Church Jurisdiction in the Civil Law of Ancient Russia

Abstract

A short research is devoted to the issue of the implementation of Byzantine law in the Russian legal system. Russia not only absorbed Byzantine legal sources into its legal system, but also enriched them with its own experience. The baptism of Rus in 988 A. D. for ever made Russia an equal actor not only in international relations of the medieval period, but also had a tremendous impact on the internal legal policy of the state. The Church, in fact, formed the branches of law, not yielding to European states in lawmaking. The author considered far from all sources of law in ancient Russia, having touched on only the main ones that had a major impact on the development of social relations.