[177] Ibid. p. 22. Potgiesser, Commentarii juris Germanici de statu servorum, i. 4. 8, p. 176. Muratori, Dissertazioni sopra le antichità italiane, i. 244.
[178] Concilium Toletanum IV. A.D. 633, can. 66 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, x. 635). Blakey, Temporal Benefits of Christianity, p. 397. Digby, Mores Catholici, ii. 341. Cibrano, Della schiavitù e del servaggio, i. 272. Rivière, L’Église et l’esclavage, p. 350.
[179] Concilium Aurelianense IV. about A.D. 545, can. 32 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ix. 118 sq.).
[180] Concilium Rhemense, about A.D. 630, can. 22 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. x. 597). Gratian, Decretum, ii. 12. 2. 13 sqq. Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, A.D. 1263, ch. 74 vol. xxii. 124. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, ii. 284 sqq. Babington, op. cit. pp. 51 sqq., 94 sq. Nys, Le droit de la guerre et les précurseurs de Grotius, p. 114.
[181] Bouvier, Institutiones philosophicæ, p. 566.
The Apostles reminded slaves of their duties towards their masters and masters of their duties towards their slaves.[182] The same was done by Councils and Popes. The Council of Gangra, about the year 324, pronounced its anathema on anyone who should teach a slave to despise his master on pretence of religion;[183] and so much importance was attached to this decree that it was inserted in the epitome of canons which Hadrian I. in 773 presented to Charlemagne in Rome.[184] But there are also many instances in which masters are recommended to show humanity to their slaves.[185] According to Gregory IX. “the slaves who were washed in the fountain of holy baptism should be more liberally treated in consideration of their having received so great a benefit.”[186] Slaves who had taken refuge from their masters in churches or monasteries were not to be given up until the master had sworn not to punish the fugitive;[187] or they were never given up, but became slaves to the sanctuary.[188] The Church, as we have seen, protected the life of the slave by excommunicating for a couple of years masters who killed their slaves.[189] She prohibited the sale of Christian slaves to Jews and heathen nations.[190] The Council of Chalons, in the middle of the seventh century, ordered that no Christians should be sold outside the kingdom of Clovis, so that they might not get into captivity or become the slaves of Jewish masters;[191] and some Anglo-Saxon laws similarly forbade the sale of Christians out of the country, and especially into bondage to heathen, “that those souls perish not that Christ bought with his own life.”[192] The clergy sometimes remonstrated against slave markets; but their indignation never reached the trade in heathen slaves,[193] nor was the master’s right of selling any of his slaves whenever he pleased called in question at all. The assertion made by many writers that the Church exercised an extremely favourable influence upon slavery[194] surely involves a great exaggeration. As late as the thirteenth century the master practically had the power of life and death over his slave.[195] Throughout Christendom the purchase and the sale of men, as property transferred from vendor to buyer, was recognised as a legal transaction of the same validity with the sale of other merchandise, land or cattle.[196] Slaves had a title to nothing but subsistence and clothes from their masters, all the profits of their labour accruing to the latter; and if a master from indulgence gave his slaves any peculium, or fixed allowance for their subsistence, they had no right of property in what they saved out of that, but all that they accumulated belonged to their master.[197] A slave or a freedman was not allowed to bring a criminal charge against a free person, except in the case of a crimen læsæ majestatis,[198] and slaves were incapable of being received as witnesses against freemen.[199] The old distinction between the marriage of the freeman and the concubinage of the slave was long recognised by the Church: slaves could not marry, but had only a right of contubernium, and their unions did not receive the nuptial benediction of a priest.[200] Subsequently, when conjunction between slaves came to be considered a lawful marriage, they were not permitted to marry without the consent of their master, and such as transgressed this rule were punished very severely, sometimes even with death.[201]
[182] Ephesians, vi. 5 sqq. Colossians, iii. 22 sqq.; iv. 1.
[183] Concilium Gangrense, about A.D. 324, can. 3 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ii. 1102, 1106, 1110).
[184] ‘Epitome canonum, quam Hadrianus I. Carolo magno obtulit, A.D. DCCLXXIII.’ in Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. xii. 863.
[185] Babington, op. cit. p. 58 sqq.