An Aspect of the Family Law in the Archbishopric of Ohrid in the Time of Archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos

The challenges of studying certain details of everyday life of Bulgarian society during the Middle Ages are numerous and diverse. This feature, as noted repeatedly, is mainly due to the limits of the available primary sources. However, it is of essential importance to emphasize that some of the restrictions are not observed when examining some aspects of family relationships, inheritance shares, sales, purchases, and interpersonal relationships among different segments of society. At least, as far as the diocese of the Bulgarian Ohrid Archbishopric is con-cerned in the first third of the 13th century. The reason is in the wellpreserved collection of documents, known as Ponemata diaphora that is related to Archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos. Even a cursory glance at the texts allows us to notice that in the field of family law issues the Archbishop skillfully took advantage of the rich Byzantine legislative tradition.