Slavery and Christianity

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How numerous the slaves were in Romansociety whenChristianity made its appearance, how hard was their lot, and how the competition of slave labour crushed free labour isnotorious. It is the scope of this article to show whatChristianity has done for slaves and against slavery, first in the Roman world, next in thatsociety which was the result of the barbarian invasions, and lastly in the modern world.

The Church and Roman slavery

The first missionaries of the Gospel, men of Jewish origin, came from a country where slavery existed. But it existed inJudea under a form very different from the Roman form. TheMosaic Law was merciful to the slave (Exodus 21;Leviticus 25;Deuteronomy 15:21) and carefully secured his fair wage to the labourer (Deuteronomy 24:15). In Jewishsociety the slave was not an object of contempt, because labour was not despised as it was elsewhere. No man thought it beneath him to ply a manual trade. Theseideas and habits of life the Apostles brought into the newsociety which so rapidly grew up as the effect of their preaching. As thissociety included, from the first, faithful of all conditions — rich and poor, slaves and freemen — the Apostles wereobliged to utter theirbeliefs as to the social inequalities which so profoundly divided the Roman world. "For as many of you as have beenbaptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neitherJew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male norfemale. For you are all one inChrist Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28; cf.1 Corinthians 12:13). From this principleSt. Paul draws no political conclusions. It was not his wish, as it was not in his power, to realizeChristian equality either by force or by revolt. Such revolutions are not effected of a sudden.Christianity acceptssociety as it is, influencing it for its transformation through, and only through, individualsouls. What it demands in the first place from masters and from slaves is, to live as brethren — commanding with equity, without threatening, remembering thatGod is the master of all - obeying with fear, but without servile flattery, in simplicity of heart, as they would obey Christ (cf.Ephesians 6:9;Colossians 3:22-4;4:1).

This language was understood by masters and by slaves who became converts toChristianity. But many slaves who wereChristians hadpagan masters to whom this sentiment of fraternity was unknown, and who sometimes exhibited that cruelty of whichmoralists and poets so often speak. To such slaves St. Peter points out theirduty: to be submissive "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward", not with a mere inert resignation, but to give a good example and to imitate Christ, Who also sufferedunjustly (1 Peter 2:18, 23-4). In the eyes of the Apostles, a slave's condition, peculiarly wretched, peculiarly exposed totemptations, bears all the more efficacious testimony to the new religion. St. Paul recommends slaves to seek in all things to please their masters, not to contradict them, to do them no wrong, tohonour them, to be loyal to them, so as to make the teaching ofGod Our Saviour shine forth before the eyes of all, and to prevent that name and teaching from being blasphemed (cf.1 Timothy 6:1;Titus 2:9, 10). The apostolic writings show how large a place slaves occupied in theChurch. Nearly all the names of theChristians whom St. Paul salutes in his Epistles to the Romans are servilecognomina: the two groups whom he calls "those of the household of Aristobulus" and "those of the household of Narcissus" indicateChristian servitors of those two contemporaries ofNero. His Epistle, written fromRome to the Philippians (iv, 22) bears them greeting from thesaints of Caesar's household, i.e. converted slaves of the imperial palace.

One fact which, in theChurch, relieved the condition of the slave was the absence amongChristians of the ancient scorn of labour (Cicero, "De off.", I, xlii; "Pro Flacco", xviii; "pro domo", xxxiii; Suetonius, "Claudius, xxii; Seneca, "De beneficiis", xviii; Valerius Maximus, V, ii, 10). Converts to the new religionknew thatJesus had been a carpenter; they saw St. Paul exercise the occupation of a tentmaker (Acts 18:3;1 Corinthians 4:12). "Neither did we eat any man's bread", said the Apostle, "for nothing, but in labour and in toil we worked night and day, lest we should be chargeable to any of you" (2 Thessalonians 3:8; cf.Acts 20:33, 34). Such an example, given at a time when those who laboured were accounted "the dregs of the city", and those who did not labour lived on the public bounty, constituted a very efficacious form of preaching. A new sentiment was thereby introduced into the Roman world, while at the same time a formal discipline was being established in theChurch. It would have none of those who made a parade of their leisurely curiosity in the Greek and Roman cities (2 Thessalonians 3:11). It declared that those who do not labour do not deserve to be fed (ibid., 10). AChristian was not permitted to live without an occupation (Didache, xii).

Religious equality was the negation of slavery as it was practiced bypagansociety. It must have been an exaggeration, no doubt, to say, as one author of the first century said, that "slaves had no religion, or had only foreignreligions" (Tacitus, "Annals", XIV, xliv): many were members of funerarycollegia under the invocation of Roman divinities (Statutes of the College of Lanuvium, "Corp. Inscr. lat.", XIV, 2112). But in many circumstances this haughty and formalist religion excluded slaves from its functions, which, it was held, their presence would have defiled. (Cicero, "Octavius", xxiv). Absolute religious equality, as proclaimed byChristianity, was therefore a novelty. TheChurch made no account of the social condition of thefaithful. Bond and free received the samesacraments. Clerics of servile origin were numerous (St. Jerome, Ep. lxxxii). The very Chair of St. Peter was occupied by men who had been slaves —Pius in the second century, Callistus in the third. So complete — one might almost say, so levelling — was thisChristian equality thatSt. Paul (1 Timothy 6:2), and, later, St. Ignatius (Polyc., iv), areobliged to admonish the slave and the handmaid not to contemn their masters, "believers like them and sharing in the same benefits". In giving them a place in religioussociety, theChurch restored to slaves thefamily and marriage. In Roman law, neither legitimate marriage, nor regular paternity, nor even impediment to the most unnatural unions had existed for the slave (Digest, XXXVIII, viii, i, (sect) 2; X, 10, (sect) 5). That slaves often endeavoured to override this abominable position is touchinglyproved by innumerable mortuary inscriptions; but the name ofuxor, which the slavewoman takes in these inscriptions, is very precarious, for no law protects herhonour, and with her there is noadultery (Digest, XLVIII, v, 6; Cod. Justin., IX, ix, 23). In theChurch the marriage of slaves is a sacrament; it possesses "the solidity" of one (St. Basil, Ep. cxcix, 42). The Apostolic Constitutions impose upon the master theduty of making his slave contract "a legitimate marriage" (III, iv; VIII, xxxii).St. John Chrysostom declares that slaves have the marital power over their wives and the paternal over their children ("In Ep. ad Ephes.", Hom. xxii, 2). He says that "he who has immoral relations with the wife of a slave is as culpable as he who has the like relations with the wife of the prince: both are adulterers, for it is not the condition of the parties that makes the crime" ("In I Thess.", Hom. v, 2; "In II Thess.", Hom. iii, 2).

In theChristian cemeteries there is no difference between thetombs of slaves and those of the free. The inscriptions onpagan sepulchres — whether thecolumbarium common to all the servants of one household, or the burial plot of a funerarycollegium of slaves or freedmen, or isolatedtombs — always indicate the servile condition. InChristian epitaphs it is hardly ever to be seen ("Bull. di archeol. christiana", 1866, p. 24), though slaves formed a considerable part of theChristian population. Sometimes we find a slavehonoured with a more pretentious sepulchre than others of thefaithful, like that of Ampliatus in the cemetery ofDomitilla ("Bull. di archeol. christ.", 1881, pp. 57-54, and pl. III, IV). This is particularly so in the case of slaves who weremartyrs: the ashes of two slaves, Protus and Hyacinthus, burned alive in theValerianpersecution, had been wrapped in a winding-sheet of gold tissue (ibid., 1894, p. 28). Martyrdom eloquently manifests the religious equality of the slave: he displays as much firmness before the menaces of the persecutor as does the free man. Sometimes it is not for the Faith alone that a slavewoman dies, but for thefaith and chastity equally threatened — "pro fide et castitate occisa est" ("Acta S. Dulae" in Acta SS., III March, p. 552). Beautiful assertions of this moral freedom are found in the accounts of themartyrdoms of the slaves Ariadne, Blandina, Evelpistus, Potamienna, Felicitas, Sabina, Vitalis, Porphyrus, and many others (see Allard, "Dix leçons sur le martyre", 4th ed., pp. 155-- 64). TheChurch made the enfranchisement of the slave an act of disinterested charity.Pagan masters usually sold him his liberty for his market value, on receipt of his painfully amassed savings (Cicero, "Philipp. VIII", xi; Seneca "Ep. lxxx");trueChristians gave it to him as analms. Sometimes theChurch redeemed slaves out of its common resources (St. Ignatius, "Polyc.", 4; Apos. Const., IV, iii). HeroicChristians are known to have sold themselves into slavery to deliver slaves (St. Clement, "Cor.", 4; "Vita S. Joannis Eleemosynarii" in Acts SS., Jan., II, p. 506). Many enfranchised all the slaves they had. Inpagan antiquity wholesale enfranchisements are frequent, but they never include all the owner's slaves, and they are always by testamentary disposition — that is when the owner cannot be impoverished by his own bounty, (Justinian, "Inst.", I, vii; "Cod. Just.", VII, iii, 1). OnlyChristians enfranchised all their slaves in the owner's lifetime, thus effectually despoiling themselves a considerable part of their fortune (see Allard, "Les esclaves chrétiens", 4th ed., p. 338). At the beginning of the fifth century, a Roman millionaire, St. Melania, gratuitously granted liberty to so many thousand of slaves that her biographer declares himself unable to give their exact number (Vita S. Melaniae, xxxiv).Palladius mentions eight thousand slaves freed (Hist. Lausiaca, cxix), which, taking the average price of a slave as about $100, would represent a value of $800,000 [1913 dollars]. ButPalladius wrote before 406, which was long before Melania had completely exhausted her immense fortune in acts of liberality of all kinds (Rampolla, "S. Melania Giuniore", 1905, p. 221).

PrimitiveChristianity did not attack slavery directly; but it acted as though slavery did not exist. By inspiring the best of its children with this heroic charity, examples of which have been given above, it remotely prepared the way for the abolition of slavery. To reproach theChurch of the first ages with not having condemned slavery in principle, and with having tolerated it in fact, is to blame it for not having let loose a frightful revolution, in which, perhaps, all civilization would have perished with Romansociety. But to say, with Ciccotti (Il tramonto della schiavitù, Fr. tr., 1910, pp. 18, 20), that primitiveChristianity had not even "an embryonic vision" of asociety in which there should be no slavery, to say that theFathers of the Church did not feel "the horror of slavery", is to display either strangeignorance or singular unfairness. InSt. Gregory of Nyssa (In Ecclesiastem, hom. iv) the most energetic and absolute reprobation of slavery may be found; and again in numerous passages ofSt. John Chrysostom's discourse we have the picture of asociety without slaves - asociety composed only of free workers, an ideal portrait of which he traces with the most eloquent insistence (see the texts cited in Allard, ''Les esclaves chrétiens", p. 416-23).

The Church and slavery after the barbarian invasions

It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the legislative movement which took place during the same period in regard to slaves. FromAugustus to Constantinestatutes andjurisprudence tended to afford them greater protection against ill-treatment and to facilitate enfranchisement. Under theChristian emperors this tendency, in spite of relapses at certain points, became daily more marked, and ended, in the sixth century, in Justinian's very liberal legislation (seeWallon, "Hist. de l'esclavage dans l'antiquité", III, ii and x). Although thecivil law on slavery still lagged behind the demands ofChristianity ("Thelaws of Caesar are one thing, the laws of Christ another",St. Jerome writes in "Ep. lxxvii"), nevertheless very great progress had been made. It continued in the Eastern Empire (laws of Basil the Macedonian, of Leo the Wise, of Constantine Porphyrogenitus), but in the West it was abruptly checked by the barbarian invasions. Those invasions were calamitous for the slaves, increasing their numbers which had began to diminish, and subjecting them to legislation and to customs much harder than those which obtained under theRoman law of the period (see Allard, "Les origines du servage" in "Rev. des questions historiques", April, 1911). Here again theChurch intervened. It did so in three ways: redeeming slaves; legislating for their benefit in its councils; setting an example of kind treatment. Documents of the fifth to the seventh century are full of instances of captives carried off from conquered cities by the barbarians and doomed to slavery, whombishops,priests, andmonks, andpiouslaymen redeemed. Redeemed captives were sometimes sent back in thousands to their own country (ibid., p. 393-7, and Lesne, "Hist de la propriété ecclésiastique en France", 1910, pp. 357-69).

The Churches of Gaul,Spain, Britain, andItaly were incessantly busy, in numerous councils, with the affairs of slaves; protection of the maltreated slave who has taken refuge in a church (Councils ofOrléans, 511, 538, 549; Council of Epone, 517); those manumitted in ecclesiis, but also those freed by any other process (Council of Arles, 452; ofAgde, 506; ofOrléans, 549; ofMâcon, 585; of Toledo, 589, 633; ofParis, 615); validity of marriage contracted with fullknowledge of the circumstances between freepersons and slaves (Councils of Verberie, 752, of Compiègne, 759); rest for slaves onSundays and feast days (Council of Auxerre, 578 or 585; of Châlon-sur-Saône, middle of the seventh century; ofRouen, 650; of Wessex, 691; of Berghamsted, 697); prohibition ofJews to possessChristian slaves (Council of Orléans, 541; ofMâcon, 581; of Clichy, 625; of Toledo, 589, 633, 656); suppression of traffic in slaves by forbidding their sale outside the kingdom (Council of Châlon-sur-Saône, between 644 and 650); prohibition against reducing a free man to slavery (Council of Clichy, 625). Less liberal in this respect than Justinian (Novella cxxiii, 17), who made tacit consent a sufficient condition, the Western discipline does not permit a slave to be raised to thepriesthood without the formal consent of his master; nevertheless the councils held atOrléans in 511, 538, 549, while imposing canonical penalties upon thebishop who exceeded his authority in this matter, declare such anordination to be valid. A council held atRome in 595 under the presidency ofSt. Gregory the Great permits the slave to become amonk without any consent, express or tacit, of his master.

At this period theChurch found itself becoming a great proprietor. Barbarian converts endowed it largely with realproperty. As these estates were furnished with serfs attached to the cultivation of the soil, theChurch became by force of circumstances a proprietor ofhuman beings, for whom, in these troublous times, the relation was a great blessing. Thelaws of the barbarians, amended throughChristian influence, gaveecclesiastical serfs a privileged position: their rents were fixed; ordinarily, they were bound to give the proprietor half of their labour or half of its products, the remainder being left to them (Lex Alemannorum, xxii; Lex Bajuvariorum, I, xiv, 6). A council of the sixth century (Eauze, 551) enjoins uponbishops that they must exact of their serfs a lighter service than that performed by the serfs of lay proprietors, and must remit to them one-fourth of their rents.

Another advantage ofecclesiastical serfs was the permanency of their position. ARoman law of the middle of the fourth century (Cod. Just., XI, xlvii, 2) had forbidden rural slaves to be removed from the lands to which they belonged; this was the origin of serfdom, a much better condition than slavery properly so called. But the barbarians virtually suppressed this beneficent law (Gregory of Tours, "Hist. Franc.", VI, 45); it was even formally abrogated among theGoths ofItaly by the edict ofTheodoric (sect. 142). Nevertheless, as an exceptional privilege, it remained in force for the serfs of theChurch, who, like theChurch itself remained underRoman law (Lex Burgondionum, LVIII, i; Louis I, "Add. ad legem Langobard.", III, i). They shared besides, the inalienability of allecclesiastical property which had been established by councils (Rome, 50; Orléans, 511, 538; Epone, 517; Clichy, 625; Toledo, 589); they were sheltered from the exactions of the royal officers by the immunity granted to almost all church lands (Kroell, "L'immunité franque", 19110); thus their position was generallyenvied (Flodoard, "Hist eccl. Remensis", I, xiv), and when the royal liberality assigned to a church a portion of land out of the stateproperty, the serfs who cultivated were loud in their expression ofjoy (Vita S. Eligii, I, xv).

It has been asserted that theecclesiastical serfs were less fortunately situated because the inalienability ofchurch property prevented their being enfranchised. But this is inexact.St. Gregory the Great enfranchised serfs of theRoman Church (Ep. vi, 12), and there is frequent discussion in the councils in regard toecclesiastical freedmen. TheCouncil of Agde (506) gives thebishop theright to enfranchise those serfs "who shall have deserved it" and to leave them a small patrimony. A Council ofOrléans (541) declares that even if thebishop has dissipated theproperty of his church, the serfs whom he has freed in reasonable number (numero competenti) are to remain free. A Merovingian formula shows abishop enfranchising one-tenth of his serfs (Formulae Biturgenses, viii). The Spanish councils imposed greater restrictions, recognizing the right of abishop to enfranchise the serfs of his church on condition of his indemnifying it out of his own privateproperty (Council of Seville, 590; of Toledo, 633; ofMérida, 666). But they made itobligatory to enfranchise the serf in whom a serious vocation was discerned (Council of Saragossa, 593). An English council (Celchyte, 816) orders that at the death of abishop all the otherbishops and all theabbots shall enfranchise three slaves each for the repose of hissoul. This last clause shows again the mistake of saying that themonks had not the right of manumission. The canon of the Council of Epone (517) which forbidsabbots to enfranchise their serfs was enacted in order that themonks might not be left to work without assistance and has been taken too literally. It is inspired not only by agriculturalprudence, but also by the consideration that the serfs belong to the community ofmonks, and not to theabbot individually. Moreover, the rule of St. Ferréol (sixth century) permits theabbot to free serfs with the consent of themonks, or without their consent, if, in the latter case, he replaces at his own expense those he has enfranchised. The statement thatecclesiastical freedmen were not as free as the freedmen of lay proprietors will not bear examination in the light of facts, which shows the situation of the two classes to have been identical, except that the freedman of theChurch earned a higherwergheld than a lay freedman, and therefore his life was better protected. The "Polyptych of Irminon", a detailed description of theabbey lands of Saint-Germain-des-Prés shows that in the ninth century the serfs of that domain were not numerous and led in every way the life of free peasants.

The Church and modern slavery

In theMiddle Ages slavery, properly so called, no longer existed inChristian countries; it had been replaced by serfdom, an intermediate condition in which a man enjoyed all his personalrights except theright to leave the land he cultivated and theright to freely dispose of hisproperty. Serfdom soon disappeared inCatholic countries, to last longer only where theProtestant Reformation prevailed. But while serfdom was becoming extinct, the course of events was bringing to pass a temporary revival of slavery. As a consequence of thewars against theMussulmans and the commerce maintained with the East, theEuropean countries bordering on the Mediterranean, particularlySpain andItaly, once more had slaves —Turkishprisoners and also, unfortunately, captives imported by conscienceless traders. Though these slaves were generally well-treated, and set at liberty if they asked forbaptism, this revival of slavery, lasting until the seventeenth century, is a blot onChristian civilization. But the number of these slaves was always very small in comparison with that of theChristian captives reduced to slavery inMussulman countries, particularly in the Barbary states from Tripoli to the Atlantic coast ofMorocco. These captives were cruelly treated and were in constant danger of losing theirfaith. Many actually did deny theirfaith, or, at least, were driven by despair to abandon all religion and all morality. Religious orders were founded to succour and redeem them.

TheTrinitarians, founded in 1198 by St. John of Matha andSt. Felix of Valois, establishedhospitals for slaves atAlgiers andTunis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and from its foundation until the year 1787 it redeemed 900,000 slaves. TheOrder of Our Lady of Ransom (Mercedarians), founded in the thirteenth century bySt. Peter Nolasco, and established more especially inFrance andSpain, redeemed 490,736 slaves between the years 1218 and 1632. To the three regularvows its founder had added a fourth, "To become a hostage in the hands of the infidels, if that isnecessary for the deliverance ofChrist's faithful." ManyMercedarians kept thisvow even tomartyrdom. Another order undertook not only to redeem captives, but also to give them spiritual and material assistance.St. Vincent of Paul had been a slave atAlgiers in 1605, and had witnessed the sufferings and perils ofChristian slaves. At the request ofLouis XIV, he sent them, in 1642,priests of the congregation which he had founded. Many of thesepriests, indeed, were invested with consular functions atTunis and atAlgiers. From 1642 to 1660 they redeemed about 1200 slaves at an expense of about 1,200,000livres. But their greatest achievements were in teaching the Catechism and converting thousands, and in preparing many of the captives to suffer the most cruelmartyrdom rather than deny the Faith. As aProtestant historian has recently said, none of the expeditions sent against the Barbary States by the Powers ofEurope, or even America, equalled "the moral effect produced by the ministry of consolation, and abnegation, going even to the sacrifice of liberty and life, which was exercised by thehumble sons of St. John of Matha,St. Peter Nolasco, and St. Vincent of Paul" (Bonet-Maury, "France, christianisme et civilisation", 1907, p. 142).

A second revival of slavery took place after the discovery of theNew World by theSpaniards in 1492. To give the history of it would be to exceed the limits of this article. It will be sufficient to recall the efforts ofLas Casas in behalf of theaborigines of America and the protestations ofpopes against the enslavement of those aborigines and the traffic innegro slaves.England,France,Portugal, andSpain, all participated in this nefarious traffic.England only made amends for its transgressions when, in 1815, it took the initiative in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1871 a writer had the temerity to assert that thePapacy had not its mind to condemn slavery" (Ernest Havet, "Le christianisme et ses origines", I, p. xxi). He forgot that, in 1462,Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus); that, in 1537,Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; thatUrban VIII forbade it in 1639, andBenedict XIV in 1741; thatPius VII demanded of the Congress ofVienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade andGregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in theBull of Canonization of theJesuitPeter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery,Pius IX branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders. Everyone knows of the beautiful letter whichLeo XIII, in 1888, addressed to theBrazilianbishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery — a letter to which thebishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of theChurch.

In our own times the slave trade still continued to devastate Africa, no longer for the profit ofChristian states, from which all slavery had disappeared, but for theMussulman countries. But asEuropean penetrations progresses inAfrica, the missionaries, who are always its precursors —Fathers of the Holy Ghost, Oblates,White Fathers,Franciscans,Jesuits, Priests of the Mission ofLyons — labour in the Sudan, Guinea, on the Gabun, in the region of the Great Lakes, redeeming slaves and establishing "liberty villages." At the head of this movement appear two men:Cardinal Lavigerie, who in 1888 founded theSociété Antiesclavagiste and in 1889 promoted theBrussels conference;Leo XIII, who encouragedLavigerie in all his projects, and, in 1890, by anEncyclical once more condemning the slave-traders and "the accursed pest of servitude", ordered an annual collection to be made in allCatholic churches for the benefit of the anti-slavery work. Some modern writers, mostly of theSocialist School — Karl Marx, Engel, Ciccotti, and, in a measure, Seligman — attribute the now almost complete disappearance of slavery to the evolution of interests and toeconomic causes only. The foregoing exposition of the subject is an answer to their materialistic conception of history, as showing that, if not the only, at least the principal, cause of that disappearance isChristianity acting through the authority of itsteaching and the influence of itscharity.

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