Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.54070/hljk.31.1.5
Violation of Holy Images and Blasphemy in the Vrsar Legal Collection
Ivan Milotić
orcid.org/0000-0002-6766-8609
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
*
Ivana Jaramaz Reskušić
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu Pravni fakultet, Zagreb, Hrvatska
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Although blasphemy is a well-known phenomenon of the medieval and later particular legal regimes of Christian Europe, it had been institutionalised much earlier – in the Roman law of Justinian’s epoch because its application is conditioned by several accurately defined prerequisites. It is an institute of evangelical and canonical provenance, which in Justinian’s law grew into a lay and public delictum publicum. Because blasphemy was a delict that was part of the universal legal tradition in the Middle Ages, it was regulated in the particular (statutory) regimes of the time throughout Europe. This paper provides an analysis of blasphemy in the County of Vrsar, as a small territory which for centuries had continuously recognised the supremacy of the Bishop of Poreč, for which it had the status of a miniature ecclesiastical State. Besides the classical delict of blasphemy, which consisted of a verbal injury of divine and holy persons, the legal system of Vrsar County also specifically regulated its real (tangible) form – the violation of holy images, which otherwise rarely appeared in statutory provisions. The real (tangible) form of blasphemy was separately and precisely regulated in Vrsar statutory provisions, which forms a central point of analysis in this paper. The analysis puts forth not just the normative aspect of the delict, but also the whole context of its regulation in the county of ecclesiastical provenance. The authors determine the legal nature of such a delict as the delictum speciale of blasphemy, which is much more common in the statutory provisions in Istra and the whole of the Eastern Adriatic
Keywords
County of Vrsar, blasphemy, violation of holy images, Roman law, statutory law, bishop of Poreč
Hrčak ID:
328278
URI
Publication date:
28.11.2024.
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