500TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VEPRINAC STATUTE

Motif: Veprinac, from the book Croatian Littoral, 1891 Half a millennium of written statutory tradition of a medieval municipality that small Veprinac nowadays is, a municipality situated on the eastern slopes of the mountain range Učka, in the present times within reach of Rijeka, on the unruly hundred-year-long dividing line between the Venetian and Austro-Hungarian authority, a long period that would remind every civilized community of their own cilivilizational attainments and stimulate them to query whether their actual legal arrangement, particularly its application, were in harmony with the times we live in - the beginning of the third millennium. In the archives of the HAZU [Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts], under the signature II d 123, together with some slightly younger preserved minutes of the Veprinac court of justice, there is preserved in its entirety this Croatian Statute, written on both pages on three paper leaves with the dimension of a larger quarter of the sheet, written in cursive, joint-up Glagolitic script, which was customary for the legal acts since the 14th century. The leaves, originally bound in the book of manuscripts called Quarto [kvadriga], are presently rather damaged by humidity, so that the text is sometimes hardly readable, and the paper has cracked, so that some smaller bits have ended being torn off in the course of time. Despite being damaged, the text was first copied in Latin characters in 1851 by the arduous promoter of the Glagolitic tradition, the Veprinac parish chaplain of that time, Jakov Volčić, a Slovene by nationality. It was first printed by the Russian historian of law, M. Vladimirsky-Budanov (in 1881, in the Cyrillic script on the basis of Volčić’s Latin copy), and then followed the Croatians F. Rački (1890) and R. Strohal (1910) and the Slovene M. Jasinski (1926). Writing about the Statute were O. Mandić (1955), trying to prove that the basic specimen to be copied of the Statute could be even older than the 14th century, and also the best-known law historian L. Margetić (in 1995 and 1997). The author of the most recent monograph, the photo-type edition, with the accompanying transcription and detailed language analysis is B. Kuzmić (2007). The content of the Veprinac Statute encompasses the establishment of legal relations on the executive and penal, civil law level. The first one presupposes, for instance, the prescribing of the procedures of choosing the county prefect “for a year” as well as other functionaries in charge of municipal duties, the regulation of accepting foreign serfs on the area of the municipality, the distribution of authority to some craftsmen, defining the maximal price for trading of basic victuals (especially meat in public butchers’ shops), leasing municipal land into rent, rules about the every-year choice of county prefect, judge and captain (on Epiphany). In the frame of the second level, punishments have been established (mostly financial) for theft or burglary (from the house, the fenced-off or unfenced pasture-ground, by day, at night,...), break-ins, causing bodily harm or threats, offences (for instance, taking a woman’s kerchief off), felling trees (depending whether it has taken place in the wood, on its edge or outside it), watering cattle without permission, etc. The present dimension and importance of Veprinac of that time is especially proved by the statement that in the town you could be judged “for every word” (every case), because the jurisdiction was completely established and there was no need to go to the neighbouring Kastav in order to find satisfaction in being dealt justice. In the final part, the judges Ivan and Pavao [John and Paul] testified to the fact that the Statute had an appropriate legal framework. Like any other legal document from the badly documented periods, the Veprinac Statute, too (like, among others the oldest Croatian legal document – the Vinodol Statute from the year 1288, preserved in the copy from the 16th century, also written in cursive Glagolitic script) is and excellent historic source for the study of the settlement’s everyday life, both in town and village. Besides mediating the level of the cultural arrangement of public life, we can learn about many things, like what situations were the source of clashes, what were the delicate issues, how clashes were tackled and solved, how moral misdemeanours were dealt with, inheriting, boundary lines, the prices of everyday items, enjoyment of rights to the land, breeding cattle, how agreements were implemented, what kind of and how much were the tithes to be paid to the landed gentry and the clergy, how much were the fees for certain services. It is interesting to see how the functioning of the judicial apparatus was secured – with regard to other segments of authority – how bearing evidence as a witness is regulated, financial reimbursement or fees for judges and the municipality, supervision of judicial proceedings, announcement of decisions of the judicial council which used to sit regularly, on a fortnightly basis, if necessary also more often, and it would solve four to five cases on each sitting, and the like. The Statute was passed by the council in front of the parish church of that time, St. Anne’s, and it was made up of “senior men” some of whom were up to a hundred years old. The old age of the participants was the guarantee of reliability and seriousness of drawing up the legal document, its foundation on the tradition of many-hundred-year tradition that in some segments encroaches into the pre-Slavonic era of oral tradition of legal formulas. At the very beginning the person taking the minutes, the notary public [kanceler] would particularly point out that it renders the old legal regulations immortal, those “that were always abided by in this honoured town of Veprinac”. Along the margin of his Latin copy Jakov Volčić wrote the words that, regarding the huge amount of work and centuries-long already settled experience can be with good reason repeated today: “You have judged well and fair, you honoured old men!” In Veprinac, where almost 50% of the male population was literate in the 16th century, they used to write in the Glagolitic script up the 18th century. Judging by many special features, the script of this and other Glagolitic written monuments from Veprinac can be differentiated from the script in other documents from the neighbouring areas (Kastav, Mošćenice, Istria, Vinodol). It is justified to suppose that in Veprinac there must have been their own scribe school active where liturgical books, literary works and legal documents used to be copied in the Glagolitic script. The Statute was written in a language close to the characteristic local Čakavian dialect where there prevails the ekavian reflex of the jat, with a considerable portion of ikavian features, though one should take into account – like in all legal Glagolitic texts – also with a mild influence of the Old Church Slavonic forms. Consequently, except for its significance as a historic source, the Veprinac Statute is an exceptionally important document of the Croatian language and script from the beginning of the 16th century.