Considering the character of the Roman curia in the Middle Ages it would scarce be malicious to suggest that the chief object of these prohibitions was to create a market for licenses to violate them, and St. Antonino of Florence, about the middle of the fifteenth century, tells us that as a rule the Venetian merchants had them (S. Antonini Confessionale)
In spite of his laxity in practice, Alfonso X in the Partidas embodies the Lateran decree denouncing slavery for all who aid the Saracens in any manner (Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxi, ley 4) and in 1253 he admitted papal control in such matters by obtaining in advance from Innocent IV ratification of certain treaties which he was negotiating with the princes of Africa (Fernández y González, p. 337).
[166] Bullar. Roman. I, 263.—Eymerici Direct. Inquisit. p. 351(Ed. Venet. 1607).
[167] Barrantes, Ilustraciones, etc., Lib. I, cap. iv, xiii, xiv, xx, xxi.—Ayala, Crónica de Don Pedro I, año III, cap. iii.
[168] Chron. Sampiri Asturicens. n. 16, 24, 25 (España Sagrada, XIV, 447, 454, 455).—Marca Hispanica, p. 1232.
[169] Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxi, leyes 6, 8; Tit. xxii, ley 3. In the Fuero Real de España the only allusion to Moors is as slaves (Lib. IV, Tit. xi, ley 3; Tit. xiv, ley 1). It is virtually the same in the old Fuero of Madrid (Memorias de la R. Acad. de la Historia, VIII, 40).
The Church held that baptism manumitted the slave, even when the master was Christian, but when it sought to enforce the rule the masters resisted, either forbidding the baptism or demanding from the clergy the value of the slave and seizing pledges to ensure payment. Innocent III was much scandalized by this. In 1205 he complained to Alfonso IX that in place of requiring such converted slaves to be paid for at the price fixed by the canons he allowed the owner to determine the value, and thus the Bishop of Burgos had recently been forced to pay two hundred gold pieces for a girl not worth ten deniers (Innoc. PP. III, Regest. VIII, 50; IX, 150).
[170] Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxi, ley 7.
[171] Fernández y González, pp. 21, 24-5.
[172] Dozy, Recherches, I, 124-6.