THEOCRATIC FOUNDATIONS OF BYZANTINE STATEHOOD AND LEGAL CULTURE

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the role and significance of theocratic ideas in the development of Byzantine legal understanding, legal culture, legal values. It notes that the specificity of the theocratic order in the Byzantine Empire was its religious component. The power of the tsar had a religious justification and was viewed not as a privilege, but as service to God. Theocratic consciousness of the individual is considered in the article as the foundation of an alliance of secular and spiritual power, and not the suppression by one authority of the other or coercion to faith. The work rejects the view of theocracy as a political regime based on the suppression of free will.