[48] Ibid. ix. 872.
In Rome, in ancient times, the master had by law the absolute power of life and death over his slaves; and he who killed another man’s slave was not criminally prosecuted, but had merely to compensate the owner for the destruction of his property.[49] Even during the Empire a slave was counted a thing, not a person; himself incapable of suffering an injuria, he was viewed as a mechanical medium only, through which an insult could be transmitted to his master.[50] Yet this doctrine was not rigidly adhered to. After the publication of the Lex Cornelia, the change was introduced that he who killed a slave belonging to somebody else could be punished for murder;[51] and later on even the master’s power of life and death was restricted by law. Claudius declared that sick slaves who had been exposed by their owners in a languishing condition, and afterwards recovered, should be perfectly free and never more return to their former servitude; moreover, “if any one chose to kill at once, rather than expose, a slave, he should be liable for murder.”[52] By a constitution of Antoninus Pius he who put his slave to death without a sufficient cause (sine causa) was to be punished equally with him who killed the slave of another.[53] Hadrian even made an attempt to induce slave-owners to hand over to the authorities slaves who had been guilty of some capital crime, instead of themselves inflicting the punishment on the guilty.[54]
[49] Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 616.
[50] Institutiones, iv. 4. 3.
[51] Gaius, Institutionum juris civilis commentarii, iii. 213. Cf. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 616.
[52] Suetonius, Claudius, 25.
[53] Gaius, op. cit. i. 53. Institutiones, i. 8. 2.
[54] Spartian, Vita Hadriani, 18. Cf. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 617, n. 2.
Faithful to her principle that human life is sacred, the Church made efforts to secure the life of the slave against the violence of the master; but neither the ecclesiastical nor the secular legislation gave him the same protection as was bestowed upon the free member of the Church and State. Various Councils punished the murder of a slave with two years’ excommunication only, if the slave had been killed “sine conscientia judicis”;[55] and the same punishment was adopted by some Penitentials.[56] Edgar made the penance last three years, whereas, if a freeman was killed, the penance was of seven years’ duration.[57] Facts do not justify Mr. Lecky’s statement that, “in the penal system of the Church, the distinction between wrongs done to a freeman, and wrongs done to a slave, which lay at the very root of the whole civil legislation, was repudiated.”[58]
[55] Concilium Agathense, A.D. 506, canon 62 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, viii. 335). Concilium Epaonense, A.D. 517, canon 34 (ibid. viii. 563). Concilium Wormatiense, A.D. 868, canon 38 (ibid. xv. 876).