Page "Dušan's Code" Paragraph 10

The Code also maintained law and order, not limiting itself against crime and insults, but also gave responsibility to specific communities ; it stated the existing custom that each territory was responsible and liable for keeping order ; e. g. a frontier lord was responsible for defending his border: " if any foreign army come and ravish the land of the Emperor, and again return through their land, those frontier lords shall pay all people through whose territory they army came.

" ( Article 49 ).

The control of brigands, a constant problem in the Balkans, was also widely addressed in articles 126, 145, 146, 158 and 191.

Article 145 says: " In whatsoever village a thief or brigand be found, that village shall be scattered and the brigand shall be hanged forthwith ... and the headmen of the village shall be brought before me Emperor and shall pay for all the brigand or thief hath done from the beginning and shall be punished as a thief and a brigand.

" and continues in article 146, " also prefects and lieutenants and bailiffs and reeves and headmen who administer villages and mountain hamlets.

All these shall be punished in the manner written above 145 if any thief or brigand be found in them.

" And article 126 states, " lf there be a robbery or theft on urban land around a town, let the neighborhood pay for it all.

" And finally article 158 requires that the localities bordering on an uninhabited hill jointly supervise that region and pay for damage from any robbery occurring there.

Fine concludes that these articles demonstrate a weakness in the state's maintaining of order in rural and border areas, which caused it to pass responsibility down to local inhabitants, by threatening them with penalties, the state hoped to force the locality to assume this duty.

Another reason for the strictness of the articles towards the locality was the belief that the brigand could not survive without local support, shelter, and food.

Thus the brigand was seen as a local figure, locally supported, preying on strangers.

As a result, the allegedly supporting locality shared his guilt and deserved to share the punishment.

The strict articles were therefore intended to discourage a community from aiding brigands.