The Acts of the Martyred Slaves were read to the congregations of the faithful, and the highest honour and veneration was paid to their memory. The slaves Blandina of Lyons, Felicitas of Carthage, Emerentiana of Rome the foster-sister of Agnes, the famous martyr—are names which deservedly rank high in the histories of the early heroines of the Church.
But although slavery was still recognized in the new Society which outwardly made no abrupt changes, which desired no sudden and violent uprooting in the old Society, a marvellous change passed over the ordinary conception of the slave.
An extract from a letter of Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, the disciple and biographer of S. Martin of Tours (circa the last years of the fourth century), will give some idea of the regard so largely entertained by Christian thinkers for the slave members of the community. Thanking Sulpicius for a young slave he had sent him, Paulinus of Nola, recognizing in the slave an earnest and devout soul, writes to his friend as follows: “He has served me, and woe is me that I have allowed him to be my servant—that he who was no servant of sin, should yet be in the service of a sinner! Unworthy that I am, every day I suffered him to wash my feet; and there was no menial duty he would not have performed had I allowed him, so unsparing was he of his body—so watchful for his soul. Ah, it is Jesus Christ that I venerate in this young man; for surely every faithful soul proceeds from God, and every humble man of heart comes from the very heart of Christ.”[75]
There is little doubt but that this authoritative teaching of the Christian masters in the matter of the perfect equality of the slave in the eyes of God, and the consequent tender and often loving treatment meted out to the Christian members of the despised and downtrodden class, gravely misliked the more thoughtful among the pagan aristocracy of Rome, and that this teaching and practice of Christians in the case of the vast slave class in the pagan Empire ranked high among the dangers which they felt threatened the existence of the old state of things. Grave considerations of this kind must have strongly influenced the minds of men like Pius and Marcus and their entourage, before they determined to carry out their bitter policy of persecution.
The Romans of the old school could have well afforded to regard with comparative indifference the enfranchisement of any number of Christian slaves. Freedmen, especially in the imperial household, were very numerous in the days of the Antonines. But the teaching that these slaves—while still slaves—were their brethren, and ought to be treated with love and esteem, was a new and disturbing thought in the Empire of the great Antonines.
Lecky, in his History of European Morals (chap. iv.), has a fine passage in which he sums up the great features of the new movement of Christian charity, and its results on the world at large. It runs as follows:
“There is no fact of which an historian becomes more steadily or more painfully conscious than the great difference between the importance and the dramatic interest of the subjects he treats. Wars or massacres, the horrors of martyrdom or the splendour of individual prowess, are susceptible of such brilliant colouring that with but very little literary skill they can be so portrayed that their importance is adequately realized, and that they appeal powerfully to the emotions of the reader. But this vast and unostentatious movement of charity, operating in the village hamlets and in the lonely hospital, staunching the widow’s tears and following all the windings of the poor man’s griefs, presents few features the imagination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression upon the mind. The greatest things are those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of the world it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole pagan world. It has indissolubly united in the minds of men the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence.”
The foundation stories of all this vast movement of charity and altruistic love were laid in the early years of Christianity.
The assemblies—the meetings together of the Christians of the first days—constructed and developed, as we have seen, the laws of charity; indicating the persons who were to be assisted, suggesting, too, the means and resources out of which the sufferers—the forlorn and needy—might be helped and comforted in life and in death.