THE CHURCH AND LIBERTY.
Men are governed more by their sympathies than by reason. Weak arguments are strong enough when supported by prejudice which is able to withstand even the most conclusive proofs. We do not pretend to say that this is wholly wrong. Our feelings are in general sincerer than our thoughts; spring more truly from our real selves; are less the product of artificial culture and more of those common principles of our nature which make the whole world akin. But since in rational beings the feelings cannot be purely instinctive, it follows that they are more or less modifiable by the action of the intellect, which in turn is also subject to their influence. Prejudice, therefore, may be either intellectual or moral, or the one and the other; the most obstinate, however, is that which is enrooted in feeling and springs from sympathies and antipathies; and this is usually the character of religious prejudice. The tendency to make religion national, which is a remarkable feature in the history of mankind, together with the fact that states have always been founded and peoples welded into unity by a common faith, has as a rule thrown upon the side of religion the whole force of national prejudice, which, though it does not touch the deep fountains of immortal life and of the infinite, revealed by faith, is yet an immense power, more than any other aggressive and defiant. As the Catholic Church is non-national, it is not surprising that she should often be brought into conflict with the spirit of nationalism.
Christ was himself opposed by this spirit; on the one side he was attacked by the religious nationalism of the Jews, and on the other by that of the Romans. These enemies surrounded the early church. There was the internal struggle to free herself from the bonds of Judaism, a purely national faith; and there was the open battle with the Roman Empire for the liberty of the soul and her right to exist as a Catholic and non-national religion. Heresies and schisms have invariably been successful in proportion as they have been able to rouse national prejudice against the universal church. To pass over those of more ancient date, we may safely affirm that but for this Luther’s quarrel with Tetzel would never have given birth to Protestantism. The conflicts during the middle ages between popes and emperors and kings, together with schisms and scandals, had accustomed the public mind, especially in Germany and England, to look upon the successor of St. Peter as a foreign potentate; nor was it easy, in the state of things which then existed, to draw the line between his spiritual and his temporal authority. He came more and more to be considered an Italian sovereign who had usurped undue power, and thus in Germany and England Italians grew to be both hated and despised; and this more, probably, than kings and parliaments helped on the cause of Protestantism.
The Catholic faith was made to appear, not as the religion of Christ, but as popery, a foreign idolatrous superstition, which had by artful
means insinuated itself amongst the various nations of German blood; and to throw off the yoke of Italian despotism was held to be both political and religious disenthralment. The specific doctrines of Luther and the other heresiarchs had merely an incidental influence. In England, where the separation from the church was more complete than elsewhere, there was the least doctrinal departure from Catholic teaching; which is of itself proof how little any desire for a so-called purer faith had to do with the movement. The appeal to the Scriptures was popular because it was an appeal from the pope. That the Reformation was not an intellectual revolt, at least primarily, there is abundant evidence in the indisputable fact that the most enlightened and learned people of that age—the Italians—remained firm in their attachment to the old faith; and even in Germany, which was comparatively rude and barbarous, the cultivators of the new classical learning, which had been revived in Italy, were for the most part repelled by the coarseness and ignorance of the preachers of Protestantism, who in England found no favor with men like More and Wolsey, scholars, both of them, and patrons of letters.
As Protestantism did not spring from intellectual convictions, but from passion and prejudice—national antagonisms, which had been intensified by ages of conflict and strife, and which became the potent allies of the ambition and rapacity of kings and princes—it is but natural that Protestants, continuing the traditions of their fathers, should still be influenced in their opinions of the Catholic Church more by their antipathies than by reason, and that these antipathies should invariably run with the current of national
prejudice. Hence the objections to the church which really influence men are not religious but social. A Protestant who accepts the Bible as the word of God, and receives in the literal sense all that is there narrated, could not with any show of reason make difficulty about believing the teachings of the church; nor can one who trusts to himself alone for his creed feel great confidence that those who are supported by the almost unanimous consent of all Christians for fifteen hundred years, and of the great majority even down to the present day, are less certain of salvation than himself. But when he comes to consider the social influence of the church, he finds it less difficult to justify his dislike of Catholic institutions; for in this direction he is upheld most strongly by traditional prejudice. That the church fosters ignorance and immorality is to his mind axiomatic. He still thinks that the darkness, the scandals, and crimes of the middle ages, which he always exaggerates, are to be ascribed to her and not to the barbarians. The labors of the learned have long since shown the old Protestant theory, that the church sought to keep the people in ignorance, to be not only groundless, but the reverse to be true; and that not less false is the charge that she encouraged immorality, however corrupt some who have held high ecclesiastical positions may have been. But as we have quite recently discussed these questions,[80] we turn to the subject of the relative influence of the church and of Protestantism upon civil liberty. Discussions of this kind, though not new, are nevertheless full of actual interest.
The subject of social liberty profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age, and bids fair to become of still more vital moment in the future. The adversaries of the Catholic Church never feel so secure as when they attack her in the name of freedom. She is supposed to be the fatal foe of all liberty, intellectual, religious, and social.
For the present we shall put aside the controversies concerning liberty of thought and discussion, and confine ourselves to the examination of the relation of the church to social freedom. And it will be necessary, in order to institute a comparison between her action and that of Protestantism, to go back to the first ages to study her early efforts in behalf of human rights.
Those great battles for human liberty were fought, not by Christianity, but by the Christian Church. The religion of Christ was from the beginning corporate and organized; and it was through its organization that it exerted its influence upon individuals and upon society. To understand, therefore, the true relation of the church to liberty, we must study her history in the past as well as in the present. In fact, it is only in the light of the past that the present can be understood. The clear perception of her spirit and action during the centuries which preceded the advent of Protestantism will enable us to see how far and in what respect the politico-religious revolution of the sixteenth century was favorable to social freedom.
Human society, like the heavenly bodies, is guided by two forces, the natural tendencies of which are antagonistic, but whose combined action, when properly harmonized, produces order. Authority and
Liberty are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the social world; but, unlike those which govern the motions of the planets, they are indefinitely modifiable by free human agency. To regulate these two powers is the eternal political problem, which is never solved because the factors of the equation are ever varying and consequently never known. The exaggeration of the principle of authority is tyranny; of that of liberty, anarchy; and the excess of the one is followed by a reaction of the other, so that, whichever preponderates, the resulting evils are substantially the same. Tyranny is anarchical, and anarchy is tyrannical; and both are equally destructive of authority and liberty.
Though authority and liberty, as applied to human society, are relative terms, they presuppose the absolute, and therefore have as their only rational basis the existence of a personal God; and hence the social order is, in its very constitutive elements, religious. In view of this fact it is not surprising that the state, which is the symbol of secular society, should be drawn to usurp the functions of the church, the symbol of the spiritual order. As a result of this tendency, pre-christian history shows us a universal subordination of religion to the temporal government, or, what is practically the same, the identification of the two powers; since, where both are united, that which regards man’s present, visible, and urgent wants will always preponderate.
The direct consequence of this was the destruction of liberty; indirectly it also undermined authority. The state was absolute, and under the most favorable circumstances, as in the Græco-Roman
civilization, recognized the rights of the citizen, but not those of man; and even the citizen had rights only in so far as the state saw fit to grant them. The logical development of the absorption of all power by the state may be seen in imperial Rome, in which the ruler was at once emperor, supreme pontiff, and God.
When the Christian, though willing to obey Cæsar in temporal matters, reserved to himself a whole world upon which he would permit no human authority to trespass, he asserted, together with the supremacy of his spiritual nature, the principle to which modern nations owe their liberties. It would indeed be difficult to exaggerate the influence of this assertion of the sovereign rights of the individual conscience. It contains the principles of all rights and the essential elements of progress and civilization; it is the necessary preamble to every declaration of human liberties; the logical justification of all resistance to tyranny, and of every reaction against brute force and consecrated wrong. It is the impregnable stronghold of freedom, without which the sentiment of personal independence which the barbarians brought with them into European life would have been powerless to found free institutions. That sentiment was as strong in the North American Indians; in the Tartar and Turkish hordes which swept down from the table-lands of Asia upon fairer and more fertile regions; and yet with them it only subserved the cause of despotism. It is, indeed, inherent in human nature. To be self-conscious is to wish to be free and to take delight in the possession of liberty. This feeling finds a sanctuary in the heart of every boy who
roams the forest, or plunges through the stream, or beholds the eagle cleave the blue heavens. It was as active in the breasts of the early Greeks and Romans as in the barbarians who rushed headlong upon a falling empire. The love of liberty was, in fact, with them a sublime passion, and yet they were unable to found free institutions because the state, absorbing the whole man, made itself absolute.
They lacked, moreover, that of which the barbarians were also deprived—the knowledge of the worth and dignity of human nature. Man, as man, was not honored; to have any rights did not come of our common nature, but of the accident of citizenship. Slavery was consecrated as being not only just but necessary; and the slave was outside the pale of the law. Woman was degraded and infant life was not held sacred. In nothing is the contrast between modern and ancient civilizations more striking than in their manner of regarding human life. With us the life of the unborn child is under the protection of conscience, of public opinion, and of the law equally with that of the highest and noblest. Its value to the state, to society, to the world, is not considered; we think of it only as a creature of God, endowed by him with rights which men may not violate. But this doctrine is unknown to paganism. In Rome the father was free either to bring up his child or to murder it; even the laws of Romulus grant him this privilege, with the nominal restriction of obtaining the consent of the nearest of kin; but under the empire his right to kill his newly-born infant was fully recognized. The abandonment of children by their parents was a universal custom, and one of which the Emperor Augustus
approved in the case of the infant of his niece Julia. If child-murder was not a crime, abortion, of course, was no offence at all, and was universally practised, especially among the rich. The contempt in which human life was held is seen also in the public games—in which hundreds of men were made to butcher one another merely for the amusement of the spectators—as well as in the power of life and death of the master over his slave.
It has been maintained quite recently that those who gave their approval and lent the countenance of their presence to these inhumanities were not therefore cruel; that, on the contrary, many of them were kind-hearted and benevolent; but this, if we grant it, makes our argument all the stronger, since it proves that the system was more vicious than the men. A social state which does not respect life is incompatible with liberty. It would be vain to seek for the origin of our free institutions in any supposed peculiarities of our barbarous ancestors. Nothing short of a radical revolution of thought as to what man is could have made civil liberty possible. It was necessary to re-endow the individual with absolute and inviolable rights in the presence of the state. Man had to be taught that he is more than the state; that to be man is godlike, to be a citizen is human; but this he could not learn so long as he remained helplessly under the absolute power of the state; nor could he, with the conviction that the state is the highest and that he exists for it, make any effort to break the bonds of his servitude. Before this could be possible he had to be received into a society distinct from, and independent of, the state; he had to be made fully conscious that he is a
child of God, in whose sight slaves have equal rights with kings. It was necessary to bring out man’s personal destiny in strong contrast to the pagan view, which took in only his social mission, and this narrowly and imperfectly.
This is what the Christian religion did: it created a personal self-consciousness which made heroes of the commonest natures. The Roman died for his country; the Christian died for God and for his own soul’s sake. He was not led to brave death by the majesty of the city, of the empire, or by the memory of the victories which had borne his country’s arms in triumph through the world, but by his own individual faith and duty as a man with a personal and immortal destiny. When the Christian appealed from emperors and senates and armies, from the power and force of the whole world, to God, it was the single human soul asserting itself as something above and beyond this visible universe. Never before had the eternal and the infinite come so near to man; never before had he so felt his own immortal strength. He was lifted up into the heaven of heavens, stood face to face with the everlasting verities of God, became a dweller in the world that is, and the garments of space and time fell from his new-born soul. He was free; strong in the liberty with which Christ had clothed him, he defied all tyrannies. “As we have not placed our hope,” said Justin to the Emperor Antoninus, “on things which are seen, we fear not those who take away our lives; death being, moreover, unavoidable.” The pagan Roman knew, indeed, how to die; but his death, though full of grandeur and dignity, was sombre and hopeless; he died as the victim of fate. To the
Christian death came as the messenger of life; he died as one who is certain of eternity, as one whose soul is free and belongs to himself and God. This sense of a personal destiny which is eternal, of infinite responsibility, gave to the individual a strength and independence of character for which we will seek in vain among the religions of paganism. It is a feeling wholly distinct from the barbarian’s dislike of restraint. The love of wild and adventurous life neither fits men for the enjoyment of liberty nor predisposes them to grant it to others.
The more we study the history of Christian nations, the more profound is our conviction that without their religion they could never have won their liberties, which even now without this divine support could not be maintained. It is to our religion that we are indebted for the creation of popular free speech. Before Christ gave the divine commission to the apostles, philosophers had discoursed to their chosen disciples, and orators had declaimed to citizens, on the interests of the state; but no one had spoken to the people as moral beings with duties and responsibilities which lift them into the world of the infinite and eternal. There were priesthoods, but they were mute before the people, intent upon hiding from them all knowledge of their mysteries. Religious eloquence did not exist; it first received a voice on the shores of the Lake of Genesareth and on the hills of Judea, in the preaching of Jesus, who remains for ever its highest exponent, speaking as one who had authority with godlike liberty on whatever most nearly touches the dearest interests of men; speaking chiefly to the people, bringing back to their minds the long-forgotten truths which
prove them the royal race of God. The preaching of God’s word with the liberty of Heaven, which no earthly authority might lessen, became the great school of the human race; it was the first popular teaching, and like an electric thrill it ran through the earth. It belongs exclusively to the religion of Christ. Mahomet, who sought to borrow it, was able to catch only its feeble echo. This free Christian public speech is unlike all other oratory; it possesses an incommunicable characteristic, through which it has exercised the most beneficent influence upon the destinies of mankind. It is essentially spiritual, lifts the soul above the flesh, and creates new ideals of life; inspiring contempt for whatever is low and passing, it begets enthusiasm for the divine and eternal. It is a voice whose soul-thrill is love, the boundless love of God and of men, who are the children of this love, and therefore brothers. This voice cannot be bought, it cannot be silenced. Currit verbum, said St. Paul, and again from his prison-cell: “But the word of God is not fettered.” On innumerable lips it is born ever anew; and always and everywhere it is a protest against the brutality of power, an appeal in the name of God, our Father in heaven, in behalf of the poor, the oppressed, the disinherited of humanity. Men may still be tyrants, may still crush the weak and sacrifice truth and justice to their lustful appetites; but the voice of God, threatening, commanding, rebuking, shall be silent nevermore.
Festus will tremble before Paul; at the bidding of Ambrose Theodosius will repent; and before Hildebrand the brutal Henry will bow his head. At the sound of this voice all Europe shall rouse itself,
shall rush, impelled by some divine instinct, into the heart of Asia, to strike the mighty power which threatened to blight the budding hope of the world. If we would understand the relations of the church to liberty, we must consider the influence of this free speech, which, without asking the permission of king or people, impelled by a divine necessity, made itself heard of the whole earth. Over the door of his Academy Plato had inscribed: “None but geometers enter here”; over the portals of the church was written the word of Christ: “Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden.” “All you,” exclaimed St. Augustine, “who labor, who dig the earth, who fish in the sea, who carry burdens, or slowly and painfully construct the barks in which your brothers will dare the waves—all enter here, and I will explain to you not only the γνῶθι σεαυτόν of Socrates, but the most hidden of mysteries—the Trinity.” This new eloquence was as large as the human race; it was for all, and first of all for the poor and the oppressed. It was not artistic, in the technical meaning; it did not captivate the senses; it was not polished. There was no showy marshalling of words and phrases, no sweet and varied modulation of voice, no graceful and commanding gesture. Around the altar were gathered the slave, the beggar, the halt, and the blind—the oppressed and suffering race of men. If with them were found the rich and high-born, they were there as brothers—their wealth and noble birth entered not into the church of Christ. Here there was neither freeman nor slave—all were one. Thus in every Christian assembly was typed the humanity which was to be when all men would be brothers and free. To
this new race the apostle of Christ spoke: “My brothers,” he said, or “My children”; and though all history and all society shrieked out against him, his hearers felt and knew that his words were God’s truth. The heart is not deceived in love. “I seek not yours,” he said, “but you; for God is my witness how I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ.… I could wish that myself were accursed, if only my brethren be saved.” And then, with the liberty which love alone can inspire, he threatened, rebuked, implored, laid bare the hidden wounds of the soul, nor feared to become an enemy for speaking the truth. To the great and rich he spoke in the plainest and strongest manner, reminding them of their duties, denouncing their indifference, their cruelty, their injustice; and then, in words soft as oil, he breathed hope and courage into the hearts of those who suffer, showing them beyond this short and delusive life the certain reward of their struggles and sorrows. He taught them that the soul is the highest, that purity is the best, that only the clean of heart see God; that man’s chief worth lies in that which is common to all, derived from God and for him created. Human life was perishing, wastefully poured through the senses on every carnal thing. No love of beauty or truth or justice was left. The mind was darkened, the heart was paralyzed. The great, strong human passions that bore the people of Rome in triumph through the earth were dead; everywhere, in religion, in art, in manners, was the deadly blight of materialism; a kind of delirium hurried all men into animal indulgences fatal alike to soul and body. To a race thus glued to the earth by carnal appetites came the
voice of the apostle, preaching Christ and him crucified; telling of the divine love that had bowed the heavens and brought down to men God’s own Son to suffer, to labor, to die for them. He was poor, he was meek and humble, he fasted, he prayed; he comforted the sorrowful, gave hope to the despairing; he offered up his life for men. Such as he was those who believe in him must be. To serve the lusts of the flesh, to be heartless, to be cruel, to be unjust, is to have no part with him. The greed of gold and of pleasure had reduced the masses of men to slavery and beggary; those who would follow God’s Son in the perfect way were to sell what they had, to give to the poor. The whole race of men was fallen, sunk in sin; the disciples of Christ were bidden to separate themselves from a world which had denied God, that, having received faith, hope, and love through union with him, they might bring to the dying peoples a new life.
The Christian religion turned the mind’s eye from the contemplation of beauty of form to the inner life of the soul; from thoughts of power and success to principles of right and justice. All the forces of society had been brought together to develop in its highest potency the passion of patriotism, which, bending to its purpose all the powers of individual life, had created mighty states, embellished them with art, crowned them with victory, made them eternal in literature that cannot die; but on the altar of all this glory man had been sacrificed. Patriotism had failed, hopelessly failed, to satisfy the unutterable longings of an immortal race. It was based upon false principles and perverted instincts. Man’s end is not more fulfilled in
citizenship in a great and prosperous state than in the possession of vast wealth. The religion of patriotism was a low and material creed without eternal verities upon which to rest. Power was its divinity, and it was therefore without mercy; success was its justification, and it consequently trampled upon right. It is not surprising that such principles should have created states whose chief business was to prey upon the human race, and which, when conquest was no longer possible, were brought to ruin by the viciousness of their essential constitutions. In fact, patriotism, as understood by the pre-christian states, was a denial of the principles out of which the common law of Christendom has grown. It placed the interests of the nation above those of the race, and thereby justified all inhumanity if only it tended to the particular good of the state.
In contradiction of this unjust and narrow spirit, the Christian preacher declared that man’s first duty is to God, as his first aim should be to seek God’s kingdom by purifying and developing his own moral nature. He declared that man is more than the state, as God is more than the world; inspiring in another form those views of the paramount worth of the individual soul without which there could be no successful reaction against the slavery and degradation of paganism. “The world,” said Tertullian, “is the common country and republic of all men.”
These principles gradually worked their way, through “the foolishness of preaching,” into the minds and hearts of the masses and became the leaven of a new society. Let us examine their action more specially. In the church the brotherhood
of the race was from the earliest day not only taught but recognized as a fact. “There is neither Jew nor Greek,” said St. Paul, “neither bond nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This doctrine is stated in various places in the New Testament with such emphasis as to leave no doubt of its true meaning. It is equally certain, however, that the apostles did not proclaim the emancipation of the slaves. “Let those who are servants under the yoke,” said the same apostle who declared that in Christ there was neither bond nor free, “count their masters worthy of all honor, lest the name of the Lord and his doctrines be blasphemed.”
It was not the spirit of the Christian faith to encourage visionary schemes or to awaken wild dreams of liberty; but rather to subdue and chasten the heart, to make men content to bear worthily the ills of life by giving to suffering a meaning and a blessing.
The misery of the pagan slave was extreme, but it was also hopeless. He believed himself the victim of relentless fate, from whose power death was the only deliverance, and he therefore rushed wildly into all excess, giving little thought to whether he should live to see the morrow. Suffering for him was without meaning—a remediless evil, a blind punishment inflicted by remorseless destiny. For this reason also his wretchedness excited no pity. Even as late as the time of St. Ambrose the pagans were accustomed to say: “We care not to give to people whom the gods must have cursed, since they have left them in sorrow and want.”
But with the preaching of Christ, and him crucified, came the divine doctrine of expiatory suffering—of
suffering that purifies, regenerates, ennobles, begets the unselfish temper and the heroic mood. When the Christian suffered he was but filling up the measure of the sufferings of Christ. The slave, laboring for his master, was not seeking to please men; he was “the servant of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart”; “knowing that whatsoever good any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” Masters in turn were taught to treat their slaves kindly and gently, even as brothers; “knowing that the Lord both of them and of you is in heaven, and with him there is no respect of persons.”
Thus, without attempting to destroy slavery by schemes that must have been premature, the Christian religion changed its nature by diffusing correct notions concerning the mutual rights and duties implied in the relations of master and slave. The slave as a brother in Christ is separated by a whole world from the slave who is a tool or chattel. Who can read St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon, written in behalf of the fugitive slave Onesimus, without perceiving the radical revolution which Christianity was destined to make in regard to slavery? “I beseech thee for my son, Onesimus: … receive him as my own heart; no longer as a slave, but as a most dear brother. If he hath wronged thee in anything, or is in thy debt, put it to my account.”
This is after all but the application of the teaching of Christ: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sick, I was a captive, and ye fed me, ye gave me to drink, ye visited me; for inasmuch as ye have done this for the least of my brethren, ye have done it for me. In every suffering and wronged human being
there is the Christ to be honored, to be loved, to be served. Whosoever refuses to take part in this ministry places himself outside the kingdom of God.
Slavery, from the Christian point of view, is but one of the thousand ills entailed upon the human race by the transgression of Adam; it is enrooted, not in nature, but in sin; and as Christ died to destroy sin, his religion must tend to diminish and gradually abolish its moral results. The freedom of all men in Christ which the great apostle so boldly proclaims must in time find its counterpart in the equality of all men before the law. Indeed, the admission of the slave into the Christian brotherhood logically implied the abolition of slavery. It so raised the individual by giving him the knowledge of his true dignity, and so softened the master’s treatment, that the moral elevation of the whole class was the inevitable result. In this way the church made the slave worthy to be free, and from this to liberty there is but a step. “We teach the slaves,” said Origen, “how they may beget in themselves a noble spirit, and so become free”; and it need not surprise us, therefore, when Lactantius testifies that among Christians already in his day the difference between master and slave was but formal; in spirit both were brothers and fellow-servants of Christ. Nor is it remarkable that as evidence of this moral regeneration we should find the slaves among the early martyrs. There is an example of the sentiments which Christians entertained for their slaves in the self-reproaches of St. Paulinus in his letter to Sulpicius Severus: “He has served me,” he wrote; “he has been my slave. Woe to me, who have suffered that he who has never been a
slave to sin should serve a sinner. Every day he washed my feet, and, had I permitted it, would have cleansed my sandals; eager to render every service to the body, that he might gain dominion over the soul. It is Jesus Christ himself whom I venerate in this youth; for every faithful soul comes from God, and every one who is humble of heart proceeds from the very heart of Christ.” Men who felt so lovingly and so deeply for their fellows could not long consent to hold them in bondage. “We have known,” wrote Pope Clement to the Corinthians, “many of the faithful to become bondsmen that they might ransom their brethren.”
Pagan masters, such as Hermes and Chromatius, on the occasion of their baptism gave freedom to their slaves; and holy women, like St. Melania, induced their husbands to follow this example. “Every day,” wrote Salvian in the fifth century, “slaves receive the right of citizenship and are permitted to carry with them whatever they have saved in the house of their master.” And we know, upon the authority of St. Gregory of Nyssa, that these manumissions frequently took place at Easter and other solemn festivals of the church. After the conversion of Constantine the influence of the church induced the civil authority to relax the severity of its legal enactments concerning slaves. Their manumission, especially from religious motives, was facilitated and the cruelty of masters was restrained. The successors of Constantine, particularly Justinian, continued to act in the same generous spirit, until finally, in the sixth century, all the harsher pagan laws were abolished, and men who had been slaves were even admitted to holy orders. This wonderful change in the policy of
the Roman state had been wrought by the pressure of Christian influences. The voices of the great preachers, St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, never wearied in pleading the cause of the slave; the councils of the church placed them under the protection of the ecclesiastical law; the bishops and priests defended them against the cruelty of their masters; and when once they were free, the church clothed their liberty with an inviolable sanctity. In other ways, too, religious influences were at work to destroy slavery. The universal custom of the ancient pagan nations, which deprived captives of war of their freedom, was an unfailing source of supply to the slave markets. Though the church was unable at once to erase from the battle-flags of the ancient world the Væ victis, she found means to alleviate the lot of the captive.
We have quoted the words of St. Clement to show that in his day already Christians not unfrequently took upon themselves voluntary servitude in order to redeem their brethren. The property of the church was considered best employed when used for the redemption of captives. For this purpose the bishops were permitted to sell even the sacred vessels of the altar. “Since our Redeemer, the Creator of all things,” wrote Pope St. Gregory, “has vouchsafed in his goodness to become man, in order to restore to us our first liberty by breaking, through his divine grace, the bonds of servitude by which we were held captive, it is a holy deed to give to men, by enfranchisement, their native freedom; for in the beginning nature made them all free, and they have been subjected to the yoke of slavery only by the law of nations.”
A council held at Rome under this great pope (A.D. 595) decreed that slaves who wished to enter the monastic life should receive their liberty; and so great was the number of those who availed themselves of this privilege that the masters on all sides loudly complained of it as an intolerable abuse. The church of the middle ages went still further in the warfare for human liberty. Slavery existed among the Germanic races which overran the Roman Empire and took possession of its territory; and with them, too, the slave was the property of the master, who had the right to exchange, to sell, or even to put him to death.
The struggle which had been but begun amidst the corruptions of ancient Rome with an effete and dying race was renewed with the wild and rugged children of the forest. In this great battle for the rights of man the monks came forward as the leaders. In many convents it was forbidden to have slaves, and when the wealthy took the monastic habit they were required to emancipate their slaves.
A council held in England in 816 ordained that at the death of a bishop all his English slaves should be given their freedom; and at the Council of Armagh, in 1172, all English slaves in Ireland were emancipated. The Council of Coblentz, held in 922, declares that he who sells a Christian into slavery is guilty of murder.
Numerous decrees of ecclesiastical synods condemned the slave-trade, and with such efficacy that by the end of the tenth century slaves were no longer sold in the kingdom of the Franks.
In the British Islands this abuse was not eradicated till towards the close of the twelfth century. In Bohemia it was abolished in the
tenth, and in Sweden in the thirteenth century. The church continued to buy slaves in order to give them their liberty. The right of asylum was given to those who fled from the cruelty of their masters. The historical records of manumission in the middle ages, as preserved in testamentary acts, almost universally assign religious motives for the emancipation of slaves.
The efforts of the church in the first centuries of Christianity, and later too, in behalf of the weak and the oppressed—woman, the child, and the slave—are intimately connected with the progress of civil liberty. It is impossible for us, who are the children of two thousand years of Christian influences, to realize the full significance of her enthusiastic devotion to the people, poor, suffering, and degraded, in an age in which no other voice than hers pleaded for them. In order to do this we should be able to place ourselves in the midst of the old pagan world, so as to contemplate the abject condition to which the masses of men had been reduced—a state so pitiable that possibly nothing short of the appearance of God himself, in poverty and sorrow, could have inspired the courage even to hope for better things.
The history of heathenism, in the past as in the present, is marked by contempt for man, by the degradation of the multitude. In this respect the civilization of Greece and Rome was not different from that of India and China in our own day. If in Christian nations, after long struggles and terrible conflicts, a better state of social existence has been brought about, we owe it to Christ working in and through his church. To render liberty possible an intellectual and moral revolution
had to take place. New ideas as to what man is in himself simply, new sentiments as to what is due him by virtue of his very nature, new doctrines as to what all men owe to all men, had to be preached and accepted before there could be any question of civil reform in the direction of larger and more universal liberty. Institutions, laws, constitutions are mechanical, the surfaces of things, social garments which, unless they cover and protect some inner life and divine truth, are merely useless forms. Liberty, individual and social, is inseparable from self-control, which is born of self-denial. Good men cannot be made by good laws any more than by good clothes. Man, of course, is influenced, in part educated, by what he wears as by what he eats; but it does not follow that the wisest course would be to hand over the children, body and soul, to cooks and tailors. Not less unreasonable is it to surrender them to politicians to be drilled and fashioned by the mechanical appliances of government.
Liberty is of the soul; it is from this sanctuary that it passes into the laws and customs of society. Men who are slaves in heart cannot be made free by legislative enactments. The church of Christ taught men how to be worthy to be free by showing them liberty’s great law—self-denial; by restoring to the soul the sovereignty of which it had been deprived since the gates of Paradise were barred; by clothing human nature with inviolable sacredness and inalienable rights; by proclaiming that man, for being simply man, is worthy of all love and respect.
When Christ came, the slave, without honor and without hope, was everywhere. The master was like his
slave. Surrounded by human herds, to whom vice in its most degrading forms had become a necessity, he breathed in an atmosphere of corruption against whose deadly poison he was powerless to contend. His life was a fever alternating between lust and blood. The debauched are always cruel, and as men sank deeper into the slough of sensual indulgence the cry for carnage grew fiercer. Nothing but the hacking and mangling of human bodies could rouse the senses, deadened by the gratification of brutish passions. Here and there a stray voice protested, but only in the sad tones of despair. Hope had fled; the world was prostrate; in the mephitic air of sensuous indulgence the soul was stifled; the poor were starving and the rich were glutted; a thousand slaves could hardly feed the stomach of Dives; and Jesus Christ took Lazarus in his arms, and in a voice from heaven called upon all who believed in God and in man to follow him in the service of outraged humanity; and his voice was re-echoed through the earth and through the ages. At its sound the despairing took heart, the dead lived, the poor heard the new gospel of glad tidings, and the slave, crushed and ignored by human society, found citizenship and liberty in the kingdom of God.
[80] “A Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy.” The Catholic World, February, March, and April.