Charter of Povlja

The Charter of Povlja (Croatian: Povaljska listina) is a legal document written on December 1, 1250 in Povlja on the island of Brač, Croatia.[1] It is parchment copy of an ownership document from the cartulary of the Benedictine monastery of St. John the Baptist.

It is written in Bosnian Cyrillic script by Ivan, the canon of the Cathedral Church of Split and a Hvar notary, at the request of the Povlja abbot Ivan, and by order of the bishop of Hvar Nikola. The template for the first part of the charter was Prince Brečko's charter from 1184, which regulated territorial relations between the estate of the monastery and the island's prince and župan. That template charter is almost entirely included within the Charter of Povlja.[1]

The terse list of monastic estates reveal the Old Croatian tribal and clan common law procedures, and legal formulations contain recognizable vernacular and literary expressions, absent in later legal documents. It is written in a mixture of a Chakavian vernacular and Church Slavonic, with a considerable number of words of Romance origin. It was first published by Franjo Rački in 1881 in Starine JAZU (Najstarija hrvatska cirilicom pisana listina). Today it is kept in the parish office in Pučišća.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Povaljska listina", Croatian Encyclopedia (in Croatian), Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 1999–2009, retrieved January 5, 2014
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