law. Apart from the grant of self-government to the towns the municipal privileges exempted inhabitants from war service, protected them from compulsory resettlement, safeguarded the independence of their schools and permitted townsfolk to wear their customary clothes.

(To be concluded)

22) M. Владимирский-Буданов, Немецкое право в Польше и Литве, Львов 1903. 23) В. Антонович, Очерк истории Великого Княжества Литовского до половины, XV-го ст., Киев 1878. 24) М. Владимирский-Буданов, op. cit. 25) А. Кистяковский, Права по которым судится малорусский народ, Киев 1879, стр. 82.

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