Tarkhanno-Nesudimaia Gramota

until the 18th century, a certain kind of Russian public-legal document, which defined the extent of financial (in the tarkhannaia part) and judicial (in the nesudimaia part) exemption enjoyed by feudal lords and individual corporations of the city and industrial (promyslovyi) population.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the financial part of the tarkhanno-nesudimaia gramola usually freed the grantee from the principal direct tax (dan’), and in the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, from one, some, or all the principal direct taxes or from a series of commercial imposts. The granting of financial privileges to lay feudal lords came to an end in approximately 1506 and was thenceforth practiced only in exceptional cases.

The judicial part defined the rights of the grantee with respect to his dependent population and established the character of the mutual relations between him and the representatives of the local and central organs of state power. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the holder of the tarkhanno-nesudimaia gramola judged his people “in everything” or “except murder,” and subsequently, in everything except “murder,” brigandage, and “theft caught red-handed.” In 1549 such judicial immunity was extended to all sluzhilye liudi (state servitors) “by inheritance.” By 1554, con-comitantly, the granting of nesudimye gramoty to lay feudal lords was halted. Although the Sobornoe Ulozhenie (Assembly Code) of 1649 (ch. 10, art. 153) abolished nesudimye gramoty for ecclesiastical lords as well, nesudimye gramoty were still issued and confirmed in part until the end of the 17th century.