The Statute of Vinodol

On January 6, 1288, in Novi (then Novi Grad) in the hall of the dukes of Krk, Vinodol and Modruš, the Statute of Vinodol was passed, regulating relations between the dukes of Krk as the new feudal lords of Vinodol, with nine Vinodol municipalities.

It is the oldest legal text in the Croatian language and the oldest legal monument of the Slavic south (in the Slavic world, only Russian justice is older). It is written in Glagolitic alphabet.

Representatives of nine Vinodol municipalities: Novi Grad, Ledenice, Bribir, Grižan, Drivenik, Hrilin, Bakar, Crsat and Grobnik gathered in a council wrote down the agreed provisions (laws) and those known to them from the traditions of customary law in Vinodol, while representatives from Krk established their authority by provisions which, under threat of losing property, forbid every gathering without the presence of the duke’s man (Article 57), and in all fines, penalties and agreements in which the duke has a right and full powers (punu oblast tako zverhu plemenitih tako zvrhu ludi crikvenih i zvrhu kmeti i zvrhu vsih inih ludi) (Article 75). The Statute of Vinodol was made in several excerpts, one for each town of Vinodol, and was preserved in a Glagolitic transcript from the first half of the 16th century, which comes from the archives of the Modruš or Krbava chapter in Novi. Today it is kept in the National and University Library in Zagreb.

The Statute of Vinodol is an inexhaustible source of information about people’s lives, about the organisation and the achieved level of social development in the area of Vinodol and Croatia at the end of the 13th century. The exceptional value of the document is that the people listed their legal customs in their own language, through their representatives.

Particularly interesting are the provisions of the Statute of Vinodol relating to criminal law and taking evidence – it does not recognise torture as a means of obtaining evidence, nor God’s judgment (grabbing hot iron or boiling water objects by hand). The Statute of Vinodol regulated criminal procedure, and witnesses became the main means of evidence. Women were also able to testify, but only in proceedings in which both sides are female. At that time, in addition to the right to vote, women also obtained the right to physical protection and protection of honour.

Academic Petar Strčić called the Baška Tablet and the Statute of Vinodol the birth certificate and certificate of nationality of Croats; both monuments were written in Croatian, Croatian script (Croatian or angular Glagolitic), and in both we find the adjective Croatian: in Baška Tablet… Croatian King Zvanimir; in the Statute of Vinodol (in Article 1) žakan… zove se hrvatski (Croatian) malik a vlaški macarol.