The cathedral code of 1649 included. The Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was adopted
The old system was not organized at all, so many came to the conclusion that it was necessary to create and adopt a Council Code. It was adopted in 1649, but this was not accidental. A year before this, there was a violent event called the Salt Riot, then there was an uprising. Then Alexei Mikhailovich was the tsar and this turn of events shocked him. Then he realized that something had to be done and began convening the Zemsky Sobor. Then this code was created, it was a wise decision. Then people calmed down and the riot was called off. According to historians, the ruler was very wise and if he had not acted this way, then perhaps the adoption of this important document could have been delayed for centuries.
Creation of the Cathedral Code
The politician entrusted the mission of creating the document to ministers, princes and church workers. For that time, this was a rather difficult task, because it was necessary to collect all the laws, decrees and amendments, and then analyze it all, draw conclusions and note the main thing. When drawing up the code, each law and decree was considered and new ones were added.
A whole document was created, where all the costs were indicated; almost the entire elite, the boyar duma, wrote the laws. After this, the proposed law was sent to two more authorities, where they edited and added if necessary. Also, each law had the responsibility of the one who drafted it, so the document can be considered completely legal and legally issued.
The justice system was quite wild, especially their punishment system. At that time there were many punishments for certain violations on the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If a hooligan injures a person, breaks his arm, for example, then he should have suffered the same fate. The law on false testimony was noteworthy; if a person protected a criminal, and then the truth was found out, he automatically became an accomplice, and therefore received punishment.
Also, some crimes could be punished differently than intended. In separate columns there was a footnote where the king could choose the punishment. As a result, although there was a new set of laws, the monarchy remained, the throne was above any law, and it could always give the final word.
Serfdom
It was this code that contributed to the end of the formation of the institution of serfdom in Rus'. Now the peasant had practically no rights and freedom of movement. Even if there was a trial, the person could not even say anything in his own defense. So the feudal system was at its dawn and was preserved in Rus' for many years. We can say that the Council Code was aimed specifically at a certain circle of people, dividing the people into a high and low stratum of the population. However, with such a restriction on the peasants, a person still had his right, which implied the protection of his personal property from the encroachments of its owner, namely the overlord. However, whether this worked or not for the most part is not known, because, as was said in court, he can answer for himself. However, this may indicate that already at that time the government understood that there was a problem of abuse of power, so attempts were made to eliminate this error in feudalism.
Mikhailovich’s policy was founded with the participation of the church, therefore in this code the role of rulers was also relegated to it. However, she still did not like one point where the church could be the only one in a particular court and make decisions on its own behalf; this right was assigned to officials. However, most of the laws were in favor of the church, which increased its power significantly.
If you look at the charter, then there were even more church laws than simple secular ones. There were a lot of crimes against the church, so those undesirable could be imprisoned for blasphemy, swearing and a bunch of other crimes. In any case, if it was necessary to get rid of a person, the church could accuse him of a crime, and for this there was only one punishment, namely burning at the stake.
Court and family in the Council Code
After this code was adopted, the court changed radically. Many reforms were carried out in the Moscow state; almost the entire procedure was different. Clear concepts also emerged of what is a court, what is a search, and what responsibilities lie behind this. The concepts were separated; before, when a wanted person was found, a trial took place immediately. Now there are different stages of the investigation. Also now the search procedure was completely different, all things found by the authorities turned into evidence and became evidence, they were used only during the process. Also, the process of interrogation through torture began to be regulated. Now you couldn’t do what you thought was necessary, you had to torture only three times in approaches and for a certain time, this increased the detection rate, because before they could falsely repent so that they would stop torturing, perhaps because of this point there was no Inquisition in Russia, popular at the time.
A new system of classification of crimes has appeared in criminal law. Types such as :
✔ crime against the church;
✔ crime against the state;
✔ crime against the order of government (unauthorized departure from the country);
✔ crimes against decency (keeping brothels);
✔ malfeasance;
✔ crimes against the person;
✔ property crimes;
✔ crimes against morality.
As for the family, quite a lot of attention and time were given to it in that system, although this was not traditional for those times. The cells of society were well mapped out, each given meaning and importance. Of course, such important changes did not happen in society; everything was called as it is. However, now all this has been legally certified, the families have been legitimized.
Of course, the distribution of orders there was the same in the matriarchal type. When a man did all the hard work, built the house and was the head of the family. The woman was the housewife and kept the hearth in the house. The origin of the family depended only on the husband, so free women could under no circumstances marry a serf. The marriage had to be registered in the church where the wedding took place; this procedure was mandatory.
However, there were still some changes and for many they seemed significant. Now it was possible to get a divorce and it could all be officially registered, which gave some guarantees if someone later went to court. Of course, they rarely got divorced, this was not accepted in Rus', but there were still cases. It was possible to go for a divorce if the wife did not become pregnant or one of the spouses committed illegal acts.
Meaning
Although the conciliar code was not finalized and had many wild laws and cruel punishments, it was a huge step forward. One could say that evolution has occurred, now at least some norms and laws have appeared, formalized legally. After all, for a long time all over the world people lived according to codes where all permitted and not permitted actions were spelled out, now this has finally appeared in Russia. The charter itself contributed not only to less tension in the country, the development of society and the transition from barbarism to more everyday concepts, but it also strengthened Rus' as a country in the international arena, now it was considered a legitimate and more civilized state. After this, many merchants from all over the world flocked to Muscovy. Perhaps they liked the fact that now they could sign a legally formalized contract, which was safe for a particular transaction.
It is impossible to say the full significance of the code, but it played an important role and accelerated the development of Russia. It worked until the nineteenth century, but was periodically changed and supplemented, improving. For several centuries, this written code of laws provided the rules of life for society. Until the new Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was signed in the nineteenth century, after which the state rebooted and began to develop a little differently.
At the Council on July 16, 1648, a petition was submitted to draw up a Code, “so that all sorts of things can be done and accomplished according to that Coded Book.” To develop the Code, a special commission was convened (at that time - an order) headed by Prince N.I. Odoevsky. It included Prince S.V. Prozorovsky, okolnichy Prince F.F. Volkonsky and two clerks - Gavrila Leontyev and the future historian Fyodor Griboedov. According to the preface to the Code, which gives the official version of the drafting of the code, the commission’s task was to write down articles from past legislation - the rules of the apostles and holy fathers, the “Gradtsky laws of the Greek kings”, from the decrees of former Russian tsars and boyar sentences - that are “decent. .. to state and zemstvo affairs”, “and those state decrees and boyar sentences should be dealt with by the old judicial officers.” On those issues for which “there is no decree in the legal codes, there were no boyar sentences for those articles, and those articles on the same should be written and presented according to his sovereign decree by the general council.” The commission was ordered to “collect everything and write it in a report.” In a more concise form, the task of the commission of N. I. Odoevsky in the decree of the tsar in connection with the decision of the Council on July 16 was defined as follows: “... indicated that he should write the laid down book... trying to match the former sovereigns to the legal code and code and the blessed memory of his father Sovereign, Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Mikhail Fedorovich of All Russia, decree and code."
Consideration of the draft Code was planned at the new Zemsky Sobor. Then, on July 16, it was decided to schedule the opening of the new Cathedral for September 1. Norms of representation were also outlined: from stewards, solicitors, Moscow nobles and tenants - two people per rank, from city nobles, children of boyars from big cities - two people, from small cities - one person, from Novgorod residents - from a fiver per person, from the guests - three people, from the living room and the cloth hundreds - two each, from the townspeople “from the cities, from the towns, one person at a time, kind and smart people.” The new Zemsky Sobor, unlike the Council on July 16, was planned in a broader composition and with the participation of representatives of the townspeople's communities. Here the impact of the ongoing uprising and the leading role of black and townspeople in it undoubtedly affected. In the letters sent to the cities, it was prescribed to choose nobles and children of boyars and merchants “good bright people, good people, and intelligent people who would do all sorts of sovereign and zemstvo affairs according to custom...”.
N.I. Odoevsky’s commission immediately began work on collecting past legislation and in a relatively short time, two and a half months, compiled the initial version of the Code. Legislative material for the commission was collected and orders copied. There is evidence of the preparation of such materials by the clerks of the Local Prikaz: “And having copied from the indicated books, sovereign decrees and boyar sentences on local and patrimonial lands were sent from the Local Prikaz, from memory, for the clerk’s acknowledgment, in order to the boyars to Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky and to to Prince Semyon Vasilyevich Prozorovsky and to the okolnichy to Prince Fyodor Fedorovich Volkonsky and to clerk Gavril Levontev and to Fyodor Griboedov, for the sovereign and the great zemstvo cause.” The record allows us to conclude that the orders, from memory, extracted the effective part from their decree books - the decrees of the boyar sentences - and sent them, certified by the clerk’s signature, to the commission. The fact that only decrees and sentences were sent, without reports, greatly facilitated the work on the Code. Unfortunately, the archive of the commission has not been preserved and therefore it is not possible to form any concrete idea about the stages of such work and its results. Very scant information is available about the members of the commission. The question of the role of each of them in the work on the Code entirely belongs to the area of conjecture, assumptions and indirect constructions. Nevertheless, all this deserves attention, since the government commission is a group of authors that has the honor of drawing up at least the initial version of the Code.
- On September 1, 1648, the Zemsky Sobor of expanded composition met with the participation of representatives of the townspeople. The predominant place at the Council was occupied by nobles and merchants. “Unfortunately, about the Council itself and its meetings,” writes M. N. Tikhomirov, “we have inaccurate and, perhaps, deliberately distorted information. Records of the Council have not been preserved... The disappearance of the record of the Council of 1648 is perhaps not an accident... the preface to the Code talks about the meetings of the Council themselves in a deliberately confusing manner, although it mentions the general council, which decided to hold the state has the same trial and punishment for all people.”
- On October 3, according to the preface to the Code, the hearing of the draft code at the Council began in both of its chambers: in one there was the Tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral; in the other, which received the official name of the “Response Chamber”, there were elected people of all ranks under the chairmanship of Prince Yu. A. Dolgorukov. There is no data on the progress of the discussion of the code in, relatively speaking, the Upper Chamber, but the active participation of the Responsive Chamber is undoubtedly. It had a significant influence on the composition of the monument and was the subject of great controversy in subsequent scientific literature. The reading of the Code in the Reply Chamber did not always occur in the order of the chapters. Some parts of Chapter XIX, for example, were reported on December 18 and even January 15, 1649, two weeks before the end of work on the Code. The main part was approved by the king on November 25, 1648. The last chapter to be considered was Chapter VII on military men. There is every reason that the draft code prepared by the Odoevsky commission underwent significant changes during its discussion at the Council. Changes and additions to the draft Code should not be attributed only to its reading in both chambers of the Council. In parallel, the active work of the commission itself was going on, which compiled reports on the petitions of elected people and reported them to the tsar: “... in the current year 157 (1648/49), in different months and dates, they beat the sovereign tsar and Grand Duke Alexei with their foreheads Mikhailovich of All Rus' in the Dining Hut, elected from the cities of the Posadtsky and in all the Posadtsky people, a place and submitted petitions by hand about their various affairs. And from those their petitions were written out, and according to the extract of the sovereign, the tsar and the Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of All Russia, the boyars, Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky, reported (the rest of the commission members are listed below).” One of the cases of such a report on the petition of clerks, solicitors and other officials dated October 30, 1648 refers to November 13, the period of the most intensive work of the Council on the Code. Based on the report, a decree was adopted on the release of white settlements in cities with their commercial and industrial population. The decree was included in the notebook of the Detective Order of Yu. A. Dolgorukov and at the same time included in the XIX chapter of the Code.
Swedish resident K. Pommerening wrote in a message dated October 4 that the tsar “works every day himself with his employees to establish good order so that the people are as satisfied as possible.” In a report dated October 18, he again emphasizes that “here they are still working diligently to ensure that the common people and others are satisfied with good laws and freedom.” The above explains that the hearing and finalization of the Code dragged on for four months. But from the way the Code was prepared, another important circumstance follows. By meeting the demands of the nobles and the upper classes of the town - both in terms of creating the Code itself and legitimizing a significant number of norms that meet the direct interests of these particular circles - the government, on the one hand, drove a wedge between them and the people and thereby prevented the possibility of dangerous contact between armed forces service people with the rebels, and on the other hand, wide publicity of measures to prepare “good laws” took a maneuver towards calming the people and diverting their attention. The reports of K. Pommerening speak eloquently about this.
But the situation in Moscow remained alarming. In September - November, representatives of the town and nobles, during a meeting of the Zemsky Sobor, increased pressure on the government. On November 25, even before the completion of work on the Code, a decree was issued on the assignment of settlements in suburbs “without years and without investigation... everyone should be his sovereign.” Apparently, this is related to the fact that in December - January 1649 the unrest intensified; The main role in them belonged to the mortgagees, dissatisfied with the return to the townsman tax. They were joined by slaves and some of the archers. Rumors spread around Moscow - “to be destined for Epiphany” (January 6). Pommerening wrote to the Swedish queen Christina and Pommerening about the impending uprising. Massacres and new executions began.
In such a situation, on January 29, 1649, the drafting and editing of the text of the Code was completed during the meetings of the Zemsky Sobor. The Code began printing on April 7, 1649 and ended on May 20. 1200 copies were printed.
cathedral code monument law
1649 is a list of laws of the Russian state. It is the first legal act that regulated almost all areas of life at that time.
The appearance of this set of laws is determined by the results of the uprisings in the seventeenth century, which arose as a result of peasant movements, as well as the need to adopt a single law. During these times, anti-feudal movements took place in the serf state against increased exploitation, increasing conscription and lack of rights. The movements were based on small monastic and church organizations, townspeople and serfs. When the struggle reached its peak, the government decided to cut the salaries of the so-called service people, which caused protest, resulting in an uprising in 1648. The adoption of the Council Code was the result of this uprising and acute class struggle.
The Tsar announced the convening of the Zemsky Sobor to develop the Code. The need for new laws is considered the main reason for the creation of the Code; one might say that this also determined its character.
The nobles, boyars and merchants, who were frightened by the uprising, demanded to convene a Council to discuss the current situation, although in fact each of them pursued their own goals. The government made concessions in order to pacify the people.
The adoption of the Council Code dates back to 1648, when the king created a decree on writing the Code Book. They decided to write out articles written by the Greek kings, as well as the old government, which needed to be corrected and supplemented in such a way that the trial and punishment for crimes would be equal for every person living on the territory of the Moscow state.
A special commission consisting of five people was assigned to draw up a set of laws. This commission developed new laws, which they submitted to the king for consideration. The Tsar gave instructions according to which the adoption of the Council Code was to be carried out by people chosen by him from settlements and cities (one person from each).
At the Council, the draft Code was heard, discussed and signed. This document was sent to all cities in the office. Thus, it became the largest of all those that were convened during the reign of the Tsars in Russia.
The Code contained twenty-five chapters (nine hundred and sixty-seven chapters). They contained the laws and codes of the Greek kings, Moscow codes of law and additional sentences to them, as well as boyar sentences copied from the Lithuanian statute, church decrees, and criminal law. According to the Council Code, each law or resolution was entered into special books, to which codes were written indicating the amended laws, as well as orders regarding changes to laws that had not been considered previously, and those that included cases not provided for by law. The Council Code had three hundred and fifteen who compiled it, as well as special notes on the columns that indicated the source of a particular article.
Thus, this document had a complex structure; it was divided into thematic sections devoted to certain areas of law, each section having its own title.
The adoption of the Council Code is the greatest achievement of the reign of Alexei. This great collection of laws played the role of a legal code for quite a long period of time. The Code covered a wide area of legislation and helped define relations between classes. It was not possible to change the Code for a long period of time.
1. Historical and economic prerequisites for creation
Cathedral Code of 1649.
3. System of crimes.
4. System of punishments.
5. The significance of the Council Code of 1649 in the socio-political life of Russia.
1. Historical and economic prerequisites for the creation
Cathedral Code of 1649.
The beginning of the 17th century is characterized by the political and economic decline of Russia. This was largely facilitated by the wars with Sweden and Poland, which ended in the defeat of Russia in 1617.
After signing a peace treaty with Sweden in 1617, Russia lost part of its territories - the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the Karelian Isthmus, the course of the Neva and the cities on its coast. Russia's access to the Baltic Sea was closed.
In addition, after the campaign against Moscow in 1617-1618 by the Polish-Lithuanian army and the signing of a truce, the Smolensk land and most of Northern Ukraine were ceded to Poland.
The consequences of the war, which resulted in the decline and ruin of the country's economy, required urgent measures to restore it, but the whole burden fell mainly on the black-sown peasants and townspeople. The government widely distributes land to the nobles, which leads to the continuous growth of serfdom. At first, given the devastation of the village, the government slightly reduced direct taxes, but various types of emergency levies increased (“fifth money”, “tenth money”, “Cossack money”, “streltsy money”, etc.), most of which were introduced almost continuously meeting Zemsky Sobors.
However, the treasury remains empty and the government begins to deprive the archers, gunners, city Cossacks and minor officials of their salaries, and introduces a ruinous tax on salt. Many townspeople begin to move to “white places” (the lands of large feudal lords and monasteries, exempt from state taxes), while the exploitation of the rest of the population increases.
In such a situation, it was impossible to avoid major social conflicts and contradictions.
On June 1, 1648, an uprising broke out in Moscow (the so-called “salt riot”). The rebels held the city in their hands for several days and destroyed the houses of the boyars and merchants.
Following Moscow, in the summer of 1648, a struggle between townspeople and small service people unfolded in Kozlov, Kursk, Solvychegodsk, Veliky Ustyug, Voronezh, Narym, Tomsk and other cities of the country.
Practically, throughout the entire reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1645-1676), the country was gripped by small and large uprisings of the urban population. It was necessary to strengthen the legislative power of the country and on September 1, 1648, the Zemsky Sobor opened in Moscow, the work of which ended with the adoption at the beginning of 1649 of a new set of laws - the Cathedral Code. The project was drawn up by a special commission, and it was discussed in whole and in parts by members of the Zemsky Sobor (“in chambers”). The printed text was sent to orders and localities.
2. Sources and main provisions of the Council Code
1649.
The Council Code of 1649, having summarized and absorbed the previous experience of creating legal norms, was based on:
Legal experts;
Directive books of orders;
Royal decrees;
Duma verdicts;
Decisions of Zemsky Sobors (most of the articles were compiled based on petitions from council members);
- “Stoglav”;
Lithuanian and Byzantine legislation;
New decree articles on “robbery and murder” (1669), on estates and estates (1677), on trade (1653 and 1677), which were included in the Code after 1649.
In the Council Code, the head of state, the tsar, was defined as an autocratic and hereditary monarch. The provision on the approval (election) of the tsar at the Zemsky Assembly substantiated these principles. Any actions directed against the person of the monarch were considered criminal and subject to punishment.
The Code contained a set of norms that regulated the most important branches of public administration. These norms can be conditionally classified as administrative. Attaching peasants to the land (Chapter 11 “The Trial of the Peasants”); the townsman reform, which changed the position of the “white settlements” (chap. 14); change in the status of patrimony and estate (chap. 16 and 17); regulation of the work of local government bodies (Chapter 21); entry and exit regime (Article 6) - all these measures formed the basis of administrative and police reforms.
With the adoption of the Council Code, changes occurred in the field of judicial law. A number of norms concerning the organization and work of the court were developed. Compared to the Code of Laws, there is an even greater division into two forms: “trial” and “search”.
The court procedure is described in Chapter 10 of the Code. The court was based on two processes - the “trial” itself and the “decision”, i.e. rendering a sentence, a decision. The trial began with the “initiation”, the filing of a petition. The defendant was summoned to court by a bailiff, he could present guarantors, and also fail to appear in court twice if there were good reasons for this. The court accepted and used various evidence: testimony (at least ten witnesses), written evidence (the most trustworthy of them are officially certified documents), kissing the cross (in disputes over an amount not exceeding one ruble), and drawing lots. To obtain evidence, a “general” search was used - a survey of the population about the fact of a crime committed, and a “general” search - about a specific person suspected of a crime. The so-called “pravezh” was introduced into court practice, when the defendant (most often an insolvent debtor) was regularly subjected to corporal punishment (beating with rods) by the court. The number of such procedures should have been equivalent to the amount of debt. So, for example, for a debt of one hundred rubles, they flogged for a month. Pravezh was not just a punishment - it was also a measure that encouraged the defendant to fulfill the obligation (himself or through guarantors). The settlement was oral, but was recorded in the “judicial list” and each stage was formalized in a special letter.
The search or “detective” was used only in the most serious criminal cases, and a special place and attention in the search was given to crimes in which the state interest was affected (“the word and deed of the sovereign”). The case in the search process could begin with a statement from the victim, with the discovery of a crime, or with an ordinary slander.
In Chapter 21 of the Council Code of 1649, such a procedural procedure as torture was established for the first time. The basis for its use could be the results of a “search”, when the testimony was divided: part in favor of the suspect, part against him. The use of torture was regulated: it could be used no more than three times, with a certain break; and the testimony given during torture (“slander”) had to be cross-checked using other procedural measures (interrogation, oath, search).
The following changes were also made in the field of criminal law - the circle of subjects of the crime was determined: they could be either individuals or a group of persons. The law divided the subjects of the crime into main and secondary, understanding the latter as accomplices. In turn, complicity could be physical (assistance, practical assistance, committing the same actions as the main subject of the crime) and intellectual (for example, incitement to murder in Chapter 22). In this regard, even a slave who committed a crime at the direction of his master began to be recognized as a subject of a crime. At the same time, it should be noted that the law distinguished from secondary subjects of the crime (accomplices) persons who were only involved in the commission of the crime: accomplices (persons who created the conditions for the commission of the crime), connivers (persons obliged to prevent the crime and did not do so), non-informers (persons who did not report the preparation and commission of a crime), concealers (persons who hid the criminal and traces of the crime). The Code also divided crimes into intentional, careless and accidental. For a careless crime, the perpetrator was punished in the same way as for a deliberate criminal act (the punishment followed not for the motive of the crime, but for its result). But the law also identified mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Mitigating circumstances included: state of intoxication; uncontrollability of actions caused by insult or threat (affect); and to aggravating ones - repetition of the crime, the amount of harm, the special status of the object and subject of the crime, the combination of several crimes.
The law identified three stages of a criminal act: intent (which in itself can be punishable), attempted crime and commission of a crime, as well as the concept of recidivism, which in the Council Code coincides with the concept of “dashing person”, and the concept of extreme necessity, which is not punishable only if the proportionality of its real danger from the criminal is observed. Violation of proportionality meant exceeding the limits of necessary defense and was punished.
The objects of crime according to the Council Code of 1649 were defined as: church, state, family, person, property and morality. Crimes against the church were considered the most dangerous and for the first time they were placed in first place. This is explained by the fact that the church occupied a special place in public life, but the main thing is that it was taken under the protection of state institutions and laws.
Major changes in the Council Code of 1649 concerned the area of property, obligation and inheritance law. The scope of civil law relations was defined quite clearly. This was encouraged by the development of commodity-money relations, the formation of new types and forms of ownership, and the quantitative growth of civil transactions.
The subjects of civil law relations were both private (individuals) and collective persons, and the legal rights of a private person were gradually expanded due to concessions from the collective person. Legal relations that arose on the basis of norms regulating the sphere of property relations were characterized by the instability of the status of the subject of rights and obligations. First of all, this was expressed in the division of several powers associated with one subject and one right (for example, conditional land tenure gave the subject the right to own and use, but not to dispose of the subject). With this, difficulty arose in determining the true full-fledged subject. Subjects of civil law had to satisfy certain requirements, such as gender (there was a significant increase in the legal capacity of women compared to the previous stage), age (the qualification of 15-20 years made it possible to independently accept an estate, enslaving obligations, etc.), social and property status.
The immediate reason for drawing up the Council Code was the riot that occurred in Moscow in early June 1648. Then, among the demands of the rebellious townspeople was, in addition to reducing taxes, the adoption of new legislative acts. The time for this is also ripe due to the fact that the previous legislative code - the Code of Laws of Ivan the Terrible, adopted in 1550, largely required revision. In addition, by the middle of the 17th century, the country had a colossal number of legal acts and norms that were not only outdated, but also contradicted each other. To consider the new Council Code, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich convened the Zemsky Sobor.
To prepare a draft code of laws, a kind of “editorial commission” was formed, headed by the boyar Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky. Together with him, other experienced administrators worked on drawing up the document - princes Semyon Vasilyevich Prozorovsky and Fyodor Fedorovich Volkonsky, clerks Gavriil Leontyev and Fyodor Griboedov.
The new code of laws was based on a number of norms of Byzantine law translated from the collection of legal acts “Nomocanon”, Code of Laws of Tsar Ivan IV and later Russian laws, a code of Western Russian law - the Lithuanian Statute, as well as petitions from nobles, merchants and townspeople submitted to the Tsar in 1648.
Already on September 1, 1648, the commission was supposed to report to the council on its work, but due to the large volume of documents, the reading of the draft articles began only on October 3. The council, which discussed the Code, was held in a wide composition: it was attended by the tsar, boyars, clergy, elected representatives from the nobility and townspeople. The deputies made many amendments, so the final text of the Code was prepared only at the end of January 1649.
The new code of laws consisted of 25 chapters, each of which was divided into articles; There were 967 articles in total. The Code outlined a division into branches of law, and systematized the norms of state, criminal, civil and family legislation. There was talk about norms regarding land ownership and land tenure, in relation to peasants, townspeople and serfs. The system of punishments and the procedure for legal proceedings were described. Separate chapters contained provisions on Cossacks, taverns and archers. The Code of 1649 was adopted on July 26 (16 old style) and became the first Moscow state code containing legislative norms relating to religion and the church (for example, blasphemy was punishable by death, obscene behavior in church was punishable by whipping ). Thus, the entire legal system that existed at that time in Russia was brought into a certain order.
What was new in the Code was that it proclaimed the principle of equality in the administration of justice for all subjects, “from the highest to the lowest rank,” and was supposed to deliver the offended “from the hand of the unjust.”
The cathedral code looked like a long paper scroll consisting of 959 columns. The text was completed by more than those hundreds of signatures of the Zemsky Sobor participants. The cathedral code was almost immediately reprinted in the form of a book, published in two editions with a total of 2,400 copies, and subsequently it was also reprinted more than once. More than a hundred years after its adoption, during the reign of Catherine II, to preserve the original list, it was placed in a special silver box. The Council Code remained in force until 1832, when a new Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was prepared. But even then it was included as a historical monument in the first volume of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire.
For its time, the Council Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich represented a big step forward in the development of the legal system and legislation of the Russian state.
