(НЕ)ПОЗНАТИ ПРЕПИС ДУШАНОВА ЗАКОНИКА У МУЗЕЈУ СРПСКЕ ПРАВОСЛАВНЕ ЦРКВЕ У БЕОГРАДУ
AN (UN)KNOWN COPY OF DUŠAN’S CODE IN THE MUSEUM OF THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN BELGRADE

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents an overlooked copy of Dušan’s legal code from the mid-18th century. It was discovered by Tihomir Ostojić in the library of the Hopovo monastery in 1906 while he was collecting material for his study about Dositej Obradović’s stay at that monastery. The copy escaped the attention of researchers of Dušan’s code for more than a century because there was no information about it in legal-historical literature. The codex includes over 500 leaves of diverse contents, with the younger redactions of Dušan’s legislative documents appended at its end – the Code of Emperor Constantine Justinian and Dušan’s Code. It was copied by Hopovo hieromonk Spiridon Jovanović around 1750, and it remained at that monastery, on the Fruška Gora mountains, until the beginning of the Second World War. Therefore, we have named it the “Hopovo” manuscript. It is now kept in the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, in the Collection of Radoslav Grujić, under catalog number 127. Comparing it with other younger-redaction manuscripts of Dušan’s legislation, we have established that the direct source from which Spiridon Jovanović copied Dušan’s legislative documents was the so-called Sandić’s (Stratimirović’s) manuscript, created around 1724 and now in the Library of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad. The Hopovo copy does not bring any new content, but it is the only known example of Dušan’s legislative documents not being the primary or only texts in a manuscript. Another distinctive characteristic of this copy is the proportionally large share of vernacular language and novel linguistic forms. With the rediscovery of this manuscript, the number of known copies of Dušan’s Code has reached 27.

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