700 Years Of The Statute Of Split

High level of communal and juridical organisation of medieval Dalmatian towns is most thoroughly evidenced in their local statutes, the emblematic expression of the medieval communal autonomy. The autonomous position of Dalmatian towns is historically reflected in a number of freedoms, whereof most intrinsic are the right to free election of the municipal government bodies and an adequate quantity of their own legal regulations. In the time of maturing of communal societies during the 13th and 14th century such regulations are also formulated in writing and gathered in pompous collections called “statutes”. Among such legislative documents of local Dalmatian communities special place belongs to the Statute of Split from 1312. It is characterised by completeness and refinement of legal regulations as well as by systematic exposing and clear formulations. An enviable level of local juridical culture is mirrored in the Statute together with the nomotechnical skill of the then city mayor (potestate), Perceval of Fermo, to whom –as the “connoisseur of the canon and civil law” the Major Council of Split entrusted the composing of Statute’s text. Although at that time Croatian ethnic element prevailed in Split, the Statute is a proof of a kind of Split’s polyglot milieu. Like the vast majority of other communal statutes it is composed in Latin language, but already in 1935 the friar Mihovil (Michael) from Split prepared –based on the Latin original - also its Italian version. In both cases the idioms are specifically medieval with distinctive regional features, what makes the Split Statute as well as the statutes of other costal towns also an excellent medium for the study of Roman oral speeches in the medieval epoch. The medieval communal statutes are not limited - like today’s city and municipality acts of the same name – to the issues of organisation and functioning of local governing bodies, but are concerned with all other aspects of communal life. Such is the case also with the Statute of Split which includes the regulations on the structure and functioning of the communal governance, but also abounds in examples of topics that concern both secular and ecclesiastical authorities, marriage and family, property and other real rights, contractual relationship and inheritance, misdemeanours and punishment, organisation of juridical authority and forms of juridical procedures, crafts and trade, agrarian relationships and maritime entrepreneurship, communal order and many other issues. The Statute remained in force until the fall of the Venetian Republic (1797), so it can rightfully be said that it offers us a condensed image of the Split’s developing society during almost half a millennium. In constant perfectioning of their legislative system the inhabitants of Split have equally followed their own necessities as well as foreign examples. The testimony to it is also the Statute of Split in which Croatian legal concepts are harmoniously interwoven with the elements of Roman, Byzantine, Canon, Italian (primarily Venetian) and even German (Langombardian) law. Hence is the Statute of Split among the best examples of the synthesis of juridical cultures and of an early integration of Croatian coast into the Euro-Mediterranean cultural circle. Here resides also its lasting civilisational value. Željko Radić