Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/44

18 The importance attached in earlier times, and even to-day, to custom, affords additional proof of this. In the west, conditions were different. Russia had no legal evolution corresponding to that of Rome and of the western states which carried on the development of the Roman realm and adopted the idea of the Roman imperium. Kiev was not so directly connected with Byzantium and the Byzantine empire as France and Germany were connected with Rome. Russia was not conquered by Byzantium, nor was Russia colonised by Byzantium. In the west, as early as the close of the eighth century, with the aid of the pope and the hierarchy, Charlemagne established the Roman theocracy; but the adoption of Christianity by Russia did not occur until a century later. At the end of the tenth century there was a school of law at Bologna where year after year during the middle ages jurists were trained to the number of many thousand; but in the Russia of that day there were only the Greek hierarchs and monks to exercise a trifling and indirect influence upon the development of legal institutions. There was in Europe a legal continuity which was lacking in Russia.

Owing to the comparative indefiniteness of their juristic concepts, the Russians have often been undeservedly reproached with anarchism and with incapacity for the founding and maintaining of states.

. The prince with his retainers constituted the political centre, and administration was predominantly militarist at the outset. This was brought about by the foreign origin of the rulers, by the warlike character of the neighbouring peoples, and by the hostile inroads of the barbarians.

The prince was not a solitary personality; he had brothers, a numerous family, and in accordance with ancient Russian custom all male children ranked equally as heirs. In conformity with this custom, we find, in the sphere of political power, either a temporary regime of all the brothers and of the more closely related agnates and cognates, or else a partition of the realm into minor princedoms. In either case there resulted an evolution of the idea and the institution of supreme sovereignty—grand princedom. Despite the equality of prestige which is characteristic of equality ol inheritance, here, as universally, age and experience claimed their rights. To put the matter in legal terminology, seniority developed, not at this stage precisely distinguished as majorat and primogeniture.