Antichresis in Byzantine law

Abstract

In the practice of antichresis the debtor conceded to his creditor the right to exploit his property in lieu of payment of interest. Antichresis survived into the Byzantine era, despite the hostility of the church to interest-bearing loans. Justinian recognized the validity of antichresis in regard to the liquidation of church debts, as this form of settlement ensured the inalienability of church property. The same emperor abolished a form of antichresis also known in hellenistic law, in which a debt could be repaid through the labour which the offspring of the original debtor rendered to the creditor (paramonè). the measures taken by the emperors in the post-Justinian period, which were associated with the practice of antichresis, all tended to the protection of small landowners ; and this was because through the concession of farmland by antichresis the lenders-large landowners steadily absorbed the smallholdings of their impoverished debtors.