The Emperor Justinian Augustus to John, most glorious prefect of the sacred praetoria throughout the East, twice ex-consul and patrician. Both our zeal concerning the laws and all else are therefore daily carried on by us with labour, that we may find advantage for our subjects: removing that which is excessive and immense, and substituting that which is both best and measured. And often too out of zeal, on account of the former immoderation, we have constrained the law even beyond measure, so that, retaining what at first overflowed, we might thereafter introduce equality.
Lately therefore we wrote a law concerning all the most holy churches, and the monasteries, and the rest of the venerable houses, permitting them no license of alienating immovable property. For we saw the cause poured out, and the ecclesiastical possessions little by little migrating to others—neither with worthy prices paid, nor with any unavoidable work pressing upon the things alienated—but also that, contrary to laws already laid down, ten thousand times over circumventions were perpetrated. Wherefore, doing away with the first path, we render the churches alike inaccessible to such circumventions. But hence very many of the most holy churches and of the other venerable houses derived advantage, no one presuming to diminish these possessions:
yet there also occurs something difficult. For debts—either constituted long ago, or even afterwards out of some necessity, and especially befalling them through fiscal occasions—have brought the sacred houses to the necessity of alienation. For when there was no sufficient movable substance, they were in danger of coming into the gravest necessity. The prelates of these, being able neither to sell, nor having whence to pay the debts, but for such debts indeed it being possible that ecclesiastical possessions be given to the creditors in payment; nevertheless, with due care and observance, the satisfaction being made, we have already often permitted this, just as we did not openly permit it before by this our law.
But if the creditor is not some private person, but the fisc takes precedence and exacts the debts, and there is a scarcity of moneys, while it is impossible for the fisc to receive an immovable possession, here we have judged it fitting to relax somewhat of the strictness of the law. And if some necessity of this kind should arise, we have provided for alienation even without the property itself. We ordain therefore: if any of the holy churches, or of the other houses to be venerated, should owe fiscal dues, and have not whence to make repayment of these, that all assemble in one—both those who are of the clergy, and the bishop beloved of God of that city, and moreover of the metropolis—and that, with the sacred oracles set forth, the case be examined.
And if no gain should appear, short of the alienation of the immovable property, able to discharge the fiscal debt, then let them have license—such sentence proceeding, and a decree being passed before the judge of the province—to lay hold even of immovable possessions, and to alienate these for the payment of the debt; the buyers paying into the fisc and receiving thence the receipts, and undertaking the fiscal debt, and having a security thence, and fearing nothing from the law first laid down; the fiscal receipts being drawn up and inserted among the records of the proceedings, those who made the transaction depositing them, so that with the most holy churches too there may be preserved clear receipts, in that the fiscal tributes have been paid, and all things have been done according to our law.
Lest any be able to feign a fiscal debt, and thus proceed to the alienation of immovable property, we have therefore permitted also the making of a decree, so that both the fiscal debt may be disclosed by testimony, and from how great a time it descends; and since it is not paid off with moneys, but comes into the necessity of alienation, so that the truth may on every side be attested, all things being done before the sacred Gospels: the bishops too knowing, and the clerics, and all others, that God beholds what is done by them. And if they should act anything through deceit, or gain, or contrivance, this they shall receive upon their own souls, living and dying. But if the creditor be some private person, let him be able to receive immovable possessions according to the scheme of payment-in-kind.
This too being done by decree, and the possessions being assigned to them according to the measure of those debts. But if it be a fiscal debt, they being able to proceed to the alienation of immovables according to the former observance, so that nothing be lacking, neither of strictness, nor of the common advantage. But from all these things universally we except the most holy Great Church of this most happy city, and its confines, and the houses of prayer of which it itself has undertaken the care, in all respects—those things which have already been sanctioned by us concerning this enduring in their force.
But if there be also any monasteries under the same most holy Great Church, neither do we bring these under the present law, establishing it only abroad in the provinces, in which there is indeed much scarcity of moneys, through which the most holy churches have not been able to pay their debts by moneys. Your Highness therefore, recognizing the things that have pleased us, let it guard the alienations concerning sacred things so as to proceed according to this. Given on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September at Constantinople, after the consulship of Belisarius, most distinguished man, in the second year.