CHAPTER II
ON SERVILE WORK
i. IN order that all, and especially the poor, may have the opportunity of fulfilling their religious duties, the Church has forbidden servile work to be done on Sunday. Servile work is the rougher and harder sort of manual labour which is done by common workmen and labourers, and which used to be done by slaves. It comprises ploughing, digging, building, sewing, and similar occupations. It is distinguished from liberal and from mixed work. Liberal work is done mainly by the intellect, and comprises writing, studying, painting, and so forth. Mixed work comprises a class of occupations which are neither exclusively liberal nor servile, but which are done indifferently by all conditions of men. In this class are hunting, fishing, travelling, and similar occupations. Of these only servile work is forbidden on Sundays, and in determining what is servile work, and therefore forbidden, we must consider not only the nature of the work itself, but also the way in which it is done, the light in which it is commonly regarded, and other circumstances. Thus it is usually held that although the rougher work of the sculptor is servile and unlawful, the more delicate is liberal and may be done on a Sunday. Similarly, fishing with rod and line is not unlawful, but going out to sea with a fishing-smack and plying the trade in the ordinary working- day way is forbidden. In the same way one who lives by photography should not ply his trade on a Sunday, but it would not be wrong for an amateur to do the same work on that day by way of recreation and amusement.
2. This part of the precept of keeping the Sunday holy also binds under pain of grave sin. If, however, the matter be light, the doing of a little servile work on a Sunday will be only a venial sin, and none at all if there be good reason for it. According to the common opinion, it would be necessary to work for well over two hours at something which is forbidden in order to commit a grave sin. Still longer time would be required for a mortal sin in doing servile work of a lighter kind, which had for it some sort of excuse on the ground that
