Cathedral Code of 1649: historical significance

Cathedral Code of 1649: historical significance



In the middle of 1648, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovichgathered the boyars for a meeting. He invited them to think about how to bring justice and order in the Russian state. It was decided to take all the best from the old laws and publish a new set of legal norms. After hard work in 1649, the Cathedral Code was born, in which legislation was presented in the form of a harmonious system.





Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich - the initiator of the creation of the Cathedral Code of 1649

















Prerequisites for the adoption of a new set of laws

At the beginning of the XVII century, Russia experienced the strongestdecline in the economy and politics. After the war with Sweden, the country lost a significant part of its former territories in the northern regions, including access to the strategically important Baltic Sea. Negative impact on the political situation and the campaign of the Poles, after which part of the Smolensk lands and territories in the north of Ukraine moved to Poland. Russia's treasure was empty, the streltsy and the Cossacks did not receive salaries for a long time. The state introduced new fees and taxes, which fell heavily on the population of Russia. In this situation, it was possible to expect major public speeches and serious social conflicts. Indeed, in the middle of the 17th century, several riots occurred in several cities of the country. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich decided that it was time to strengthen the central authority and make changes in the legislation. In September 1648, the Zemsky Sobor took place in Moscow. The result of his work was the adoption in 1649 of the Cathedral Code, which became a new set of Russian laws. The Code included a whole set of rules and regulations that were designed to regulate the most important aspects of public administration.

The value of the Cathedral

Before the adoption of a new set of laws in Russiathere was a legal practice that relied on the decrees of the tsar, the forensic sentences and the Duma verdicts, which made the proceedings ambiguous and highly controversial. The code of 1649 is an attempt to form an integral set of legislative norms capable of covering the most important aspects of Russia's social, political and economic life, and not just disparate groups of social relations. In a new set of laws, an attempt was made to systematize legislative norms by breaking them down into branches of law. Before the introduction of the Cathedral Code of printed sources, relating to legal relations, did not exist; earlier laws were simply announced in public places. The creation of a printed set of legal norms has become an obstacle to the abuses that the voivodes often inflicted on the localities. The composite code significantly strengthened the judicial and legal system of the Russian state. The code of law became the foundation on which in the following decades the legislative system aimed at strengthening feudal relations and the feudal system was built and developed. The Cathedral Code was a kind of result of the development of Russian law in the late XVI and early XVII centuries.