Ecclesiastical property in the Novels of Justinian

This dissertation analyses the emergence of a set of elaborate provisions on ecclesiastical property preserved in the late Roman collection, the Novels of Justinian. While the legal corpus of Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) is often identified as the zenith of ancient Christian lawmaking, his laws on ecclesiastical property have not been subjected to a dedicated analysis in over one hundred years. The term ‘ecclesiastical property’ is used to denote a broad field of legal doctrine and practice encompassing scenarios involving the patrimony of churches, monasteries and charitable houses, as well as property related to ecclesiastics and ascetics. These laws, moreover, provide crucial, yet underappreciated, evidence of the complex interplay between religion and law in Late Antiquity, as demonstrated through the application of legally defined categories relating to Christian orthodoxy and heresy. Scholarly attempts to account for the proliferation of ecclesiastical property law under Justinian have tended to identify it with an imperial drive to restore order to law, the empire and the cosmos. This thesis argues, however, that the remarkable complexity of this material complicates, rather than confirms, the emperor’s self-styled image as the ultimate source of law. Analysed case by case, Justinian’s provisions reveal the agency of imperial law’s many users. As the emperor and his officers, ecclesiastic and monastic actors, and lay citizens all employed legal strategies in the pursuit of their infinitely variable interests, they mobilised religious ideas and arguments strategically. This drove elaboration in the field of ecclesiastical property law. An examination of the use of law in the acquisition, management, commercial exchange and disputation of ecclesiastical property [Part I], and of an evident readiness to call upon ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ in property suits [Part II], reveal a vibrant and dynamic field of legal practice and production at the interface of law and religion.