Conclusion and Dissolution of Marriage in Cyrillo-Methodian Sources

The article is devoted to the conditions and restrictions on the conclusion and dissolution of marriage in Great Moravia during the Cyrillo-Methodian period. The norms of the oldest Slavic legal monuments regulating the above-mentioned domain, primarily the ‚Zakon Sudnyi Liudem' and the “ Methodian” 'Nomokanon', are intensively analyzed. The study is also focused on determining the mutual compatibility and complementarity of selected norms, as well as matters of their sources. The authors mainly concentrate on norms of Eastern origin and correlate the content of Slavic normative acts with some preserved Byzantine sources, or with other documents of that period. If the legal regulation in Slavic monuments is not fully comprehensive, the study tries to find possible solutions to situations that are also under question in contemporary Byzantine legal monuments. The article deals with important problems such as the marriageable age and the transfer of responsibility for protecting the girl from her parents or father to the betrothed, just to name a few. The text analyzes the permissible forms of marriage, which correlates its announcement with publicity, as well as with widespread Slavic customs of that time (the introduction of the bride into the house). The article examines the conditions for divorce and their relation to the models of Byzantine origin. Special attention is paid to the norms regarding the position of clergy and monastics.