The concept of marriage in Roman, Byzantine and Serbian mediaeval law

Abstract

In this paper the author is exposing definitions of marriage that were accepted in Byzantium and mediaeval Serbia, although it was not insisted in them on wedding as a religious rite. Leo VI, at the end of the 9th century, was the first to prescribe Church benediction as an obligatory form of entering into marriage. Novels of latter Emperors placed marriage under the complete jurisdiction of the Church, but they were not incorporated in Serbian translations of Byzantine legal miscellanies (Nomokanon of St. Sava and Syntagma of Matheas Blastares). Therefore in articles 2 and 3 of Dušan's Law Code it was prescribed that no marriage could be contracted without wedding ceremony and Church benediction. .