SLAVERY
37
SLAVERY
the name of rixor, which the slave woman takes in
these inscriptions, is ver>' precarious, for no law
protects her honour, and with her there is no adultery
(Digest, XLVIII, v, 6; Cod. Justin., IX, ix, 23).
In the Church 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 the duty of making his slave contract
"a legitimate marriage" (III, iv; VIII, xxxii).
St. Jolin Chrysostom declares that slaves have the
marital power over their wives and the paternal
over their children ("InEp.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 adul-
terers, 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 the Christian cemeteries there is no difference between the tombs of slaves and those of the free. The inscriptions on pagan sepulchres — whether the columbarium common to all the servants of one household, or the burial plot of a funerary collegium of slaves or freedmen, or isolated tombs — always indi- cate the ser\'ile condition. In Christian epitaphs it is hardly ever to be seen (" Bull, di archeol. Christiana", 186(5, p. 24), though slaves formed a considerable part of the Christian population. Sometimes we find a slave honoured with a more pretentious sepulchre than others of the faithful, like that of Ampliatus in thecemeterj-of Domitilla("Bull.ch archeol. christ.", 1881, pp. 57-74, and pi. Ill, IV). This is particularly so in the case of slaves who were martyrs: the ashes of two slaves, Protus and Hyacinthus, burned alive in the Valerian persecution, 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 slave woman dies, but for the faith and chastity equally threatened — "pro fide et castitate occisa est " ("Acta S. Dula>" in Acta SS., Ill March, p. 552). Beautiful assertions of this moral freedom are found in the accounts of the martyrdoms of the slaves .Vriadne, Blandina, Evelpi.stus, Potamienna, Felicitas, Sabina, Vitalis, Porphyrus, and many others (see .\llard, "Dix le^'ons sur le martyre", 4th ed., pp. 15.)-t54). The Chin'ch 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"); true Christians gave it to him as an alms. Sometimes the Church redeemed slaves out of its common resources (St. Ignatius, "Polyc", 4; Apos. Const., IV, iii). Heroic Christians are known to have sold themselves into .slavery to deliver slaves (St. Clement, "Cor.", 4; "Vita S. Joannis Eleemosynarii " in Acta SS., Jan., II, p. .506). Many enfranchised all the slaves they had. In pagan antiquity wholesale en- franchisements are frequent, but they never include all the owner's slaves, and they are always by testa- mentary disposition — that is v/hen the owner cannot be impoverished by his bounty (Justinian, "Inst.", I, vii; "Cod. Just.", VII, iii, IV Only Christians en- franchised all their slaves in the owner's lifetime, thus effectually despoiling themselves of a considerable part of their fortune (see Allard, "Les esclaves Chre- tiens", 4th ed., p. .SUS). At the beginning of the fifth century, a Roman millionaire, St. Melania, gratui- tously granted liberty to so many thousand of slaves that hiT biographer declares himself unable to give their exact numl)er (Vita .S. Melania>, xxxiv). Palla- dius 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. But Palladius wrote before 406, which was long
before Melania had completely exhausted her im-
mense fortune in acts of liberality of all kinds (Ram-
polla, "S. Melania Giuniore", 1905, p. 221).
Primitive Christianity 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 the Church 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 Roman society. But to say, with Ciccotti (II tramonto della schiavitil, Fr. tr., 1910, pp. 18, 20), that primitive Christianity had not even "an embrj-onic vision" of a society in which there should be no slavery, to say that the Fathers of the Church did not feel "the horror of slavery", is to display either strange ignorance or singular unfairness. In St. Gregoiy of Nyssa (In Ecclesiastem, hom. iv) the most energetic and absolute reprobation of slavery may be found; and again in numerous passages of St. John Chrj'sostom's discourses we have the picture of a society without slaves — a society 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 chrt'tiens", pp. 416-23).
II. The Church and Slavery after the Barbarian Inv.\sions. — It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the legislative movement which took place during the same period in regard to slaves. From Augustus to Constantine statutes and jurisprudence tended to afford them greater protection against ill-treatment and to facilitate enfranchisement. Under the Christian 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 (see Wallon, "Hist, de Tcsclavage dans I'antiquite", III, ii and x). Although the civil law on slavery still lagged behind the demands of Christianity ("The laws of Caesar are one thing, the laws of Christ another", St. Jerome writes in "Ep. lxx\'ii"), 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 calam- itous for the slaves, increasing their numbers which had begun to diminish, and subjecting them to legislation and to customs much harder than those which obtained under the Roman law of the period (see Allard, "Les origines du servage" in "Rev. des questions historiques", April, 1911). Here again the Church intervened. It did so in three ways: redeem- ing slaves; legislating for their benefit in its councils; setting an example of kind treatment. Documents of the fifth to the seventh century arc full of instances of captives carried off from conquered cities by the barbarians and doomed to slavery, whom bishops, priests, and monks, and pious laymen redeemed. Redeemed captives were sometimes sent back in thou- sands to their own country (ibid., pp. 393-7, and Lesne, "Hist, de la proprietc ecclesiastique en France", 1910, pp. 357-69),
The Churches of Gaul, Spain, Britain, and It.aly were incessantly busy, in numerous councils, with the affairs of the slaves; protection of the maltreated slave who has taken rehige in a church (Councils of Orl(ans, 511, .538, 519; Council of Epone, 517); protection of freedmen, not only those manumitted in rcclcsiix, but also (hose freed bv any other process (Council of Aries, 4.52;of Agde, 5(Mi; of Orli'-ans, ,549; of Macon, 585; of Toledo, 589, 633; of Paris, 615);
