Legal Regulation of Monastic Usury in Russia in the XV-XVII Centuries

Relevance. This article examines the problems of normative regulation of monastic usury in Russia in the Middle Ages and Modern era. Due to the peculiarities of economic and social development and historical and political reasons, the Church for a long time carried out operations characteristic of specialized credit and banking organizations. However, such activities contradicted basic Christian principles and the texts of the Holy Scriptures, prompting the legislator to respond to the current situation by creating various legal acts. The study of this issue by Soviet scientists through the prism of anti-religious policy in the modern period cannot reflect the full objectivity of this phenomenon. Consideration of monasteries as a unique subject of civil legal relations in the XV-XVII centuries will allow us to rethink the degree of development of financial in the Russia.

The purpose of the research is to form a modern scientific approach to the legal regulation of monetary and borrowing activities of monasteries in Russia.

Objectives: to determine the place of monastic usury in the financial sphere of the Russia; to characterize the main mechanisms of interaction between the Church and other subjects of civil legal relation in the field of loan transactions; to identify the features of normative regulation of this phenomenon.

The research methodology is characterized by the application of the principles of historicism and objectivity, as well as structural-functional, formal-legal and comparative-legal methods.

The results of the research indicate the versatility of the problems posed, have a historical and legal nature and allow us to consider the participation of monasteries in credit transactions from the perspective of economic and legal views for further scrutiny.

The conclusions formulated based on the results of the study confirm the existence of complexly structured monetary-borrowing relations in the Russia in the 15th-17th centuries and their special legal regulation. The article is a continuation of the author’s scientific research on issues of legal regulation of credit and banking relations in the history of Russia.

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