Acta Iuris Stetinensis (Dec 2024)
Legal regulation of commodity and money relations in the colonies of the Republic of Saint George on the territory of modern Southern Ukraine in the mid-15th century
Abstract
The article deals with the issue of the peculiarities of the legal regulation of commodity and monetary relations that existed in the cities and settlements subordinate to the Genoese Republic, which were located on the territory of modern Ukraine, in particular on its currently occupied lands, during the 13th – 15th centuries. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of the relevant norms contained in the text of the Charter for the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea of 1449. The article consistently describes the legal foundations of the formation and evolution of the Genoese colonies in the Northern Black Sea region, the specifics of local money circulation and the characteristic features of the normative regulation of commodity-money relations reflected in the 1449 Charter. Particular attention is paid to the legal regulation of slave trade, which acted as an object of commodity-money relations. The author came to the conclusion that during the investigated period, a set of norms was gradually formed in the northern Black Sea colonies of the Republic of St. George that regulated commodity and monetary relations. Moreover, in the middle of the 15th century, collections of legal norms acted as sources of such law in addition to legal customs – first of all, the Charter for the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea of 1449, which, with certain reservations, may be considered the germ of a code. At the same time, a characteristic feature of the law of the Genoese colonies was that its basis was not the norms of local origin, but those that were transferred onto local soil from the metropolis and adapted to specific local conditions. Attention is drawn to the fact that during the Middle Ages, the law of the population of southern Ukrainian lands was significantly influenced by the law of other states, and in the future, some of the introduced norms were, with certain changes due to local specifics, adopted and reflected in customary law, and in some places also in legislation widespread on the territory of Ukraine at a later time.
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