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Old Muscovite Concepts of Injured Honor (Beschestie)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

H. W. Dewey
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Slavic Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 594 - 603
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1968

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References

1 Art. 70, 1550 Sudebnik; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1952), p. 165.

2 Art. 25, 1550 Sudebnik; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 147. As early as 1189 (in the Novgorod-German treaty), the tearing of clothes and the forcible removal of women's headgear were recognized as actionable forms of assault. V. Sergeevich, Lektsii i izsledovaniia po drevnei istorii russkogo prava (3rd ed.; St. Petersburg, 1903), p. 417.

3 The word beschestie had two meanings : (1) the offense itself and (2) payment for the offense; N. I. Lange, “O nakazaniiakh i vzyshaniiakh za beschestie po drevnemu russkomu pravu,” Zhurnal ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia, Vol. CII, Pt. II, Sec. 7 (Mar.-Apr. 1859), p. 219. For the term's use in supplemental clauses of the Russkaia Pravda, see Pamiatniki russkogo prava, I (Moscow, 1952), 197, 206, 210-12.

4 Likhachev, D. S., Chelovek v literature drevnei Rusi (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), p. Leningrad Google Scholar. For the legal clauses, see Russkaia Pravda, articles 23, 28, 30, 67; Pamiatniki russkogo prava, I (Moscow, 1952), 110, 111, 115. See also M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov's comments in Obzor istorii russkago prava (6th ed.; St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 318. In Anglo-Saxon England, incidentally, the “contumelious outrage of binding a free man, or shaving his head in derision, or shaving off his beard, was visited with heavier fines than any but the greatest wounds.” SirPollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederic W., The History of English Law , I (2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1923), 53.Google Scholar

5 The key passage in the 1550 Sudebnik is its twenty-sixth article; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 148. For offending the honor of a senior retainer in Kievan Rus', the offender had to pay a fine to the prince four times as large as for the injury of a lowly smerd. This qualified protection for offenses against princes’ retainers also existed in German laws of the period; George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia (New Haven, 1959), pp. 139, 293. Khlebnikov established a 1 : 15 ratio or range in amounts of Kievan beschestie fines; B. D. Grekov, Krest'iane na Rusi, I (Moscow, 1952), 92, whereas in late sixteenth-century Moscow a beggar's 2 dengi amounted to 1/12, 000 of the 1200-ruble beschestie to which, according to some sources, the offended wife of a boyar was entitled. Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 179. On the issue of slaves and beschestie, see V. O. Kliuchevsky, Sochineniia v vos'mi tomakh, VI (Moscow, 1959), 450.

6 See texts of the church statutes of Vladimir and Yaroslav in Pamiatniki russkogo prava, I, 237-47, 259-77, and M. Szeftel and A. Eck, Documents de droit public relatifs á la Russie médiévale (Brussels, 1963), pp. 234-39 anc* 251-63.

7 Szeftel, Documents, p. 257. For other provisions on insults to “church people” and on rape and assault, see pp. 235, 238, 251-52, 259. The status scale is far smaller than in Muscovite laws. Another church statute—Vsevolod's—lists two other charges (heresy and brewing of sorcerers’ potions) in addition to adultery as constituting “insults” (p. 272). During the period of Tatar domination, local laws sometimes took both the severity of injury and the victim's rank into consideration; P. O. Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia protiv chesti po russkim zakonam do nachala XVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 1889), p. 32.

8 Vladimirsky-Budanov, Obzor, p. 349.

9 Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, p. 40.

10 Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 186. This type of suit was later specifically disallowed; ibid., p. 220. Giles Fletcher, who visited Russia in 1588-89, reported that the top three ranks of nobility—the patrimonial princes, boyars, and voevody—sued for beschestie when “vich” was omitted from their patronymic (which Fletcher correctly demonstrates with an example, but then mistakenly labels as “surname“); Of the Rus Commonwealth, ed. A. J. Schmidt (Ithaca, 1966), p. 42.

11 Akty arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsii, Vol. III (St. Petersburg, 1836), No. 42. See Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” pp. 182-83.

12 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. II (Moscow, 1841), Nos. 12 and 13; see also Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 180.

13 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 216; see also Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 180.

14 Akty arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsii, Vol. III, No. 44; see also Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 183.

15 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. II, No. 108; see also Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 181.

16 Insulting a minor daughter could bring a fine four times as high, whereas insulting a minor son brought only half the father's compensation; Vladimirsky-Budanov, Obzor, p. 349. (This same scale of compensation reappears in the 1694 Ulozhenie, chapter X, art. 99.) German law knew many varieties of injury to feminine honor; Sergeevich, Lektsii, p. 417.

17 Vladimirsky-Budanov, Obzor, p. 349.

18 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 110; see also Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 170.

19 Even when the exact amounts of compensation were left to the discretion of the sovereign, the sovereign was expected to set the sums in accordance with ranks and professional categories; see Art. 72, 1589 Sudebnik; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 385 (musketeers, ordinary soldiers, free cossacks, masons).

20 Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 463.

21 Art. 2 : Pamiatniki russkogo prava, III, 162. For an English text, see Vernadsky, Medieval Russian Laws (New York, 1965), p. 58. The 1486 Gubnaia moskovskaia zapis’ mentions a “review fee” (peresud) for all beschestie cases handled in vicegerents’ courts, and Lange believes that such cases included insults; “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 172.

22 Articles 68-70; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 384.

23 A military governor who had been offended by a colleague might address a petition directly to the tsar; Akty arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsii, Vol. III, No. 42. A bishop followed the same procedure when “insulted” by an archbishop; Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 216.

24 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 50. And a guard officer made the complaint against cossacks who had insulted a Siberian prince's family; see note 12.

25 Art. 31, 1550 Sudebnik; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 150.

26 Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, pp. 50, 51-52 (quoting Capt. Margeret).

27 A. Iushkov, ed., Akty XIII-XVII w. : Predstavlennye v Pazriadnyi prikaz (Moscow, 1898), No. 46.

28 Akty arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsii, Vol. I, No. 280.

29 Quoted in Arthur Voyce, Moscow and the Roots of Russian Culture (Norman, 1964), pp. 65-66.

30 Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, p. 50.

31 Ibid., p. 49. This might have been because certain traces of physical assault would quickly disappear and the plaintiff would lack his best “evidence” at the trial.

32 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 180; but estate confiscation was barred in an important beschestie suit; Bobrovsky, Prestapleniia, pp. 73-74 and sources quoted.

33 Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth (London, 1856), p. 67. This procedure apparently led an early seventeenth-century visitor to Russia (Capt. Margeret) to believe that such beatings were always administered to defendants convicted of beschestie; Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, pp. 48-50. Beating (or flogging), to be sure, was part of the penalty in beschestie cases involving false accusation; see sources quoted in notes 40 and 42, and Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 188.

34 Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 190.

35 Quoted in V. O. Kliuchevsky, Sochineniia v vos'mi tomakh, VI (Moscow, 1959), 449- 50.

36 Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, pp. 418, 434, 459-63.

37 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 216.

38 Lange, “O nakazaniiakh,” p. 220. See also Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, pp. 56, 63, 67-68. At the same time we may surmise that the code compilers, when specifying precise sums for beschestie, wished to regulate these sums and keep them within bounds!

39 Such reasoning was old and widespread. Early Western laws had similar provisions to combat blood feuds, duels over honor, and the effect of the vendetta; see, inter alia, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West (New York, 1962), pp. 55-60, and Salic law “concerning insults” in Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. Henderson (London, 1892), p. 181. Capt. Margeret observed that, whereas in the West men fought duels over questions of honor, in Russia they went to court; quoted in Bobrovsky, Prestupleniia, pp. 48-49.

40 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 154 (V, 5); art. 103, 1589 Sudebnik; Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, pp. 390 and 485-86. This writer has attempted to analyze the crime of false accusation in “Defamation and False Accusation (Iabednichestvo) in Old Muscovite Society,” Études slaves et Est-Européennes, XI, fasc. 3-4 (1966-67), 109-20.

41 P. A. Sadikov, Ocherki po istorii oprichniny (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), pp. 62-63.

42 Akty istoricheskie, Vol. I, No. 154 (XX).

43 Lange analyzes the Ulozhenie provisions in “O nakazaniiakh,” pp. 188-89. The Russian text appears in M. N., Tikhomirov and P. P., Epifanov, Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 goda (Moscow, 1961), pp. 102–10 Google Scholar. For an English translation, see Readings for Introduction to Russian Civilization , trans, and comp. Hellie, R. (Chicago, 1967), p. 5–15.Google Scholar