International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Tamara Matović
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Byzantine Studies, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
Concerning Diverse Legal Significance of a Document 
in the Byzantine Private Law
In numerous late Byzantine documents we find information on various legal deeds – contracts 
and wills. The aforementioned documents contain facts about legal bindings of an individual or an 
entity. Furthermore, the document itself can serve as a legal instrument in different ways.
Providing certain facts in writing can be a requirement for formation of a contract. This 
being the case usually in regards with specially important contracts, whose subject exceeds certain 
value – e. g. in many legal systems thereby is prescribed for a Purchase contract. This is known as 
forma ad solemnitatem
, a mandatory form of an agreement. Lodging a document with an authority 
(
insinuatio, 
ἡ
 
ἐμφάνισις) and drafting, certifying, and serving on the document – done by a notary 
to the interested parties in some cases can also be considered as mandatory and in compliance with 
legal provisions.
On the other hand, consensual contracts are concluded as soon as contractual parties agree 
upon the essential matters of a contract. Whereas of this type of contracts, drafting or issuing a 
document has only the meaning of an evidence to the previously concluded deed, with a purpose to 
be enclosed in disputes arising in the future. The law can outline similar solutions for the other legal 
deeds as well, beside contracts. In case of wills, there could still be legal binding even if no document 
is produced, as an oral will is also a valid one.
The second part of our communication is related to transferring of a right. It is usually necessary 
to provide certain performance in order to assign a right. However, perfecting legal transaction 
sometimes can be efficiently done by mere alienation of a document. Thus, 
traditio per cartam (
ἡ
 
παράδοσις
 
δι
’ 
ἐγγράφου
) 
is a powerful reminder of a rather distinct nature of documents that we 
encounter the Byzantine law.
Therefore, our intention is to peruse private documents, particularly for a time range of the 
13
th
-15
th 
centuries, and confront them to other legal sources. Special attention will be given to 
diplomatic formulas, in which we often find reminders and references to the legal tradition in this 
subject matter.

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330
Nebojša Porčić
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
The Serbian Imperial Chancery in Documents of the Dubrovnik Corpus
The corpus of 29 largely original documents preserved in the Dubrovnik archives provides 
the best available avenue of approach to the still inadequately treated issue of the Serbian imperial 
chancery. Analysis of the corpus confirms that documents were produced in accordance with a 
clearly defined typology by a regular, organized staff. Very proficient in supplying the various types 
of documents with appropriate external and internal features, these individuals also proved capable 
of adapting earlier tradition to the demands presented by the rise of the Serbian rulers to imperial 
status. However, certain aspects of the production process seem to have remained underdeveloped 
(apparent lack of proper formularies and registers of outgoing items), opening the way for greater 
involvement of addressees.