Lemšat of Serbian medieval law

Abstract

The topic of this article is the contract of lemšat (Lehenschaft) in Serbian medieval mining law. The author discusses the details of this legal and social institution in medieval Serbia by answering the following two questions: What was the scale of transplantation of Saxon law, i.e., how original were the Serbian rules? Who were the lenhavars - the contractors in a special type of lemšat? The results of the investigation show that Serbian lemšat was a contract of the temporary lease of a share in a mining partnership and that the lenhavars were qualified miners, whose employment was occasionally necessary. The results also show that Serbian medieval mining law contained numerous original legal solutions. The applied methods are linguistic, systemic and historical interpretation of the Mining Code of Despot Stefan, as well as the comparative method.

Keywords

• lemšat
• lehenschaft
• lehenhäuer
• mining partnership
• serbian medieval mining law