Original scientific paper
The Origin and Role of the Kmeti in the Thirteenth-Century Society of Vinodol
Maurizio Levak
Abstract
The law-code of Vinodol, the oldest legal monument in the Croatian vernacular, was made in 1288, when the representatives of nine fortified towns belonging to Vinodol convened and in the presence of their territorial lord, the count from the extended family of the counts of Krk/Vegla, put into written form for the first time the legal rules they called “the law of their fathers.” In the text of the law-code, the inhabitants of these fortified towns are referred to by the term kmeti, a term which had several meanings in medieval Croatia (ranging from the tenant-peasant or serf to persons in high positions in society). In modern scholarship the position and origin of the kmeti of the law-code of Vinodol have been understood in various ways. The author offers an explanation based on the comparison of the area of Vinodol with other frontier areas of the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, in which at that time there existed a system of castles and fortified towns inhabited and administered by the so-called “castle-warriors” (iobagiones castri). The author points out several characteristics of the Vinodol communities typical also for the communities of castle-warriors in Hungary, although he acknowledges that military organisation undoubtedly already existed in Vinodol in the period of an independent Croatian kingdom, prior to the union with Hungary.
Keywords
Vinodol; the law-code of Vinodol; legal history; kmeti; castle-warriors; the Middle Ages
Hrčak ID:
11180
URI
Publication date:
1.3.2002.
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