Theft and robbery in the sentences of Moldavia’s Criminal Department (1799–1804)

Abstract

Sources on crimes and their punishment do not really offer much support in the reconstruction of criminal realities in the medieval and pre-modern Moldova, as their frequency until the second half of the 18th century is quite low. However, due to the fact that the writing of procedural elements of the criminal investigation and the application of the sentence as well as the preservation of these records in archives were mandatory, even if on a limited scale, this reality becomes palpable for the historian. Apart from this type of sources, anaforale can also be distinguished. These judicial sources are reports issued by members of the Moldovan criminal court, which had operated under the name of the Criminal Department since the late 18th century and in the first three decades of the 19th century. In our study, the documents we are interested in, the reports called anaforale (judicial sources), illustrate significant progress in the judicial practice in Moldavia at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, as far as both the changing of the death penalty to other punishments, and the trial procedures were concerned. In the following article, we are focusing on the punishment of the acts of theft and robbery – in the case of theft, it being accompanied by the violence against victims, as it is provided in the anaforale issued by the Criminal Divan of Iasi between 1799 and 1804. The actors of the criminal investigation (the prosecution agents, the perpetrators, the witnesses), the judicial norms and the practices in cases of theft and robbery, represent an area of interest for our research in regards to the aforementioned period of time. We use these criminal historical sources as a documentation basis for an investigation into the legal system, the criminal organization and its operation in last decades of the Old Regime in Moldova as part of Eastern and Central Europe.