Byzantine Criminal Law: again on a decision by Maurice

Abstract

A supposed decision by Maurice on the murder of a castaway, characterized by the symbology of the punishment, and that faces in the meantime the possibility for a Christian soldier to kill the enemy in the battle without to be considered a murder, could be considered as an emerging point of a sort of confusion, in the Byzantine penal law, between crime and sin, an approach that considered the investigation of the internal status more than the analysis of the pure fact.

Keywords : murder of a castaway; death penalty by symbolic punishment; crime and sin.