International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Dimitrios Nikolakakis
Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Critical Remarks upon the Law of Asylum 
during the Early and Middle Byzantine Periods
In the history of Byzantium, the institution of asylum was often a point of conflict between State 
and Church. This fact is strongly attested in the historiographical sources from the Byzantine period, 
where, in the recorded cases, the extent to which this institution was applied seems to have depended 
directly on the person who ordered the prosecution, the identity of the asylum-seeker and the timing. 
The first regulation specifically mentioned in the law of asylum, granted that such a law was in force 
was issued in the time of Theodosios I. The subject of asylum also preoccupied the emperor Justinian, 
who, on the one hand, was concerned with the general validity of the right and, on the other, restricted 
the scope of its application. Even the legislation of the Isaurians dealt with asylum and proceeded to 
make fundamental changes to the existing regime. Thus, through a relevant provision of the 
Ecloge, 
the application of the right of asylum was restricted so severely that it could be said to have been 
effectively abolished. This legislation was modified by the 
Prochiros Nomos
which provided that in 
future, the violator of asylum was to be punished with a beating, tonsure and exile for life, provided 
that, in removing the asylum-seeker, he had acted on his own accord.
The Church, on its part, has always believed that sincere repentance, the confession of sins and 
hence the performance of the penances prescribed for the unjust act that has been committed, are 
much more preferable to the penalties imposed by criminal law, since the latter – and in particular 
the death penalty – do not give the perpetrator a chance to reform his soul or to receive atonement 
and forgiveness. So, it is self-evident that the Church willingly embraces those seeking asylum in 
it. This is not to say, of course, that nowadays the Church believes that the penances it imposes for 
sinful or unlawful acts should replace the penalties imposed by the state courts. In the past the 
Church was concerned with ensuring the sanctity and silence of its places of worship, which would 
certainly have been disturbed if the organs of the State, in their pursuit of alleged criminals, had 
acquired the right to follow them into the churches where they had sought refuge. Therefore, the 
Church continued to provide protection indiscriminately to whoever took refuge in its temples in 

---

714
pursuit of asylum, even to willful murderers, despite the fact that state legislation explicitly excluded 
from asylum the perpetrators of this (and not only this) crime. 
At this point, it should be noted that, in order to gain a proper understanding of the institution 
of asylum, one should not take into account merely the present-day reality, in which human rights 
are largely respected and the dispensation of justice is characterised by a clear proportionality 
between the sentence and the crime. In the period with which we are dealing, the judicial system 
of the State prescribed exceptionally strict sentences. Therefore, the asylum granted by the Church 
largely served as a refuge for the protection of human rights, the only place where anyone persecuted 
could feel safe and for this reason it was justified as an institution in the Byzantine consciousness.